[Fun] Design A Successful Portable Game Console

[migo]

[I was thinking of putting this in other consoles, but that didn't seem right since it's not about anything that actually exists]

Obviously, lots of people want to get in on the portable game market, but Nintendo's owned it from the start.

So here's the scenario: You have to design a successful portable game system that sells better than the Sega GameGear did (the most successful competitor to the GameBoy that still left the market - PSP and iPod Touch are more successful and still in the market, so it doesn't necessarily have to beat them, it just has to be sustainable)

What would the console have feature wise (specs or just general) and why?
What would it look like, and why?
What controls would it use, and why?
What would the marketing strategy be, and why?

Etc.

Could be either homebrew, emulation, or commercial based, although there would have to be a good reason why an emulation based system that sells over 11 million units wouldn't get sued into oblivion.

 

[migo]

Nobody's taking a shot at this? I guess it shows it is pretty hard.

What I'm looking at is what made the GameBoy successful compared to other handhelds, and what made the nearest competitors successful.
-good battery life
-low price

The iPod Touch is a bit of an anomaly, but otherwise people really aren't willing to pay more for a handheld that's less powerful than a living room console, and you want it to cost less than some of the competition. DS Lite runs at $140, PSP-3000 at $180, DSi at $200 and PSPGo at $250. Wii and Xbox Arcade are both $200, so it would at the very least need to cost less than that. Slipping in under the PSP-3000 would be ideal. So the hardware would have to be cheap enough. Cheap means less powerful processor, and less powerful processor means better battery life. Smaller screen also means better battery life, although it probably goes with having a smaller battery, so some balance would need to be struck there. I'm thinking since the DSi has 3.25" screens and it's based on what's cheap, something in that range would probably do the trick. Only having 1 screen and no cameras would cut down on the costs. Also, no touch screen - it would just add to the costs and invariably be compared to the iPhone and other touch screen phones, and the games that'd come out for it would also be playable on phones. Not much for niche protection, especially with the iPhone app store having a huge library of them.

Now looking at each competitor to the GameBoy that has had some success:
-The GameGear runs on the same type of hardware as the Sega Master System, so porting would have been trivial, it also got access to a library of existing popular games.
-The Neo Geo Pocket Colour had access to popular arcade fighting games, and controls that suited it well with the analog stick.
-The WonderSwan had Bandai licenses as well as Final Fantasy.
-The PSP had Sony licenses, as well as similar hardware to the PS2 for relatively easy porting (considering how hard it apparently is to code for the PS2 I can't imagine it would have been terribly easy to port to, so all is relative. The small software suggestion also shows it's not that easy, but at least the licenses don't have to be ported from one difficult architecture to another different difficult arhitecture)
-The iPod Touch is damn easy to code for, and the app store model offers devs plenty of opportunity to make money.

So, to hit a number of these:
-Windows CE platform, running hardware similar to the Dreamcast. WinCE devices come in relatively cheap, and the hardware looks to be not much different from what 3-4 year old handheld devices come in with. Even if it ends up not being as powerful, 320x240 is 1/4th the pixels that need to be rendered on the DreamCast, and is a resolution that compares favourably with the DS, and DC like graphics capabilities also compare favourably with the DS. Also, since the DC has had full commercial quality games released homebrew, it should be easy to port to, and it seems some DC games were easy to port to the Xbox due to a similar architecture. So it's easy to code new gamess for it, and also has the potential of getting a number of DC ports depending on who has the licenses and how they're willing to share them.

Each one also offered something in hardware features that the current gen Nintendo didn't.
-GG had colour
-NGPC had an analog stick
-WonderSwan had extra controls
-PSP had an analog stick

So this isn't going to be anything revolutionary; dual analog sticks. People have been wanting this for a while, and dual analog shooters are pretty popular and easy to code, so it could get some good ones out the door right away. They're well suited to pick up and play style gaming too. As for the other controls, it'd probably be easy enough to do a d-pad, 2 shoulder buttons and 4 face buttons, although the analog stick makes it tempting to have 6 face buttons to make it suitable for arcade style fighters. It should be quite feasible to get a number of popular titles for it that play better than on any of the other consoles. However, the dual analog sticks would be the main point, as getting more buttons probably isn't the best idea for a portable (there's gotta be some reason the GBA only had 2 face buttons, as much as SFII sucked on it).

The only thing that's unfortunate is with that kind of hardware configuration and capabilities it competes squarely with the PSP. As long as it has better battery life and is cheaper though, the lower resolution and less powerful graphics capabilities should be OK, since the GB beat out the Lynx and GG on account of being cheaper and having better battery life despite not even having colour.

 

[craigix]

Mine would have had the Tetris license.

Instant fried gold.

 

[Exophase]

Nobody's taking a shot at this? I guess it shows it is pretty hard.

What I'm looking at is what made the GameBoy successful compared to other handhelds, and what made the nearest competitors successful.
-good battery life
-low price

Having Nintendo's first part games and third party appeal certainly helped too. This was probably a bigger advantage than both of these things combined, although the poor battery life of the GameGear and Atari Lynx was a pretty big problem back when most people had to keep buying the things.

The iPod Touch is a bit of an anomaly, but otherwise people really aren't willing to pay more for a handheld that's less powerful than a living room console, and you want it to cost less than some of the competition.

I refuse to consider either the iPhone or the iPod Touch to be handheld gaming consoles, or at least not primarily. This is just a market Apple shoehorned on top of it when they realized that they could make easy game sales on the app store. The type of games these devices are playing is quite limited compared to what you see on NDS and PSP.. even the commercials highlight this.

DS Lite runs at $140, PSP-3000 at $180, DSi at $200 and PSPGo at $250. Wii and Xbox Arcade are both $200, so it would at the very least need to cost less than that. Slipping in under the PSP-3000 would be ideal.

Some of your prices are not right. These are the correct North American prices for the handhelds:

DS Lite - $130
PSP-3000 - $170
DSi - $170

I'm not sure if relative price is as important as absolute price. Wii did quite well while costing more than XBox 360 Arcade for a very long time (even though it's offering clearly cheaper/inferior hardware). PS3, on the other hand, was hurting pretty badly by its price and from what I understand has seen a huge increase in sales since the drop to $300, which is still more than the other consoles. I would say that $200 is about where the sweet spot is for handhelds - anything more and you'll start to suffer for it. A new handheld which is markedly more powerful than PSP could probably float well at that price. I would expect anything beyond $250 to really diminish sales.

So the hardware would have to be cheap enough. Cheap means less powerful processor, and less powerful processor means better battery life. Smaller screen also means better battery life, although it probably goes with having a smaller battery, so some balance would need to be struck there. I'm thinking since the DSi has 3.25" screens and it's based on what's cheap, something in that range would probably do the trick. Only having 1 screen and no cameras would cut down on the costs. Also, no touch screen - it would just add to the costs and invariably be compared to the iPhone and other touch screen phones, and the games that'd come out for it would also be playable on phones. Not much for niche protection, especially with the iPhone app store having a huge library of them.

The biggest factor in cost is probably going to be how well the base unit sales and how high the attachment rate to licensed third party games is. If you expect for the console to be successful against NDS then it'll have to have a decent attachment rate regardless of its price. DSi, like Wii, is not priced especially aggressively because Nintendo knows they can sell it for the amount they're selling it at. A newcomer wouldn't be able to push their luck that much. Having said that, I think they can do much better hardware than DSi at $200. They can probably do considerably better than PSP too. If the newcomer has a lot of money then they might have to initially take damage on the sales, Sony-style, in order to get the units out there. Sony did this even with the original PS1, before they established themselves in the market, and it paid off very nicely.

Touchscreens are actually really cheap, and you can get controllers integrated with other things you need. Having two screens and a camera would probably not be necessary and would look like it's just copying DSi anyway. Touch screen is a much more useful feature. Going with the screen size and resolution of DSi would certainly be limiting factors that I don't think any newcomer could afford to take. 640x480+ might not be necessary for a gaming-only platform but it should at least match PSP's 480x272. How do you reason that having a touchscreen would make the game library less unique? I don't see it hurting DS's library, most of the touchscreen games require other controls too and can't be ported to iPhone so easily..

Now looking at each competitor to the GameBoy that has had some success:
-The GameGear runs on the same type of hardware as the Sega Master System, so porting would have been trivial, it also got access to a library of existing popular games.

If you consider anything on SMS popular, sure ;p

-The Neo Geo Pocket Colour had access to popular arcade fighting games, and controls that suited it well with the analog stick.
-The WonderSwan had Bandai licenses as well as Final Fantasy.
-The PSP had Sony licenses, as well as similar hardware to the PS2 for relatively easy porting (considering how hard it apparently is to code for the PS2 I can't imagine it would have been terribly easy to port to, so all is relative. The small software suggestion also shows it's not that easy, but at least the licenses don't have to be ported from one difficult architecture to another different difficult arhitecture)

Yes, the licenses/companies you get are really everything. PSP is really not a lot like PS2 though, porting between the two isn't at all trivial.. PSP is probably easier to code for.

-The iPod Touch is damn easy to code for, and the app store model offers devs plenty of opportunity to make money.

Very true, but I still hesitate to even consider this competing.

So, to hit a number of these:
-Windows CE platform, running hardware similar to the Dreamcast. WinCE devices come in relatively cheap, and the hardware looks to be not much different from what 3-4 year old handheld devices come in with. Even if it ends up not being as powerful, 320x240 is 1/4th the pixels that need to be rendered on the DreamCast, and is a resolution that compares favourably with the DS, and DC like graphics capabilities also compare favourably with the DS. Also, since the DC has had full commercial quality games released homebrew, it should be easy to port to, and it seems some DC games were easy to port to the Xbox due to a similar architecture. So it's easy to code new gamess for it, and also has the potential of getting a number of DC ports depending on who has the licenses and how they're willing to share them.

What does WinCE bring to the table? Only a small percentage of Dreamcast games used WinCE, anything you heard about a similar architecture between it and XBox is nonsense. The two are nothing alike as far as consoles go. With that in mind you should see that hardware doesn't have to be very DC like to still get DC ports. The way the games were coded probably made them pretty portable to begin with.

To be successful a new handheld absolutely must be more powerful than the PSP. I'd say that the hardware has to be better than the PSP's in every way, including screen resolution. Even if 320x240 is perfectly adequate they won't win over people with it.

Each one also offered something in hardware features that the current gen Nintendo didn't.
-GG had colour
-NGPC had an analog stick
-WonderSwan had extra controls
-PSP had an analog stick

So this isn't going to be anything revolutionary; dual analog sticks. People have been wanting this for a while, and dual analog shooters are pretty popular and easy to code, so it could get some good ones out the door right away. They're well suited to pick up and play style gaming too. As for the other controls, it'd probably be easy enough to do a d-pad, 2 shoulder buttons and 4 face buttons, although the analog stick makes it tempting to have 6 face buttons to make it suitable for arcade style fighters. It should be quite feasible to get a number of popular titles for it that play better than on any of the other consoles. However, the dual analog sticks would be the main point, as getting more buttons probably isn't the best idea for a portable (there's gotta be some reason the GBA only had 2 face buttons, as much as SFII sucked on it).

Probably a good idea.

The only thing that's unfortunate is with that kind of hardware configuration and capabilities it competes squarely with the PSP. As long as it has better battery life and is cheaper though, the lower resolution and less powerful graphics capabilities should be OK, since the GB beat out the Lynx and GG on account of being cheaper and having better battery life despite not even having colour.

Personally, I think a choice that would have a good shot at success would be like Pandora, possibly with an OMAP36xx or better instead, no keyboard, possibly a sliding design, and a cheaper price supplemented by game sales. Would have to have a lot of companies on board from the start. Marketed strictly as a gaming handheld first. I just don't see there being any market potential whatsoever for a new handheld that's weaker than PSP and not done by Nintendo. PSP is 5 years old, you know.

 

[migo]

I'm not sure if relative price is as important as absolute price. Wii did quite well while costing more than XBox 360 Arcade for a very long time (even though it's offering clearly cheaper/inferior hardware). PS3, on the other hand, was hurting pretty badly by its price and from what I understand has seen a huge increase in sales since the drop to $300, which is still more than the other consoles. I would say that $200 is about where the sweet spot is for handhelds - anything more and you'll start to suffer for it. A new handheld which is markedly more powerful than PSP could probably float well at that price. I would expect anything beyond $250 to really diminish sales.

I suspect part of this was that the Wii was going for the casual gaming market, and in that aspect didn't have any real competition, while the type of people who would buy the 360 arcade were competing with the PS3, and were also considering they'd have to buy an add on hard drive.


I'm thinking even if it is markedly more powerful you'd have to somehow make the battery life good, or else it stops being a viable portable system. The iPod Touch comes in at around 6 hours, which is better than the PSP's 3-4 hours off UMD, which I think helps it.

The biggest factor in cost is probably going to be how well the base unit sales and how high the attachment rate to licensed third party games is. If you expect for the console to be successful against NDS then it'll have to have a decent attachment rate regardless of its price. DSi, like Wii, is not priced especially aggressively because Nintendo knows they can sell it for the amount they're selling it at. A newcomer wouldn't be able to push their luck that much. Having said that, I think they can do much better hardware than DSi at $200. They can probably do considerably better than PSP too. If the newcomer has a lot of money then they might have to initially take damage on the sales, Sony-style, in order to get the units out there. Sony did this even with the original PS1, before they established themselves in the market, and it paid off very nicely.

Good point. Sony had the capital to muscle their way onto the market, as did Microsoft. When was the last time a newcomer company was successful? N-Gage QD failed miserably, and the only reason N-Gage 2.0 goes on is because it's free on some phones, and Nokia is a big company.

Touchscreens are actually really cheap, and you can get controllers integrated with other things you need. Having two screens and a camera would probably not be necessary and would look like it's just copying DSi anyway. Touch screen is a much more useful feature. Going with the screen size and resolution of DSi would certainly be limiting factors that I don't think any newcomer could afford to take. 640x480+ might not be necessary for a gaming-only platform but it should at least match PSP's 480x272. How do you reason that having a touchscreen would make the game library less unique? I don't see it hurting DS's library, most of the touchscreen games require other controls too and can't be ported to iPhone so easily..

I suppose they would have to be as the DS is all about cheap components, but comparing Wiz to A320 prices I wonder if it wouldn't cut into profits a bit much. Do you have any numbers on bulk prices of touchscreens? I've got no idea with that as I'm just eyeballing it based on retail prices of systems with certain features and components.

It's not that it makes it less unique, it's that it suddenly puts it up to be compared to the iPhone, and capacitive is cheaper than resistive, and is by the general public considered to be worse, so there would invariably be discussion about how it's not as good. One thing I think Apple did very well with the iPhone is only support a feature if it worked well, and completely keep it out if it's going to suck. That's probably why there's no multitasking (otherwise it would crash) and no camera in the newer touch models. I think it's worth only keeping in features that work well, rather than throwing in too many that end up diluting the quality.

If you consider anything on SMS popular, sure ;p

Sonic? I'm looking back through history, and I didn't even know about the SMS until a few years ago, but off hand I remember Mortal Kombat and Double Dragon also being popular Game Gear games. I don't know if they were on SMS first.

What does WinCE bring to the table? Only a small percentage of Dreamcast games used WinCE, anything you heard about a similar architecture between it and XBox is nonsense. The two are nothing alike as far as consoles go. With that in mind you should see that hardware doesn't have to be very DC like to still get DC ports. The way the games were coded probably made them pretty portable to begin with.

Ah, I was under the impression that the DC used Win CE, not just certain games. I guess that's unimportant then.

To be successful a new handheld absolutely must be more powerful than the PSP. I'd say that the hardware has to be better than the PSP's in every way, including screen resolution. Even if 320x240 is perfectly adequate they won't win over people with it.

I question this, the PSP was more powerful than the DS and while it didn't get slaughtered it hasn't been doing that well. The GameBoy was always the weakest system power wise. The GBC was too. And the GBA. And now the DS. Each time despite being weaker it sells better. I think this points to power not being a primary selling point for a portable system. At the very least, the correlation between power and sales/attach rate is really weak. Of course stuff that underperforms the GB didn't sell well either... There's also the Wii outselling the Xbox 360 and PS3 and it's much weaker. I just see every console that has failed badly, or not made great success, has been more powerful than whatever GameBoy iteration was out. I'm thinking if you can get more powerful than the DS (really shouldn't be hard to do at all) it'll help, but only as long as nothing else gets sacrificed in the process.

Personally, I think a choice that would have a good shot at success would be like Pandora, possibly with an OMAP36xx or better instead, no keyboard, possibly a sliding design, and a cheaper price supplemented by game sales. Would have to have a lot of companies on board from the start. Marketed strictly as a gaming handheld first. I just don't see there being any market potential whatsoever for a new handheld that's weaker than PSP and not done by Nintendo. PSP is 5 years old, you know.

Price is what I'm thinking. If you could get it in at under $100 at launch, with a good library of titles, people wouldn't care that it isn't as powerful. Particularly if there's digital distribution with a bunch of titles in the sub-$2 range like the iPod Touch. Low price for the initial handset and low price for the games would also mean marketability in countries like China and India. India would be particularly good, it's got an English speaking population that just doesn't have much money. They pirate games there simply because it's criminal to charge them full retail price for games (seriously, who's going to pay 2 months rent for a video game?) $1 games are an excellent price point for being inclusive worldwide, and having them on a $100 console makes it actually affordable. You've got something like 1/3 to 1/4 of the 2.4 billion population in China and India that could be viable buyers for a cheap console. So ~600 million. South America is apparently still selling Genesis clones, so there's a chunk of the market there too. I'd say you're doubling your potential market by keeping it cheap.

 

[Exophase]

I suspect part of this was that the Wii was going for the casual gaming market, and in that aspect didn't have any real competition, while the type of people who would buy the 360 arcade were competing with the PS3, and were also considering they'd have to buy an add on hard drive.

I don't think Wii was going for the casual market as much as that was the market they got and they ran with it. But for that market low price is even more important.

I'm thinking even if it is markedly more powerful you'd have to somehow make the battery life good, or else it stops being a viable portable system. The iPod Touch comes in at around 6 hours, which is better than the PSP's 3-4 hours off UMD, which I think helps it.

Current draw doesn't scale linearly with how powerful something is. More powerful parts tend to be newer and on smaller processes, not to mention more optimized by design, for instance, a TBDR like PowerVR's SGX is probably much more efficient at what it does than the 3D in PSP. Battery capacity also continues to improve. A handheld isn't going to have much on another one by having 15 hours instead of 10 hours, and 6 hours is pretty much the sweet spot for that.

I also don't know where you get that PSP lasts 3-4 hours running UMDs, the number is more like 5-6 hours, unless WiFi is involved. I'm guessing your love for iPhone Touch has something to do with things like this..

Good point. Sony had the capital to muscle their way onto the market, as did Microsoft. When was the last time a newcomer company was successful? N-Gage QD failed miserably, and the only reason N-Gage 2.0 goes on is because it's free on some phones, and Nokia is a big company.

Didn't help that N-Gage did all sorts of other things wrong too.

I suppose they would have to be as the DS is all about cheap components, but comparing Wiz to A320 prices I wonder if it wouldn't cut into profits a bit much. Do you have any numbers on bulk prices of touchscreens? I've got no idea with that as I'm just eyeballing it based on retail prices of systems with certain features and components.

Take my advice on this: you can never guess what components cost based on relative sales costs of devices. Simply put, Wiz is not nearly as inexpensive as it could be (although having an OLED inflates it). However, they might be a little more expensive than I realized. It's looking like $15-$20 in quantity.

It's not that it makes it less unique, it's that it suddenly puts it up to be compared to the iPhone, and capacitive is cheaper than resistive, and is by the general public considered to be worse, so there would invariably be discussion about how it's not as good. One thing I think Apple did very well with the iPhone is only support a feature if it worked well, and completely keep it out if it's going to suck. That's probably why there's no multitasking (otherwise it would crash) and no camera in the newer touch models. I think it's worth only keeping in features that work well, rather than throwing in too many that end up diluting the quality.

There are tons of handhelds with capacitive touchscreens, I don't think they're all being compared to iPhone disfavorably because they have other buttons. For a gaming handheld in particular I don't think a capacitive touchscreen would be looked down upon because once again, you can see how well it's doing for DS.

Sonic? I'm looking back through history, and I didn't even know about the SMS until a few years ago, but off hand I remember Mortal Kombat and Double Dragon also being popular Game Gear games. I don't know if they were on SMS first.

That says it all, you haven't even heard of the platform. Most people in the USA didn't even know there were Sonic games for SMS. They were heavily overshadowed by the Genesis versions. The console was relatively successful in Europe and Brazil but those markets matter much less to the gaming industry.

I question this, the PSP was more powerful than the DS and while it didn't get slaughtered it hasn't been doing that well. The GameBoy was always the weakest system power wise. The GBC was too. And the GBA. And now the DS. Each time despite being weaker it sells better. I think this points to power not being a primary selling point for a portable system. At the very least, the correlation between power and sales/attach rate is really weak. Of course stuff that underperforms the GB didn't sell well either... There's also the Wii outselling the Xbox 360 and PS3 and it's much weaker. I just see every console that has failed badly, or not made great success, has been more powerful than whatever GameBoy iteration was out. I'm thinking if you can get more powerful than the DS (really shouldn't be hard to do at all) it'll help, but only as long as nothing else gets sacrificed in the process.

Yes, you don't have to be the most powerful when you're Nintendo. Most companies are not Nintendo. Furthermore, Nintendo has usually released weaker handhelds around the time of their competitors, not significantly later. GBA actually enjoyed being the most powerful handheld for a while, and pretty much until DS was released outside of a few very small competitors that never would have had the means to do much of anything, and N-Gage.

Nintendo has something that a newcomer is guaranteed not to have - the ability to make very strong first party games with very strong brand appeal (if a company was a strong game developer you can bet anything they'd be selling games before new hardware). Maybe if a company like Konami made a new handheld that'd be different, but they know that they're in a better arrangement right now. Sega actually ended up moving in the opposite direction.

[quote name='migo' date='02 October 2009 - 01:22 AM' timestamp='1254442976' post='759570']Price is what I'm thinking. If you could get it in at under $100 at launch, with a good library of titles, people wouldn't care that it isn't as powerful. Particularly if there's digital distribution with a bunch of titles in the sub-$2 range like the iPod Touch. Low price for the initial handset and low price for the games would also mean marketability in countries like China and India. India would be particularly good, it's got an English speaking population that just doesn't have much money. They pirate games there simply because it's criminal to charge them full retail price for games (seriously, who's going to pay 2 months rent for a video game?) $1 games are an excellent price point for being inclusive worldwide, and having them on a $100 console makes it actually affordable. You've got something like 1/3 to 1/4 of the 2.4 billion population in China and India that could be viable buyers for a cheap console. So ~600 million. South America is apparently still selling Genesis clones, so there's a chunk of the market there too. I'd say you're doubling your potential market by keeping it cheap.[/quote]

In order to create a successful platform you have to get prestigous companies making games for you, and in order to do that you have to offer something new. Being really cheap isn't offering anything new. Big companies don't invest in making $1 games, generally only individuals do. And as popular as these games may be they certainly aren't going to sell hundreds of millions in Asia, that's absurd. You're talking about selling dozens of times more than typical games do, to people that by and large have bigger things to worry about than gaming. Even if they could afford a $1 game, wouldn't the console itself cost 4 months rent by your reasoning? Forget that, what about the internet service that's necessary to download them in the first place? They can only be that cheap by forgoing physical distribution. And do you think these super cheap games are going to be considered so good that they'll sell in record numbers? iPhone games sell because Apple already has a target audience of impulse buyers who are willing to rapid fire purchase small things if they're presented as a price that looks like nothing. It's an audience that got an iPhone to use as a phone, or a media player, or whatever - if it were just a gaming platform first no one would have bought it (not to mention, it wouldn't have been cheap, that's for sure). To poor people living in third world countries, nothing looks like nothing.

 

[migo]

Current draw doesn't scale linearly with how powerful something is. More powerful parts tend to be newer and on smaller processes, not to mention more optimized by design, for instance, a TBDR like PowerVR's SGX is probably much more efficient at what it does than the 3D in PSP. Battery capacity also continues to improve. A handheld isn't going to have much on another one by having 15 hours instead of 10 hours, and 6 hours is pretty much the sweet spot for that.

That's counter-intuitive, but OK. More powerful = better battery life? I can happily live with that.

I also don't know where you get that PSP lasts 3-4 hours running UMDs, the number is more like 5-6 hours, unless WiFi is involved. I'm guessing your love for iPhone Touch has something to do with things like this..

5-6 hours sounds right for the 2200mAh battery on a 2000 or 3000, but that's buying an extended battery and a special battery cover to support it.

Take my advice on this: you can never guess what components cost based on relative sales costs of devices. Simply put, Wiz is not nearly as inexpensive as it could be (although having an OLED inflates it). However, they might be a little more expensive than I realized. It's looking like $15-$20 in quantity.

Damn. Any idea what the A320, DS and PSP are?

There are tons of handhelds with capacitive resistive touchscreens, I don't think they're all being compared to iPhone disfavorably because they have other buttons. For a gaming handheld in particular I don't think a capacitive resistive touchscreen would be looked down upon because once again, you can see how well it's doing for DS.

The DS I think gets a pass because it was released before capacitive was in vogue, plus it's Nintendo. If you look at comments on gadget blogs, despite there being very real advantages to resistive over capacitive (not to say there aren't other advantages in reverse) if a device has resistive people won't stop bitching about it. It's pretty much inevitable.

That says it all, you haven't even heard of the platform.

Not really. I grew up without a TV, and for a time we didn't have running water and had to use a well or melt snow. I hadn't heard of the Commodore 64 either (although thinking back I actually saw one when I was 8, but didn't know what it was). If I hadn't heard of something when I was younger it was much more likely because I hadn't heard of anything in that field.

Yes, you don't have to be the most powerful when you're Nintendo. Most companies are not Nintendo. Furthermore, Nintendo has usually released weaker handhelds around the time of their competitors, not significantly later. GBA actually enjoyed being the most powerful handheld for a while, and pretty much until DS was released outside of a few very small competitors that never would have had the means to do much of anything, and N-Gage.

Wasn't the GBA the only handheld for a while? I see your point about time of release though.

In order to create a successful platform you have to get prestigous companies making games for you, and in order to do that you have to offer something new. Being really cheap isn't offering anything new. Big companies don't invest in making $1 games, generally only individuals do.

It's relative to the market though. That's what region locking on DVDs was for, so they could charge $20 for a DVD in the first world and much less in poorer regions. If the market is something like India and China where they really can't afford more than $1 for a game, but there are 20 times as many people to buy it, the ROI is the same.

And as popular as these games may be they certainly aren't going to sell hundreds of millions in Asia, that's absurd. You're talking about selling dozens of times more than typical games do, to people that by and large have bigger things to worry about than gaming.

They care enough to buy bootleg games, if you get the games to be as cheap as what the bootleggers are charging for other systems, you're undercutting them and will actually make money.

Even if they could afford a $1 game, wouldn't the console itself cost 4 months rent by your reasoning? Forget that, what about the internet service that's necessary to download them in the first place?

It's easier to justify spending more money on a console, and given what you said about the actual cost of making a Wiz, it'd be feasible to have the actual retail price be down to the cost of most games for other systems. They have internet kiosks. I've talked to plenty of people from Indonesia, Phillipines and China who have a hard time making ends meet but are still able to go on the net (although in China the net gets blocked off for other reasons).

They can only be that cheap by forgoing physical distribution. And do you think these super cheap games are going to be considered so good that they'll sell in record numbers? iPhone games sell because Apple already has a target audience of impulse buyers who are willing to rapid fire purchase small things if they're presented as a price that looks like nothing. It's an audience that got an iPhone to use as a phone, or a media player, or whatever - if it were just a gaming platform first no one would have bought it (not to mention, it wouldn't have been cheap, that's for sure). To poor people living in third world countries, nothing looks like nothing.

Plenty of people buy an iPod Touch for gaming. There are sites dedicated to just the gaming apps, and the gaming section of the app store is the largest. You've got more people buying it for gaming than you do people getting the PS2 just as a DVD player or PS3 as a BR player. Plus, plenty of big developers (EA, Squenix among others) are making games for it. iPod Touch for gaming may have been as expected as the Wii for the casual market, but it's pretty much locked in as the 3rd handheld gaming system, and in much less time has sold better than the PSP.

 

[arrrgh]

I would find a way to squash an XBOX into a PSP-like formfactor and wait for all the Halo fanboys to come running.

 

[migo]

Has there been a good FPS for handhelds on any system? I mean Halo has the fanboys partially because of bungie but also because Halo on the Xbox was good. Having Halo play shitty on a handheld would bring a massive amount of bad press I'd think.

 

[arrrgh]

But it'd have like, XBOX controls somehow. So controls would be all good.