Where is fanboyism bred – in the heart or in the head? I am more and more starting to believe that the nature of that beast is brought about by the company themselves. Sony, already known for their sagacious Ken Kutaragi statements, has taken a few more stabs at the Nintendo DS, its spiritual competition in the portable market. I say spiritual, since VP of studios Phil Harrison seems to think otherwise: “The idea of a handheld rivalry with Nintendo is an irrelevance, those formats don’t appear in our planning. It’s not a fair comparison; not fair on them, I should stress. That sounds arrogant, maybe, but it’s the truth.” Which might sting more if the PSP was not being outsold by almost a million in Japan to the Nintendo DS. Other quotes worthy of mention include:

* ”With the DS, it’s fair to say that Nintendo stepped out of the technical race and went for a feature differentiation with the touch screen, but I fear that it won’t have a lasting impact beyond that of a gimmick - so the long-lasting appeal of the platform is at peril as a direct result of that.”
* ”Nintendo knows its target audience, because it has really narrowed that down; and it’s pretty much defined by a boy or girl’s ability to admire Pokemon.”

I do not know what exactly brought about these harsh words, but they are unusually strong, even for a corporate spokesperson, but I bet fighting words like this will incite fanboys on both sides to speak their mind. Despite that, these are pretty funny quotes.

Ashman sighning off.

Yeah it was a bit strange for a spokesman from Sony. All the Japanese spokesman and Ken Kutaragi haven't mentioned the DS at all. But than again, Nintendo have said some harsh words towards the PSP themselves

both systems Have ovious flaws witch leaves a lot of room for improvement

both have poorley designed controlls for starters

I think the controls are probably adequately designed for their initial target audience, i.e. Japanese. Us big-handed folks have more issues with them though.

Every time I see a comment from Kutaragi, he's saying something monumentally stupid. The man isn't quite right.

A flaw from a genius, I guess