One of my favourite anecdotes about the Game Boy (and one I sincerely hope is actually true) is that when a senior Sony executive spotted it, they berated their engineers and claimed it should have been a Sony product, given the company's success with the Walkman and Discman.

Former PlayStation Executive Shawn Layden has revealed that the tables were turned somewhat when Sony announced the PSP, which some described as the Walkman of the 21st century.

Speaking to The Expansion Pass about whether Nintendo should worry about Sony's rumoured return to the handheld arena, Layden said he got a short-but-sweet message from an industry friend when the PSP was revealed (thanks, Stealth40k):

"I remember when we showed the first PSP back in, what was that? 2003, 2004, 2005, something like that, and I had a friend who was working at Nintendo, and he sent me a text message saying, 'You bastards.' I said, 'Hey, bro, you know, it's all fun and games!"

It's worth noting that the Nintendo DS sold 154 million units worldwide, while the PSP "only" sold 76.4 million – so Nintendo had the last laugh in this case, but one can certainly see why Sony's sleek device triggered such feelings of envy in certain Nintendo staffers.

Layden then goes on to talk about how the PS3 was struggling when the PSP hit its high point – fuelled by Monster Hunter fever – and feels that Sony perhaps needs to try something different if it wants both its home console and handheld console to triumph at the same time:

"There's an argument to be made that if Sony does get in the handheld business again, you might almost set up a different company to do it. That would be their only focus instead of having one marketing budget trying to put it against a handheld and a console and software."

He also references the dismal commercial failure of the PS Vita, claiming that Sony misunderstood how to position the handheld effectively:

"One of the things that Nintendo always understood that it took us a while to figure it out ourselves... people just want a good handheld experience on their handheld. They don't want to replicate a console experience necessarily.

Some of the games we had the early on... you know, trying to aim a third-person shooter on the Vita was not easy.

I think the company needs to really decide what it wants to be before it makes a decision to fire up another platform."