Shuhei Yoshida thinks that competition between Sony and Nintendo is a good thing as it helps innovation.

President of Sony's worldwide studio's, Shuhei Yoshida, spoke to Game Informer recently about the upcoming PlayStation Vita, 3DS and smartphones.

A lot of interesting things came out of the article including how Sony doesn't believe the 3DS pricing and second circle pad are a direct reaction to Vita and that competition between Sony and Nintendo is important in order to drive innovation.

When asked about the newly announced second circle pad for 3DS, Yoshida stated that it was not a direct result of the Vita but more likely a request from Capcom.

"Well it's not like they looked at PS Vita and said "we need to do that as well." I don't know. It's clear that they didn't believe a second analog was necessary when they designed the 3DS, so I can only guess it was requested by Capcom's side. Maybe a Capcom producer told Nintendo that to play Monster Hunter we need [two] analog sticks. That I don't know, so I can only guesstimate. It was a bit shocking to see what they came up with."

Yoshida was then asked to comment on the recent price drop of 3DS and whether he thought it was to fend off competition from Sony. Yoshida believes that Nintendo are merely trying to meet targets and are not doing it to compete with Vita.

"I don't personally believe that they dropped the price of the 3DS to respond to our pricing. We didn't price PS Vita to their price, either. We had that plan since the last couple years. My personal guesstimate is that they have their business plan and goals to sell a certain amount of 3DS units, and they realized post-launch was that the pricing was not helping them to achieve the goal that they set. That's my estimate. As far as if I'm excited, I'm not sure. If the 3DS sells like crazy and no one is interested in PS Vita, that's a problem. There are lots of analysts talking about, "well, you know there are smart phones, there's no need for dedicated portable game machines." I don't believe it. But if they point to certain performance of the 3DS and say the smartphone is here, it doesn't help us either. I like to see healthy competition between Nintendo's system and ours because it helps innovation. It's always a good thing to have."

What do you make of Yoshida's comments? Do you believe that if there is healthy competition between Sony and Nintendo the handheld market can fend off the ever prominent smartphone market? Or do you think the days of needing handheld systems are over? Let us know your views below.