"The DS was Nintendo"s biggest gamble in years: up against the PSP which is a much more powerful multimedia machine, the DS was expected by the industry to be an out and out failure. Even the company pitched it as the "Third Pillar" alongside the Game Boy Advance and the GameCube. It was supposed to be another string to the bow and a kind of stop gap between the GBA and the Game Boy Next, or Game Boy Evolution, or the Game Boy Revolution or even the Game Boy Superior. Whatever. The fact is that Nintendo could not have anticipated the success of the machine – its flagship title was a rehash of a game that was released as a system seller on another machine. Ridiculous.
Despite the derision of insiders, the out and out abhorrence of retailers and the general indifference of the gaming public, the machine became a best seller overnight. No longer was it a third pillar to the ageing GBA or the under-performing GameCube, it was THE pillar on which the triumphal arch of gaming"s future had to be built.
Then along comes the Wii: tiny when compared not only in size to its rivals but also in terms of power. With a revolutionary control system that was derided as much as the touch screen on the DS, critics and rivals were already sharpening their knives."
