Game fans stood in lines through a chilly Tokyo night to be among the first in the world to get their hands on Sony's PlayStation Portable, the consumer electronics giant's first handheld game machine.
About 200,000 of the sleek black devices that play movies, music and games, went on sale early Sunday morning as part of a drive by Sony to loosen rival Nintendo's iron grip on the market for handheld game machines.
The PlayStation Portable (PSP), at a discounted launch price of 19,800 yen ($189), went on sale 10 days after the successful launch of Nintendo DS, a game machine the size of a paperback book with a wireless connection and two screens, one of which is touch-sensitive and works with a pen-like device.
Nintendo launched DS in the United States on Nov. 21 and in Japan on Dec. 2, in time for the holiday spending rush, and has raised its forecast of shipments this year by 40 percent to 2.8 million units.
Sony has said it will ship just 500,000 units in Japan by the end of the year and it will miss the holiday season in the United States and Europe, where a launch is expected early next year.
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