I’ve owned a PSP for a little over a year now, having decided at purchase time that it was the portable gaming system for me. I decided that for the following reasons:

1) Homebrew capability without the need for any ‘modchip’ or third-party add-on hardware.

2) Awesome games like “SOCOM” and “Grand Theft Auto” — none of the crap Nintendo has been putting out for years.

3) The ability to play movies without some kind of add-on.

4) The dead sexiness of that shiny black device.

Last January I had a 25% off coupon for Toys ‘R’ Us that applied to hardware, so I picked up a Nintendo Gameboy DS thinking that I would hate it but be able to sell it for a profit if I did.  I think it was about 2 days later that Nintendo started talking about the new ‘Lite’ version that would be coming out, thus killing any chance of profit. In any case, I spent all my time with the new PSP games that I picked up with said coupon and didn’t even look at the DS until a week or so ago, thinking it was stupid and not as cool as the PSP.

I was wrong.

The following are the reasons why the DS is better than the PSP and is therefore the portable gaming system for me:

1) “The crap Nintendo has been putting out for years” turns out to be exactly the type of game I am interested in playing. Other than many hours spent playing “SOCOM” over the Internet and the occasional bit of “Virtua Tennis”, none of the PSP games I have hold much interest for me anymore when I’m out and about — which is the time I’m most interested in gaming. There aren’t any new games out that I’m interested in for the PSP, but 5 minutes at the store turned up tons of DS games that interest me. (Puzzley games and games to make my brain work, mainly.)

2) I’ve played movies on my PSP a total of zero times due to the fact that it only plays special discs you have to buy or specially crafted MPEG-4 files. Crafting said MPEG-4 files takes way too long and is way too much effort.

3) Sexy isn’t as important as fun to be with.

4) The third-party add-on to enable homebrew is very reasonably priced. In fact, owning a DS is still pretty much half the cost of a PSP even after adding that cost, not to mention that games for the DS are cheaper.

I’m now looking forward to picking up the DS Lite, because it is both fun to be with and sexy.