Nintendo Co. will begin selling an adaptor for its DS and Game Boy Advance handheld game players to allow them to play music and video, the company said, matching a popular feature on Sony"s portable game machine. Nintendo is in a heated battle to defend its dominant position in the lucrative handheld market against new competitor Sony Corp., which launched the PlayStation Portable (PSP), its first ever mobile game device, on Dec. 12 in Japan.
Nintendo"s DS, launched in the United States on Nov. 21 and in Japan on Dec. 2, has been flying off the shelves but the PSP has generated an equal level of buzz among game fans, in large part because it can also play back music and movie files. The DS, which by itself is strictly a game device, will be able to play video in the MPEG-4 format and songs in the MP3 format by inserting a memory card into the adaptor, which is plugged into a slot in the machine.