your confussing a portable gaming device with a mobile phone. What exactly am I confusing? I said it was cheap compared to similarly specked devices, which it is. 300 for a new phone, yes.. on the cheap side. 300 for a portable gamming device.... that is powered by a mobile phone CPU/GPU... sorry mate.. doesn't sound like a good deal. 300 dollars for any device with a Quad Core Cortex A15 is a pretty good deal. Compared to other mobile CPUS it is years ahead. The Vita is still using a Cortex A9 Architecture. I can bet you tha the psvita is twice the better console with more games and cheaper! I don't know about the DS, but would rather a DS over this thing! The Vita has a very small game library and can't run any homebrew. The DS sucks and by the way the Shield can emulate the DS My old psp has emulators.. it's a mater of time before the vita is hacked.. also the vita has a good indie dev program if your keen lol. Your old PSP also limited hardware and has limitations on what emulators it can run. That is why I am buying a shield I don't want to wait for the Vita to be hacked. It has been nearly 2 years since the Vita was released and so far it has not been hacked clearly Sony did something to make it hard If you buy one, don't open it, it'll be worth 10x in 10years when they only make 1 batch lol