Even though Nintendo’s systems in the post-GameCube era have quite handily outsold the competition — especially its handhelds — Sony hasn’t tired of taking shots at the Mario maker. Despite its own PSP garnering a fairly young audience (as evidenced by the recent “Thank You PSP” TV spot), SCEA President and CEO Jack Tretton has taken a shot at the perceived audience of Nintendo’s handhelds, describing them as “a great babysitting tool.”
Referring to the DS line of systems as the “Game Boy experience,” Tretton told CNN, “Our view of the ‘Game Boy experience’ is that it’s a great babysitting tool, something young kids do on airplanes, but no self-respecting twenty-something is going to be sitting on an airplane with one of those. He’s too old for that.”
He also talked up the PlayStation 3’s 3D games and the NGP, as one would expect. It’s his Nintendo bashing that is somewhat puzzling; the DS has sold more than double that of the PSP worldwide. It’s an accomplishment that Sony was able to do as well as it did with its first handheld given Nintendo’s long history of dominating the market. Sony and Tretton in particular likewise have a long history of knocking Nintendo and its appeal to the younger crowd, but when Sony itself has outright admitted that a significant portion of the PSP’s audience consists of people under the age of 18, declarations like this stand out even more than they normally would.
