The name of this game is who can capture the most adult gamers. Heading into the year-end shopping season, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and market leader Nintendo Co. are slugging it out in the arena of portable game consoles for adults, analysts say.

Even before doors opened, fans lined up at shops early Sunday to snap up Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP), which the company hopes will break Nintendo's stranglehold on the portable game console market.

Most of the initial 200,000 units shipped to retailers have already been sold, according to a company spokesperson.

Sony expects to sell 500,000 consoles by the end of the year, and projects global sales of 3 million by the end of March.

Nintendo's DS console, released Dec. 2, has sold 700,000 units domestically, while the combined sales in Japan and the United States have reached 1 million, according to a Nintendo spokesperson.

Nintendo has raised its global sales target to 2.8 million by the end of the year.

The two companies hope their consoles will revitalize the shrinking game market by attracting grown-ups, rather than children, with their new features.

The foldable DS has two screens: the lower is touch-sensitive, allowing players to play by touching the screen with a stylus or finger.

A distinctive feature of Sony's PSP is the design itself. Stripped of showy colors, the black gadget is intended ``to save adults from feeling a bit like a fool'' when playing games in public, a company spokesperson said.

The console, which boasts a high-quality liquid crystal display and a high-performance processor, can also play video and music.

Sony Computer Entertainment President Ken Kutaragi says the console is for adults.

``You can enjoy movies on trains and airplanes,'' he said.

Nintendo, which has sold 47 million GameBoy and GameBoy Advance portable consoles domestically since they debuted in 1989 and 2001, respectively, is the established market leader, enjoying strong support from young gamers thanks to such popular titles as the Pokemon series.

However, the domestic game market has been in a slump in recent years, with sales falling to 450 billion yen in 2003 from 750 billion yen in 1997.

Industry players are now focusing on stimulating demand among adults, rather than children or teenagers.

Already, the player demographic has been shifting to the older generations. As of Nov. 1, there were 27.24 million players between the ages of 25 and 40, exceeding the 26.44 million players aged 5 to 24, according to a communications ministry estimate.

Analysts, who attribute the rising average age to players who continue to play even as they grow older, say those are the very gamers the two companies are targeting.

Specifically, the consoles are intended for adults to use on their daily commute or while passing the time on their breaks.

``These new consoles look like PDAs (personal digital assistants) and don't look too strange for an adult to use on a train,'' said Hirokazu Hamamura, president of gaming magazine publisher Enterbrain Inc. ``They have the potential to take root as a grown-up form of entertainment.''

However, other analysts point out that other gadgets, such as cellphones equipped with games and portable digital music players like the enormously popular iPod by Apple Computer Inc., are already hogging the free time of adults.(IHT/Asahi: December 14,2004)