HANDHELD VS HANDHELD / 7TH GENERATION

PSP vs Nintendo DS: The Best 7th-Gen Handheld to Buy Now

Handheld collecting demand has grown steadily, and these two remain the defining rivals of their generation.

Design Philosophy: Two Screens vs One Powerful One

DS built its entire identity around dual screens and touch input, unlocking genres and mechanics (puzzle games, DS-native RPG interfaces, the entire brain-training wave) that simply didn't exist on a single-screen handheld. PSP went the opposite direction — a single high-resolution screen and console-comparable power that made it a genuinely strong home for ports and original titles that looked and played closer to a home console experience.

Media and Format Considerations

PSP doubled as a portable media player, supporting music and video playback via its UMD format and memory stick storage, a real selling point at the time. DS relied on cartridges exclusively, which means no disc-based degradation concerns the way PSP's UMD format can have, though UMD wear is generally a smaller concern than optical discs on home consoles.

Which to Buy

DS is the broader, safer first purchase given its larger and more varied library and simpler cartridge-based reliability. PSP is very much worth owning alongside it for its stronger action and RPG library and console-like presentation — the two rarely compete for the same games, so owning both is common among 7th-gen handheld collectors.

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