The idea of gaming on the go has been around since the idea of console gaming itself. In the early days, handhelds were really just LCD displays that had a preset series of sprites that would light up depending on the buttons you pressed. There was no actual game as such, but Nintendo in particular found great success through the Game and Watch series.
Handheld gaming as we know it today really took off when Nintendo released the Game Boy with Tetris as a bundled in game for an incredibly affordable price. It didn’t have the colour displays the competition would make use of, instead opting for the LCD displays used in the Game and Watch, but it had the right games, for the right price and the ability to play for more than ten minutes without being plugged in or changing batteries.
It’s fair to say, when it comes to handhelds, Nintendo has always managed to find huge success, even on the lesser successes such as the 3DS. Perhaps its Nintendo’s IP that just work so well for on the go play, Mario Kart being a prime example of pick up and play.
The first two major rivals to Nintendo in the handheld gaming space were Sega and Atari, whom both championed the idea of cutting edge technology with backlit colour screens. The problem is, cutting edge technology and backlit colour screens both increased manufacturing and thus, sale price while diminishing the life of the batteries to the point in one Atari Lynx video, it was evidently plugged into an off screen wall just so they could film enough footage.
Sega’s biggest bonus for the Game Gear was that it was essentially a portable Master System which meant games could be ported between the two systems with relative ease. The downside is that outside of Sega, there was very little support for the Master System and Sega hadn’t yet captured a market aside from the arcades.
It is fair to say, neither Sega’s Game Gear or Atari’s Lynx handheld devices sold particularly well compared to Nintendo’s Game Boy. It wouldn’t be until Sony entered the scene that there would be some real competition. The PlayStation Portable, the first handheld from Sony sold an incredible 80 million, which is a fantastic achievement, even it outsold by nearly double by the Nintendo DS.
However, the successor, the PlayStation Vita sold so poorly that Sony stopped issuing sales updates making it difficult to get a concrete final sales figure. It is believed to have sold somewhere between 10 and 15 million units. Although the Nintendo 3DS sold significantly less than the predecessor Nintendo DS, it still managed to outperform the PlayStation Vita, selling a respectable 75 million by the end of its life.
We have already heard officially from Phil Spencer at Microsoft that there is to be an Xbox dedicated handheld that will allow games to be played natively. However, don’t expect to see or hear anything soon as it’s still in the concept stages and therefore will be years away from seeing light of day. However, it is now believed that Sony could also have a dedicated handheld in the works that will play PlayStation 5 games. Once again, it is still very early in concept stages and so there is a good chance nothing will be revealed until after the PlayStation 6 launches. This is also to be in addition to the PlayStation Portal streaming handheld that is currently on the market.
The gaming landscape has always been constantly evolving, but the past decade has perhaps witnessed the largest changes I we have so far witnessed. It will be fascinating to see how Sony and Microsoft handle their handheld consoles should they ever release, especially when competing not just the multitude of PC handhelds but especially against Nintendo.
