Being almost a month since my last post, you’re probably starting to wonder if I’m ever going to update this thing again, well here i am at last.

The DS lite launched in America on Sunday June the 11th, in Japan March 2nd (a Thursday).  In Japan the unit is still hard to come by even several months after the launch, in America it’s pretty easy to walk into your local retail outlet and pick one up.  This is not to say that the DS lite has not launched well in the US, just not much more low key, after all it is just a very nice redesign.

While I never owned the original DS, I have spent a good deal of time with it.  I was never really satisfied with the design of the original DS it was far to large and clunky, the buttons had a horrible feel to them and the power button was positioned in such a manner that I often accidently turned the unit off.  I’m happy to say that Nintendo has fixed all of these oversights and a few other that I haven’t mentioned here.  The DS lite is easily the nicest portable device I’ve ever used, the hard plastic clear shell seems to be nearly indestructible, to go one step further I haven’t even been able to scratch the shell of this thing.  I’m not going to dwell on the other changes seeing as you probably already know about them if you’re reading this.

Coming from a heavy PSP user (up until recently that is), I can personally say there are a lot of differences in the implementation and several thing that were a welcome change and an odd disruption.

On the PSP i’ve gotten used to never actually turning the unit off, so the DS freaking out when a DS or GBA game comes in or out was a rather abrupt change of usage.  Changing Wifi settings on a DS requires me to insert a Wifi game and go into the settings on it, instead of having it with in the main system preferences.  One of the incredibly nice things about the DS coming from the PSP is incredible difference in load times, the DS has almost non-existant loading and transitions.  Yet another thing about the DS that has been really nice has been the games, the DS games feel more complete, more original, the PSP games feel like portable-ized versions of PS1/PS2 games (with exceptions like the brilliant Loco Roco and the very cool Metal Gear Ac!d series).  so far since i’ve had the DS lite I have not touched the PSP, other than a few rounds of Loco Roco here and there, on the other hand the DS lite has gotten a couple of hours of use just about everyday.

The conclusion I am attempting to come to here is that the DS seems to be a better gaming platform than the PSP.  I still have my PSP and i still plan to play my PSP, but while the PSP continues to show great potential and fail to deliver on it, the DS delivers on every ounce it’s capability.

Source: Wikipedia Article