The Vita's Challenge: A History of Portable Competition
To succeed, Sony's new handheld must escape the long shadow cast by two decades of Nintendo's domination.
Today marks the official U.S. launch of PlayStation Vita. It's a great system, but it has its work cut out for it. Nintendo's 3DS is making serious inroads after a soft launch, and Sony runs the very real risk of seeing history repeat itself. To date, Nintendo has triumphed against every handheld competitor to challenge it since the Game Boy launched 23 years ago. We can't predict how the Vita/3DS battle will turn out just yet, but we can certainly look to history to see how Nintendo has consistently triumphed over its impressive competitors.
The Game Boy Era
1989: Game Boy
Shortcomings: The Game Boy was almost laughable from a hardware standpoint. Its puny processor was more than a decade old at launch, and its screen felt like a throwback to the '70s, too, offering no color support but rather a paltry four shades of grey on a cheap LCD so prone to ghosting and blur that it rendered many action games nearly unplayable. Atari's impressive Lynx arrived almost simultaneously with Game Boy, rendering Nintendo's handheld practically obsolete from day one.
Why they didn't matter: Nintendo's design philosophy rendered many of the Game Boy's perceived flaws into strengths. That weakling of a processor and mess of a screen allowed Nintendo to sell the system for about half of what the Lynx cost, and its battery life was extraordinary. On top of that, Nintendo was at the pinnacle of its NES-era popularity in 1989, and the mere opportunity to play games like Mario, Castlevania, and Mega Man on the go was profoundly motivating. Plus, Game Boy had a killer app in the form of Tetris. Game Boy games weren't often truly great -- but they were certainly good enough.
1989: Lynx
Strengths: Atari's Lynx arrived mere days after the Game Boy and, technologically speaking, blew it away. It boasted a vivid full-color screen with proper backlighting, beside which Nintendo's pukey-looking graphics paled. Behind that screen was an impressive array of hardware, including a beefy processor and a fast 16-bit graphics chip, putting it nearly on par with the TurboGrafx-16. On top of that, Lynx featured an innovative ambidextrous design so that both lefties and righties could play it comfortably.
Why they didn't matter: With great power comes great responsibilities, and Lynx failed at living up to its demands. It cost nearly twice as much as Game Boy, and the hidden cost of batteries was even more significant: It required six AA batteries to run for four hours, where the Game Boy could run five times as long on fewer batteries. The system itself was massive and cumbersome thanks to some ill-advised focus testing. And perhaps most crushingly of all, Lynx wasn't made by Nintendo, which meant its software library was filled with obscure games and dated arcade conversions. The sad thing is that Lynx probably would have done much better for itself had it been launched in a more timely fashion: Epyx developed it in 1986, but Atari sat on it for two years only to debut it head-to-head with Game Boy.
1990: TurboExpress
Strengths: The TurboExpress was nothing less than amazing. A compact and comfortable system, it was capable of playing TurboGrafx-16 games. Not ports, not repackagings; TG16 HuCard chips slotted directly into the system and played with few compromises aside from some difficulty with saves and the different resolution of its beautiful color screen.
Why they didn't matter: Like Lynx, the TurboExpress was an incredible power hog, requiring as many batteries as Lynx for even less play time... and that was on top of its hefty $249 price tag (almost $390 in today's money). The TurboExpress also had the misfortune to be tied to the TurboGrafx-16, a console that achieved very little success in the U.S. -- and outside the U.S., its popularity was largely tied to the TurboCD add-on, which wasn't compatible with the handheld.
1990: Game Gear
Strengths: Game Gear definitely offered the strongest competition to Nintendo's handheld hegemony until the PSP arrived. Compact and comfortable with a slick color screen and a solid library, Game Gear featured all the strengths of its fellow competitors but also backed it with the Sega name -- a true boon, especially in the U.S., where Genesis was eating Super NES's lunch at the time. Another advantage: Gear Gear was essentially a scaled down Sega Master System, meaning existing games could easily be tweaked to run on the hardware and resold. It even had an optional TV tuner!
Why they didn't matter: Unfortunately, as with Lynx and TurboExpress, Game Gear was hoist by its own petard: Its power and screen devoured batteries. While it never managed to overcome its thirst for power, by the time the system was retired it had moved more than 10 million units and boasted a library of nearly 400 games: A modest success.
1992: Watara Supervision
Strengths: Rather than trying to outdo Game Boy, this device by Asian manufacturer Watara took the opposite tack by trying to undercut Nintendo's design. It was half the price and featured similarly low-power, low-cost components.
Why they didn't matter: Supervision was too little, too late. With a paltry software library and even worse visual prowess than its competition, Watara's effort appealed only to cheapskates and, these days, to aficionados of the obscure.
1997: Game.com
Strengths: In the twilight days of the Game Boy, Tiger Electronics launched the Game.com, which offered enhanced black-and-white graphics and far more power than Nintendo's aging machine. It sported a touch screen (a first!), and Tiger pursued aggressive licensing (presumably carried over from its simple LCD games) to bring PlayStation hits like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Resident Evil to the system.
Why they didn't matter: Game.com looked good on paper, but it was either a giant train wreck or too far ahead of its time, depending on how kindly disposed you are to it. The hardware proved to be grossly underpowered for the games it aspired to run; Sonic and Resident Evil were downright disastrous. The system felt flimsy and insubstantial, and its touch screen was strictly used in conjunction with its PDA elements, which were ill-conceived and not particularly useful.
The Game Boy Color Era
1998: Game Boy Color
Shortcomings: Nintendo finally took the Game Boy into color nearly a decade after the system's original launch. For all intents and purposes, the Game Boy Color was a portable NES, a system that had been retired several years prior. It was, much like its predecessor, a dated, underpowered device. Its graphics were still considerably less impressive than those of the Lynx, which had been designed 12 years prior. It felt in every way like a stopgap measure until the advent of a true Game Boy successor.
Why they didn't matter: Dated and pointless as it may have seemed, Game Boy Color didn't need to be amazing. It really was a stopgap: A way to keep the hardware line feeling lively while the company rode the success of Pokémon. Nintendo brilliantly launched Game Boy Color simultaneously with the U.S. debut of Pokémon, and its addictive gameplay and impressive multimedia assault kept Nintendo riding high until the manufacturing cost of its 32-bit Game Boy Advance came down to an acceptable profit margin. And, of course, Game Boy Color was still inexpensive, still ruthlessly energy-efficient, and boasted full backward-compatibility with the Game Boy's massive library.
1999: Neo Geo Pocket/Color
Strengths: With Neo Geo Pocket, SNK struck a balance of hardware design that no one else had attempted before: Better than Game Boy, but not bleeding edge. The innards were impressive, but not top-of-the-line. Rather than incorporating a full-color, backlit, active-matrix LCD screen, the Neo Geo Pocket went with a more modest screen (initially black-and-white, but quickly reworked to color) that was gentle on batteries but nevertheless offered some great-looking games. Wrapped around those guts and screen was a wonderful shell: Compact, comfortable, durable, and highlighted by a miniature control stick whose "clicky" responsiveness made playing its library of smartly reworked arcade favorites a joy.
Why they didn't matter: Despite all it had to offer, the NGP was undermined by poor distribution and perception. Gamers had spent a decade thinking of the Neo Geo brand as a pricey boutique platform for rich kids who liked fighting games, and this reasonably priced handheld was dismissed by gamers. To further compound the problem, the excellence of Neo Geo Pocket's library was difficult to communicate easily; SNK's fighting game library was brilliantly remade into a portable-friendly form, with revamped visuals and streamlined controls, but their cartoonish look failed to convey the refinements of the underlying play mechanics.
2000: Wonderswan
Strengths: Bandai's Wonderswan represented an impressive counter to the success of the Game Boy, and expectedly so: It was the brainchild of Game Boy creator Gumpei Yokoi. Wonderswan hit all the high points of its inspiration -- low power usage, inexpensive components, and strong third-party support -- while offering advanced graphical capabilities and interesting new features like the ability to rotate the system's orientation to allow games to be presented either in landscape or portrait styles.
Why they didn't matter: Wonderswan was crippled by three issues. First, it was instantly obsolete, launching as a black-and-white system after the Game Boy color. Secondly, despite its extensive third-party support, many of those games were of poor quality. Finally, Bandai never offered international distribution, so it remained exclusive to Japan, greatly limiting its potential and appeal to developers and publishers.
The Game Boy Advance Era
2001: Game Boy Advance
Shortcomings: The Game Boy Advance stands out as the least hobbled portable Nintendo has ever released. At the time of its debut, it was easily the most powerful handheld the world had seen. Its main drawback came in the form of its screen, which was dim and murky and turned its gorgeously detailed games into indistinct mud.
Why they didn't matter: Gamers complained about how crummy GBA games looked, but that didn't stop them from buying the system. Its excellent software support -- both first- and third-party -- made for some truly compelling portable experiences, and its complete backward compatibility with Game Boy games offered a handy way to play those old 8-bit favorites. In the end, Nintendo even turned the lousy screen into a business opportunity: 18 months after the GBA's debut, they launched the side-lit GBA SP and sold fans a new piece of hardware all over again.
2001: SwanCrystal
Strengths: The SwanCrystal was Bandai's third attempt with the Wonderswan family, and the one that finally got it right. Its graphical prowess was on par with Game Boy Advance, and its software library included some high-profile titles by Capcom, Sony, and Square.
Why they didn't matter: With three different versions of hardware in three years, the Swan brand became too fragmented for its own good; where the GBA SP and original Game Boy all ran the same software, The Wonderswan, Wonderswan Color, and SwanCrystal had their own specific libraries. Game quality remained uneven, and Bandai seemingly never considered international support. And by upping the system's power to be competitive with GBA, Bandai sacrificed its price and power advantages over the competition.
2003: N-Gage
Strengths: Nokia was definitely working ahead of the curve here, creating a portable system that doubled as a cell phone. Considerably more powerful than the GBA, the N-Gage offered 3D portable graphics in a phone designed for core gaming rather than forcing gamers to use the tortured 3x4 buttons of previous game-capable cells.
Why they didn't matter: Any forward-thinking involved in the N-Gage's design was completely mooted by the fact that it looked absolutely ridiculous. The real problem, though, has only become evident in hindsight: The phone and game aspects of the series worked at odds with one another rather than together, as with the iPhone. It was a bizarre Frankenstein's monster of a game system, and on top of that its game hardware wasn't quite powerful enough to achieve its ambitions, causing its 3D games to chug at completely unplayable framerates.
Nintendo DS Era
2004: Nintendo DS
Shortcomings: Most people assumed the Nintendo DS was meant as a desperate, last-ditch resort to fighting the impressive and elegant Sony PSP. With its cheap-looking shell (considerably refined between its initial reveal and launch a few months later) and strange design, it seemed both bizarre and slapash. Its layout offered two screens, which seemed impractical and cumbersome; its processors were feeble; and the storage offered by its solid-state media was painfully restrictive yet high in price. The DS seemed to have a long and difficult road ahead of it.
Why they didn't matter: The ultimate success of the DS -- it's sold more than twice as many units as the "superior" PSP -- stemmed from many of the same reasons the Game Boy was able to face down technically advanced hardware like the Lynx and Game Gear. Its processors were weak, but they were just potent enough to render decent, playable 3D graphics without compromising battery life. Its carts may have been limited, but they also drew little power. The unconventional design of the DS was its real strength: The intuitive touch screen offered a friendly interface for people who were otherwise uncomfortable with the idea of video games, transforming the DS into a crossover device whose appeal and value extended well beyond that of the core gamers portable systems traditionally catered to.
2005: PlayStation Portable
Strengths: The PSP offered everything the DS didn't: A single gorgeous screen, console-caliber visuals, and a diverse array of multimedia and entertainment functions (including the ability to watch movies via the proprietary UMD medium).
Why they didn't matter: That UMD format was actually the beginning of the PSP's troubles. The moving parts involved in its optical drive made for a power-hungry system that was considerably more fragile than the DS. And while it offered console-level visuals, the play experience was hampered by Sony's decision not to include a right analog input, forcing the use of awkward workarounds for console-style action games. Where the DS's hardware revisions were clearly improvements over the original design, the PSP saw the PSPgo, which was a strategic mess. And, finally, the PSP was strictly a gaming device, lacking the breadth of purpose that drove the DS beyond the core gaming market.
2005: Gizmondo
Strengths: The Gizmondo was a weird creature, but certainly an ambitious one. The hardware ran faster than even a PSP with its clock limiter removed, and it helped pioneer the concept of ad-supported reduced-price hardware currently employed by Amazon's Kindle tablets -- a feature that was to be made possible through the machine's GSP capabilities.
Why they didn't matter: Gizmondo arrived stillborn thanks to the shady dealings of its parent company. Even disregarding its terrible (and possibly criminal) business model, the Gizmondo wasn't a particularly compelling piece of hardware; its design bore a bizarre resemblance to a black rubberized taco with valves sticking out of the top. Its software lineup featured a handful of noteworthy third-party games and a whole lot of nothing. And let's not forget that Gizmondo's entire existence has been theorized to serve entirely as an excuse for its creators to fund nice cars and have fancy parties with the media.
2008: iPhone
Strengths: The iPhone managed to bridge the gulf between game system and general-purpose device. It's been a successful rendition of the gaming phone N-Gage attempted so clumsily to create. The iPhone perfected the app store model, revolutionizing digital distribution and the entire concept of video games.
Why they didn't matter: Actually, they did matter. iPhone is the first portable device to outsell a competing Nintendo system; as of the end of 2011, the iPhone family had moved tens of millions units more than the DS, and that's not taking the semi-compatible iPad into account. Just as Nintendo has traditionally succeeded by redefining the rules, iPhone changed the way portable games are sold and the experiences they offer with great success.
Nintendo 3DS Era
Today sees the official U.S. launch of Sony's PlayStation Vita, the successor to the PSP and an impressive (if not quite perfect) piece of equipment in its own right. And yet, it arrives on the heels of the revelation that the Nintendo 3DS, despite a high initial price and weak early response, has become the fastest-selling portable device in the history of Japan's gaming industry. Will the 3DS match its predecessor's success? It's hard to say, but certainly it represents far more of a threat to Vita than anyone could have predicted half a year ago. Does Vita stand a chance? How would you approach the system if you were Sony?
No comments:
Post a Comment