OSNews

Don't think of it as a competitor to the 3DS - think of it as one of those cheap, Chinese emulation handheld devices with some serious horsepower underneath. This'll be like a GP2x on steroids, and it has an HDMI port. I might actually be able to play Smash TV at full speed on a portable device, with two analog sticks. Personally, I can't wait

They're also showing off a sweet looking 10" Visio Android tablet with Tegra 4 that's lighter than the Nexus 10, and actually running stock Android 4.2. If you're tired of only having Nexus Android devices to choose from, this is a big plus.

Seems that companies like Visio and Nvidia are actually pimping stock Android as a feature now. I can see companies going forward putting 'we stopped crippling Android with our shitty bloatware' as a bullet point on the boxes of their phones and tablets

Not only that but they always ignore the fundamental problems, which is who in the hell wants to do fancy 3D gaming on an itty bitty screen, that the controls on the handhelds just don't do those kinds of games very well, and that powerful GPU equals lousy battery life.

Frankly the only consumer tech I'm looking forward to checking out would be the PS4 and Steambox which from a hardware standpoint ought to be quite interesting as the PS4 is using an AMD APU and the Steambox an Intel i3 and Nvidia GPU so for the first time since the original Xbox you are gonna have consoles built out of bog standard X86. From an OS standpoint it ought to be interesting, especially if someone can hack the systems, as they could make for cheap HTPCs. I know I hung onto my original Xbox for a few years past its EOL simply because with XBMC it made a heck of an SD media player.

There's also the issue of massive production costs related to making these types of games. With the majority of consumers only interested in $0.99 - $1.99 mobile games these days, it's almost impossible for any studio to release a game of substance (gfx & gameplay wise). Even mobile gaming powerhouses like Nintendo might be forced to cheapen their gaming experience to cater to cheap customers. Blame that retarded bird-throwing game.

Oh, fwiw, some of the best gaming experiences I've had have been on handheld devices, particularly the GBA and DS.



Careful. Sony might send you to prison for it.

Edited 2013-01-08 02:08 UTC

Original PSP?
According to wikipedia, ~71.4 million units sold as of Sept 2011.

IIRC the NeoGeo was huge in the east. I've never used one though, so couldn't comment on it's performance / hardware.

Also the original PSP had some success - albeit not as all encompassing as Sony visioned (eg those movie disks for the PHP were largely a flop).

On the whole though, I think you're right. Most of the successful mobile platforms have been the least cutting edge (just look at how big those Java phone games were).

If I had to guess, I'd say most people aren't interested in cutting edge graphics nor sound on a mobile gaming device because it's hard to create the environment to play in (noisy train stations / being lurched about on a bus / etc).

Laurence,

"(eg those movie disks for the PHP were largely a flop)"

Yea well with the crummy state of HTML5 in those early days, who didn't see that one coming.

:)

Not so sure that the home console version was ever huge even in the east, in the arcades the Neo Geo did very well but the system was very expensive for home users.

As for the handhelds, I think it's mainly a question of Nintendo having an iron grip on that market more than the pricing.

Back when the Gameboy ruled we had Bandai trying to aggressively compete with the Wonderswan and later the Wonderswan Color, SNK with the Neo Geo Pocket/Neo Geo Pocket Color which were as I recall, priced competitively, but to no avail.

The PSP is probably the only success story in handheld consoles that didn't come from Nintendo and it's obviously still nowhere near the DS. PSP Vita was off to a very slow start but seems to be picking up, 3DS is way ahead though.

Here are the japanese hardware sales for 2012 and the total sold (again, in Japan):

Nintendo 3DS: 5,727,763 units (total 9,762,502 units)
Nintendo DS: 286,270 units (total 32,864,129 units)
PSP: 941,992 units (total 19,179,100 units)
PS Vita: 674,365 units (total 1,077,159 units)
Wii U: 638,339 units (total 638,339 units)
Wii: 492,999 units (total 12,667,420 units)
PS3: 1,327,185 units (total 8,744,333 units)
Xbox 360: 67,273 units (total 1,588,011 units)

Of course the big problem for the dedicated handheld console is the increasing competition from smartphones/pads.

"Huge" is not the proper term... home console version of NeoGeo had something better described as smallish enthusiastic following, AFAIK.

NeoGeo Pocket saw some success, relatively wide adoption in the east ...but it wasn't high powered, so the rule stands.


And consider that the most popular portable game of all time is probably still Tetris... not only for Gameboy and such, also on inexpensive dedicated tetris handhelds (like this http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brick_Game.png ), quite widespread in less affluent places.

There is another category of handhelds which did quite well - LCD games with just one game. That includes, yes, Nintendo Game & Watch and its clones ...but also dedicated tetris handhelds (like this one http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brick_Game.png ). They were quite popular in the 90s in less affluent places (I suppose they might be still easily found in Spain); cloned by many small manufacturers, so numbers aren't really known, it's all anecdotal.

And yes, they also demonstrate that low powered gaming consoles do better.

Edited 2013-01-14 22:27 UTC