Xbox Portable Vs Nintendo DS

With the power and resources a company like Microsoft has, would a company like Nintendo be able to compete alongside it if Microsoft did decide to do the inevitable and released it's own portable console to battle against the might of Sonys graphical beast the PSP and Nintendo's innovative handheld the DS.

Lets have a closer inspection at what would most likely appear on the console. Well to start with im sure most of the developers who are working under Microsoft such as Rare and Bioware etc would help create the initial set of launch games and another obvious company that would do so would be Microsofts saviours Bungie Software, yes the developers who created the Halo series. Now that's three company's that are pretty well respected by the gaming industry (Rare?). But it would mainly be down to Bungie to create the 'must have' launch game for the system which would be a spin-off id imagine of Halo 2.

Surely with those company's at the helm and an on-line portable version of Halo Microsoft would be on for a winner.

Well not quite, it all depends on what functionality the handheld would offer alongside its general gaming useage. As it's a Microsoft product its bound to be inter-grated with all kinds of multimedia tools which allow you to do some fantastic things on the move… So your asking what would the problem with handheld be?

Well the problem is Microsoft aren't renowned for their simplicity, if people are using a handheld console they want it to be as quick, simple and as fast as possible to navigate round. They just want to be able to load up a game and play without having to go through endless navigation displays to get there. Sometime people just want a very quick gaming fix.

Secondly due to Microsofts obvious technological heritage the system would basically be a multimedia center and this isn't going to come cheap. A multimedia center and a handheld Xbox, now that's going to be pricey. Therefore I believe these two points would cut out a huge chunk of the video gaming market.

You see Microsoft may have the money and marketing power but the products can tend to be fiddle-some and the large slice of the handheld market belongs to the kids who thrive and love the simplicity of a Nintendo handheld console and games such as Nintendogs and Animal Crossing.

As shown by Sony and its PSP console Nintendo is one company that is damn hard to beat.