Oh god, no. I like where Nintendo has gone with hardware (NES controller, shoulder buttons, analog sticks, portable game player, light gun, and yes even connectivity) and is going with hardware (touchscreen and hopefully more). I mean sometimes their innovation is incremental, but when they innovate, the other guys play catch up. Sony, IMO, is awful in the area of game hardware. I'm not really talking about graphical capabilities, but hardware capabilities and controllers. This generation disappointed me in hardware capabilities because it was mostly just an improvement in graphics, which is the only thing Sony really cares about game-wise. I'd rather have connectivity than nothing different at all (and Four Swords is excellent).
As a gamer, I don't really care about the multimedia features of Sony's hardware because it doesn't affect the games. But they completely lack any innovation game-wise and their controllers are terrible. First, they took the SNES controller, added flat handles, two more shoulder buttons, pushed the face buttons far away from each other, made the D-pad stiffer and segmented, and threw out the letter system for symbols. All bad ideas, IMO. Then, mid-life, they 'redesigned' the Playstation controller by slapping two of the loosest analog sticks ever between everything that was already there (aka at the harshest angle possible for your thumb at rest). Up was not up anymore, but the two stick idea was good. Then with Dual Shock 2 they tightened the sticks enough to feel tension and analoged the digital buttons. That was a harmless move, but also pointless (a rather flawed concept, IMO), basically rendering it the Dual Shock 1.1.
As for PSP, again the advantages are for consumers looking for multimedia features. For the gamer, you get nothing. Well, unless portability for the PlayStation brand is something, that's what you get. Innovation? No. Oh, and another horribly placed stick. This was all okay before the DS. Touchscreens were long overdue for game handhelds, and DS also has a mic and two screens. At worst, the mic and two screens are a gimmick for gamers (no way is touchscreen a gimmick IMO), but they still aren't as useless as Dual Shock 2's analog digital buttons. And Band of Brothers' use of the mic is anything but useless. For me, PSP is a step back for game handhelds other than being a 3D intense system.
Microsoft is almost a Sony copycat, but they threw in a hard drive which I think can actually be a fruitful idea for games. Nintendo proposed great ideas for re-writibility, and they could do that with a HD. Microsoft is also majorly online, which would give Nintendo the opportunity to finally give us online Mario Kart and Smash Bros. But their controllers are probably worse than Sony's, and the other stuff Nintendo could do themselves rather easily. In other words, no need to side with MS for a hard drive, then get a worse controller and no innovation.
Sticking Nintendo with Sony or Microsoft, to me, would be like locking them in a time loop with bad controllers. It would stifle their creativity, which is one of the best things about them. Nintendo made game hardware what it is today more than anyone else, and I am not content to let that end here.
