So, it begins again.

I can remember, back in the halcyon days of 1994 when I was still a dependant and spotty little rascal, when Sony casually strolled onto the console hardware scene. No one fretted too much about the new fella, it inocuously sat there and smiled at us and we smiled back at it as we remarked on the adorable audacity of this wee underdog trying to take on the stern-faced, baby-eating sadist Hiroshi Yamauchi and whoever mis-ruled Sega at the time.

Like the cute little ferret that furtively bores into your eye-sockets the moment you bow down to goo-goo at it, Sony's Playstation had been busily gnawing into the luscious buttocks of Nintendo and Sega while we all had our backs turned, only to smile and wave coyly at us when we would glance in their direction and look bemusedly at Sega and Nintendo making frenzied signals toward us.

Then all of a sudden we looked once more, Sony waved at us casually as per usual but something was different this time. Their Playstation was a morbidly obese, blood-soaked mafia boss, insane and cackling with power, while Nintendo was waving excitedly like an over-sugared and under-attended toddler at us on the horizon and Sega's skeletal corpse lay slumped at the Playstation's bloated feet, serving as a convenient toothpick dispenser for the power-mad king. The Playstation had become the console titan, without anyone really realising it.

Now Sony are doing it again with the PSP and, inexplicably, getting away with it. Getting away with the precise strategy they employed to eviscerate their rivals ten years ago. While Nintendo busily whittle away their R&D on finding new and exotic ways to alienate third-party software companies, Sony woos them by luxuriously gyrating in their faces. While Nintendo strenuously courts the nerds who are going to buy every console anyway, Sony gives them a teasing wink to make them fall into line before getting on it's knees to fellate the metro-sexual, BOSS wearing yuppy man.

And, as one of those nerds, I have of course refuted my better judgement and sympathetically patted Nintendo on the head with its DS and generously given them one hundred of my English pounds. Because of this, as well as my innate sympathy for the poor wee blighter, I am stuck in the kind of slow-motion, useless limbo of the parent watching as their happy wee toddler swims straight and happily into the maws of a Great White Shark. A shark for whom the bloody fate of the child is merely a tasty incidental to claiming a stake of the cool, salty, idiot-infested waves of the handheld market.