Sony's Phil Harrison goes crazy on Nintendo DS

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.

[via 1up]