Portable gaming consoles compared

Updated April 12, 2006

For all intents and purposes, portable gaming was once relegated to a single product: the Nintendo Game Boy Advance. Nintendo upped the ante with the DS in late 2004, offering a dual-screen touch pad and wireless capabilities. Sony countered with the PlayStation Portable (PSP) in March 2005. Not only does it boast the best graphics of any portable gaming platform, the PSP's impressive video, audio, and digital image capabilities offer the potential to transcend gaming and serve as a portable entertainment device. Sony's since updated the PSP's firmware to enable Web browsing and with an add-on, remote video viewing. Nintendo, meanwhile, has countered with slimmer, sexier redesigns of its standbys: the aptly named Game Boy Micro--an update of the old GBA--and the DS Lite, which is already available in Japan and scheduled to hit North America later in 2006. Meanwhile, don't dismiss Nokia's much-maligned N-Gage; it's still the only handheld gaming console that doubles as a phone, and it's the only handheld you can get for free--with a service contract, of course.

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