The primary thing has always been the games – and as you noted, the NDS has bucketloads. But it’s quality too – unique, intuitive, inexpensive and exclusive software. The touchscreen helps in this regard; Nintendo is now organically growing their market of touchscreen applications, such as ebooks and interactive cooking lessons; “Brain Age” is just the beginning.

Meanwhile, the PSP tries hard to be the jack of all trades but remains a master of none. Very poor game selection and 30-40% more expensive hardware and software remains a problem.

As for mindshare, in their fear of piracy Sony has zealously denied its users features; Sony has released several firmware updates which do nothing but prevent the more intrepid gamers from playing homebrewed games and emulations of old NES titles. Sony even blocked Internet access to the built-in web browser for eight months.

Want to watch a movie? You can spend $30 on a proprietary UMD of “Out of the Blue” and others of similar calibre from their meagre movie library, or buy a proprietary $120 memory stick and spend time hacking and transcoding your own material. Music? You have to use Sony’s proprietary (and arguably clunky) SonicStage software.

Throw in the build design issues – easy to scratch screen, dead pixels out of the box, short battery life, low LCD screen response causing “ghosting”, and its obvious weight and size, and its no wonder Nintendo remains on the top of the heap.