Nintendo Gameboy Advance, In Advance

IEEE1394 writes "The Gameboy Advance is due to be released in North America on June 11, 2001. Many reviews of the Japanese units have been done, but I haven't seen one of the North American unit. Futurelooks has snagged a unit and some games recently and has done a thorough review of the unit. Hopefully this will help some of you folks figure out if you should run to your closest Circuit City in the U.S., or Futureshop in Canada to buy it. For a hundred bucks, it's a steal, so you know I'm there! Check it out!" Now if only that screen was touch sensitive;)

Comments

Re:Gameboy? Hope it pays off...

[GeorgeH]

I respectfully disagree. As far as the market for portable consoles goes, Gameboy has been a bigger success than anyone anticipated. It was introduced in 1990, and shortly after it had competition from Sega and Turbografix, neither of which sold well despite having color screens.

The Gameboy has survived for 10 years with only one upgrade (color) since it was introduced. That's better than any console in the history of video games. I think this says something fundamental about the handheld console market - people don't always want the best hardware as long as they can play games with high replay value (I suspect bundling Tetris with the Gameboy had a lot to do with its early success).

If all people want is a game that they can play riding in the car, or between classes, or sitting in a doctor's office, they don't want to carry around 3d goggles, custom input devices, etc. They want to carry as few items as possible and buy stuff like light guns and goggles for their powerful home console.

You suggest that the GameBoy will lose the market if they don't provide these add-ons. I'm curious who you think they'll lose the market to: Sony or Microsoft? The Gameboy's marketshare makes Windows look like it's at death's door. If the GBA doesn't catch on, it won't be because of competition providing a better product, it'll be because people don't want the GBA.
--

And SDKs?

[MSBob]

What I want is for nintendo to lower the barrier to entry for individual developers and small software shops. It's stil an extremely painful process to acquire a license for developing gb/gba games together with the SDK. If there was a handheld gaming console with a lower barrier to entry maybe we would see a lot more Open Source 2d games and lots more small game shops specialising in games for handhelds. I think Nintendo are stifling the market by making it so hard for enthusiasts to develop and distribute games on their platforms.