Read the latest in portable gaming news, and you might think it’s 2005 all over again — but not quite. Though Sony’s higher-priced-and-powered piece of tech is once again up against a Nintendo product with a retail head-start, the former handheld doesn’t seem like the destined winner this time around. For Vita, competition is stiff: Nintendo’s 3DS took only eight months to match the shaky first year of DS sales, and, unlike the PSP’s early days, the smartphone market currently provides a multitude of cheaper options for gaming on the go (not to mention multimedia features matching Sony’s offerings). And while Vita’s hardware fixes many of the PSP’s flaws, power alone won’t win this arms race; instead, Sony will have to rely on strategies beyond pushing the HD angle.
