Who says Sony don't like to cause a stir?

Sony? Controversial? Tell us something we don't know. In a recent interview with Gamedaily Biz, Sony Computer Entertainment America's Executive VP Jack Tretton made some interesting claims regarding the PSP, Nintendo and their DS system.

"We really feel we carved out new territory [with the PS1] and then we built upon that with the PS2. The parallel that we draw to the PSP is that it is exactly the same to portable gaming to what the PlayStation was to console gaming, that we are carving this new road out and we are selling again to 20-something consumers that were not fans of portable entertainment, were not playing Game Boys because the technology and the software offerings just weren't appealing to them... And now because of the technology in PSP and the game offerings it appeals to them and that same consumer we carved out with the PlayStation is now being carved out with the PSP at an even much greater rate than we did with the original PlayStation. There's a lot of PlayStation legacy there that we've been able to capitalize on that we didn't have back in 1995, but I think it's very similar in terms of carving out a new audience and that new audience has generated $2 billion in revenue in the 17 months that the PSP has been out."

"I think obviously our competition, the handheld devices from Nintendo and specifically in the case of the DS, we really feel like they're appealing to the same audience that Game Boy has always appealed to. And if you look at the adoption rate of the DS over the first 17 months, not only does it trail the PSP but it also trails their other platforms... They're potentially losing some of their core audience and they're not really expanding beyond that and we think we're expanding into a completely new audience as we did with PlayStation. And we'll do just what we did on PlayStation; we'll dip down to the younger consumer eventually and we'll ultimately appeal to that vastly Earth wide audience we carved out with the original PlayStation."

But what of Nintendo's approach to broaden the market by appealing to non-gamers with the Touch Generations! brand? "I think it's a good premise, but I would tell you for a fact that there are much more people in their 50s and 60s playing PlayStation platforms in terms of console, than there are playing Nintendo platforms. So I think it's conceivable just as we did with the PS1 and PS2 that we could bring in that audience."

Nintendo still appealing to the same audience? Well, i'm pretty sure a lot of people will disagree with him there. Considering that the DS has sold pretty well in all areas, and also amongst the non-gamers, do these prove his claims to be incorrect? Argue it out amongst yourselves within our forum.