Slashdot Mirror
Game Boy Advance SP Sells 1.1 Million in U.S.
clu76 writes "An article at Business Wire indicates that Nintendo has sold 1.1 million Game Boy Advance SPs since hitting the shelves less than 10 weeks ago. The article goes on to say, 'The new model has sold at a rate of more than 10 per minute, non-stop, since launch.'
Two new colors of the popular handheld have also been announced: Flame (red) and Onyx (black)." I'd attribute this to the SP being the first Game Boy to have a screen that's viewable in total darkness, as well as not requiring batteries. Anyone got ideas for what to do with an old GBA?
Anyone got ideas for what to do with an old GBA?
I'll take it.
Yet another signature that refers to itself. The irony and humor is dead.
When the Backlight is on the screen gets all hazy from too much reflection and glare from it's own internal light. Also, let's not forget you have to pay extra to get a headphone jack. That extra accessory makes the GBASP a little less portable than the previous incarnation.
Send it to me! The NetBSD port is only a few days away. I could patch in a keyboard and a numeric coprocessor and a hard disk and wifi/wired ethernet...
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
"Anyone got ideas for what to do with an old GBA?"
:P
Boy, one would think the Slashdot editors had never heard of eBay.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
While I do like the GBA SP, and it's screen, I'm sticking with my GBA and AfterBurner ( http://www.tritonlabs.com/ ) internal light (which is in my opinion as good as the GBA SP light), just because I can't use the GBA SP without getting cramp.. I'd live nintendo to release a new GBA SP about 50% bigger, then those of us with larger hands (or it seems normal man-sized hands) can hold it without cramp!
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
Here's a high-resolution picture of the two new colors. Unfortunately, you won't be able to buy one until September.
For more information, click here.
Get some rechargable batteries and a lamp. Use it. You'll live.
Or use your m4d h4XX0r1ng skilz and get an afterburner lighting kit for it.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Very nice. So I guess it runs off the pure power of geek? Or have they nailed that whole zero point energy conundrum?
I had a sucky sig.
I think it would be intresting to see how many of those purchases where new or old gameboy users simply upgrading.
No batteries, eh? So they finally accepted my idea for the nuclear reactor power pack...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
My only real problem with it is that the hinge doesn't act as a switch. That seemed like a no-brainer to me. Close the GBA, it turns off. Instead we get a goofy little switch on the side.
Oh, and the headphone adapter. What the hell is up with that?
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Anyone got ideas for what to do with an old GBA?
Save it for use as a controller for your Gamecube for when Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles comes out. It's rumored to *require* a GBA for every player.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
I read the internet for the articles.
I got mine back in March, shortly before I came to Japan.
To say the least, it's worth the money. Even more so if you (like I) owned zero consoles before it.
The thing lasts forever with the light on, and even longer with the light off. And it's very, very small. Only downside might be the attachment you have to buy for the headphone jack but the sound isn't really that important.
Nintendo did an awesome job with the SP. Now if only they had 4 buttons instead of just A and B...
With Nintendo pushing connectivity with the GameCube, I have commited the life of my original GBA as a controller for the GC. My SP is a little small to use for a controller for a console, and this way I don't have to hook/unhook the GBA every time I want to leave the house. I don't play the GameCube in the dark, so the lack of lighting is not a problem.
Give it to a child you know and them start stealing his games that his mom buys him. also, when you are playing the child you can fiddle with the lighting and make it so he can't see the screen while you take him to school in some head-to-head action with the gameboy advance link cable.
I simply wonder how many they would've sold if they could keep up with the demand. It took me 3 weeks to get a GBA SP, and then I had to get the blue one (I wanted the silver one), or face another 2-3 weeks unless I got lucky (and no, I haven't seen a silver one in the ~1 week since I got mine). The worst part is that everyone I asked pretty much knew what I was going to say by the time I got the words Game Boy out of my mouth, but they had to wait for the SP because they have so many of the old GBAs on the shelf and would love to get rid of them.
Everyone pretty much said that they get a shipment of 12 of them every couple of weeks, 6 of each colour, although sometimes they come in seperate shipments. They also have no idea when they will receive them (except for a couple of the larger retailers like WalMart which gets more regular shipments, though the shipments are the same size).
-PainKilleR-[CE]
My hands are somewhat big and i find the grip on the SP model too small and awkward, the old model is a bit bigger, but with the afterburner, i actually think you're better off(the dimmer chip has different levels of intensity, and an auto-off feature, very handy if you leave it turned on because you can't save at that moment).
By the way, i think Nintendo has done wrong requiring an adaptor for headphones, because in both the old GBA and the SP the speaker is practically useless.
A great man I know bought an SP and left his GBA at work for bored people to play (this is a receptionist job with very slow times). He is unto a god.
Save it. Final Fantasy: Chrystal Chronicles uses a GBA hooked up to your Gamecube as a controller.
Some people will shout that they did this just to sell more GBAs, but it all makes sense, really. A Final Fantasy where the game pauses every time one of four players need to change equipment?
This method also encourages you to talk to each other during the game, since you only see your own stuff and need to tell the other players that you're low on healing potions or whatever.
Leveling up builds character.
"Anyone got ideas for what to do with an old GBA?"
Mutter curses while throwing it in the dumpster on your way out to get the newest version, now with Tint Control®. Gotta stay on the bleeding edge you know.
Seriously tho, Toys for Tots or something along those lines would be a nice this to do with "out-dated" game systems, just make sure you pack the games with them.
I've been in Japan since April 1st, and the black GBA SP is all over the place here.
I'm suprised Nintendo is waiting until September to release it in the 'states.
The red one is nice looking though. I'll stick with my silver though.
I hadn't realized that "red" and "black" were so last week that they couldn't serve as product color descriptors.
Nail it to a picture frame, with the caption "If you are going to be an early adopter, occasionally you are going to throw away your money".
We need waterproof GBAs!
Now you're playing in the shower...Nintendo shower!
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
The GBA has the advantage that it is a very easy machine to do home development on. Grab yourself a flash cart and get going. I should put some references in now.. instead I'll just say any of the top ten links from goodle under "gba development" are good. If you can't be bothered to search for it deving is probably too much hard work for you.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
I'd attribute this to the SP being the first Game Boy to have a screen that's viewable in total darkness
What about the Gameboy Light?
How many hours of gameplay do you get out of a set of batteries ?
http://www.intellipool.se/ - Intellipool Network Monitor
Nintendo did a smart thing by releasing this one - it's suddenly cool to have a gameboy, even if you're not a kid. I hope this will bring the console to older audiences and Nintendo will follow up by releasing games to match the interests of that demographic (versus just releasing games aimed at younger children)
Ñ'
Eh? Mean extra batteries?
Amazing how Nintendo can continue to dominate the handheld gaming market year after year. One of the major points about a gameboy (be it the original or the new advaced ones) is that they don't suck down the batteries like some of the other flops (gamegear? could you even play all the way through a game without having to swap batteries).
Funny how the basics of what someone would like in a mobile device really help sell it. Maybe some of these pda companies should take note.
-Eod
You've got it all wrong!
:)
:)
Say that the average male thinks of sex once every 6 seconds (i dont know the actual stat). Assuming there are 6,000,000,000 people in the world, of which 3,000,000,000 are men, then in every period of 6 seconds, there are on average 3,000,000,000 thoughts of sex that occur. That means, there are roughly 500,000,000 million sex-thoughts per second.
Compare that to 1 GBA sp sold every 6 seconds
Don't worry, sex is still WAAAAY ahead
Alex
I guess this means we're not being left behind again. I've got my black one right here and I'm pretty sure red is available - both since their UK launch.
I haven't felt this honoured since Silent Hill 3 turned up... or when we got the English version of Shenmue II.
Yay, go UK!
[)amien
In never fails to impress me with how excited people get over these "innovations" in portable gaming. Those familiar with the turbo express have been enjoying a complete backlit screen with 16 bit (heh....here we go) graphics in slick black package for years. The turbo express also boasted a tv tuner and the ablility to share games with the standard console, a feat so impressive you actually have to see the Hu Cards to believe.
My beloved street fighter 2 even looked better on the turbo express than it did on the genesis (64 colors on screen at once, yuk)...if only you could get used to hitting select to alternate between punches and kicks.
You can usually spot one on ebay for around 100 bucks, a few games included...
"I'd attribute this to the SP being the first Game Boy to have a screen that's viewable in total darkness"
That is not true, the GameBoy Light was the first GameBoy to work in the dark. It was Monocrome Indiglow screen.
Check it out here:
Well, you've got Golden Sun, which is easily the best handheld RPG that I've ever played. Then there's Metroid Fusion, which is a game worthy of the Metroid name. Last, but not least, Advance Wars, which is the most addictive game that I have ever played.
Any one of those is worth getting at least the original GBA.
is that it solves all the problems of the original GBA.
I would have got the original GBA, but I'm hard on my hardware, and screens get scratched. The "clamshell" design of the SP solves that problem.
I also hate buying batteries or battery packs. The SP solves that with an internal Li-Ion battery that lasts as long lit as the GBA could go on a set of alkalines without a light (ten hours) and longer unlit (eighteen hours).
The Castlevania games that every review site ever said "Get a halogen lamp and don't move while playing this" are no longer valid now that the SP has an even front-light (that does make the screen a bit bluer, but still very playable). I don't have to go third-party (sketchy) or trust my own skills (sketchier) to avoid getting dirt in the screen when installing a light.
It's also small. I've got enough crap in my pockets (cell, keys, PDA, etc etc) that I needed something a bit smaller than the GBA. At three inches square, the SP fits the bill.
Yes, the lack of a headphone jack is annoying, but I can play without sound and rarely lose anything. Unfolded, the form factor's similar to the original Game Boy, and I can play it just fine. I guess I have small girly hands. Lucky me.
The SP is replacing old GBAs ("MOMMY MOMMY BUY IT FOR ME" is a popular one, but far from all) and is increasing the userbase to adults who can drop a hundred bucks on a toy. I just wish they'd premiered with all four colors - I would have preferred black to silver. Oh, I'm sorry. ONYX to PLATINUM.
Dare to Hope. Prepare to be Disappointed.
Check out this guy
http://come.to/6955
He does performances using several gameboys wired to some custom equipment
You need to buy a $5 headphone adaptor cable that nintendo sells. Yeah it sucks they removed it, but oh well.
Slashdot geeks propably want to run the GBA Web Server on it. :)
Try WarioWare - it's not one of thse 10 or 20 hour games, you can complete a game in 5 seconds. Oh, and it's horribly addictive. BestBuy had it on the display GBA and I highly recommend checking it out.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
http://www.ncsx.com/ncs0420/goldgb.htm
Nintendo released the GameBoy Light in Japan. It featured an Indiglo-style backlight.
Needless to say, it tanked.
The Human Cow - bringing you scrumtrelescence since 1995
Keep it, damned! In a few years it will be worth more than the new one. It's how these things go: the original Jaguar E-type is the most coveted one, the original "breadbox" Commodore 64 is the one that has some value, unlike the newer Commodore 64-II (flat box), The Apple 1 motherboard is much more valuable than any Apple II, and the original Apple II is more valuable than the IIc or IIgs, and finally, the Sinclair Zx-80 is MUCH more valuable than the newer ZX-81. Etc etc etc....
Newer and improved technical goods almost always have less value as collectible items, than the models that entered the market.
Sigged!