Where did this myth come from? YEARS? The PS2 I'll admit struggled for the first six, seven months (I was making fun of it at the time).
The unfortunate tragedy for your post, Ian, was I meant "inital years" of both the PS1 and PS2. As in, the first years of both, 1994 and 2000. I certainly didn't mean initial "Years," plural for either. The PS1 had a pretty rotten launch lineup. Go look it up. Seriously, you'll cringe. And the first year was basically meh. PS2 was even worse, with games that looked worse and played worse than the already more formidable Dreamcast. IT wasn't until GTA III that anybody gave two craps about the PS2.
And the DS actually had a very great first year. SM64 was the only decent launch game, yeah (thanks, third parties) but the system had a very competent lineup from November 21, 2004 to November 21, 2005:
Super Mario 64
Daigasso Band Brothers
Kirby Canvas Curse
WarioWare Touched
Advance Wars: DS
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (lol This DS meme)
Trauma Center
Sonic Rush
Meteos (a godly puzzler)
Lost in Blue (I like it, at least)
and the harbingers of Nintendo's repeated success:
Nintendogs and Mario Kart DS
As well as Nintendo's effortless little money mill from Japan:
Brain Age
Yeah January through April might have been a little rough, but the system certainly wasn't a "joke" to own for an entire year. I didn't really wanna play listwarz but this myth, which is a common trope (you know, "Zomg nothing for first year!"), basically dies when light is shined upon it.
and now that I saw Yoshidious post the same thing I feel a little sheepish, so I'll talk about why the big game media and fansite's berating of the DS in the early years is important. Lindy said that Sony should have focused on games that were different from PS2. But that's not what most people said in 2004. they said the PSP should easily coast to victory because of Gran Turismo 4 Mobile, some FFVII spinoff, and Metal Gear, and actually wanted them to make as many games like the PS2 as possible. No wonder the PSP's flagship game in it's first year was GTA: LCS, which is almost a straight port of GTA III.
It didn't matter that the PSP basically ruined the very strict physical rules of what a portable console should be:
1. Quick (loading times are out)
2. Functional (remember that Square button fiasco, where the misaligned the square buttons connector just to be more "stylish")
3. Game-focused (Just the IDEA that there were more UMDs than games at one time should be repulsive to any gamer)
4. Durable (clamshell design is standard)
5. Relatively inexpensive ($250 was just too much, and $40-$50 a game was just a bad idea. No wonder the $150 DS and the $20-$30-$40 range of games is the reason the DS has a healthy tie ratio and the PSP's is in the pits)
The PSP thumbed it's nose at all of this, and most of the websites applauded them as they did it. So why would they want to change when they thought their victory was "assured?" They thought they won already.
Meanwhile, the DS was called "gimmicky" and "The next Virtual Boy" and Nintendogs was a "non-game for girls" and all that crap. This is the real revisionist history.