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Leapfrog Launches GBA-Style Educational Handheld
Thanks to Yahoo/Reuters for their story on the launch of Leapfrog's educational handheld, the Leapster. The article says the handheld is "aimed at giving parents an alternative to Nintendo's GameBoy system, [and] plays educational games and interactive videos." It retails for $79, with game cartridges costing around $25, and a Leapfrog spokesman commented on the reasoning behind today's launch: "A half a million GameBoys were sold last year for kids in the 3-1/2 to 6-1/2-year-old age group, but try to get parents to admit that in a focus group. This is a completely untapped market."
But wouldn't it be easier just to make education GBA games? After all, you don't make profit on the hardware....
can some one give the tech specs for it, i couldn't find it on the web site....(but what 4 year old would care it has a 33 mhz dragonball processor?) seems like it has a nice screen, and is cheap... but then again so are many handhelds these days, what makes this one different?
-and occasionaly a giant moose.
EDUCATE YOURSELF: How do you know that they are not making a profit on the hardware? Do you even know what is inside one of these things? The widespread myth that all consoles are sold at a loss (and apparently you've extended this belief to the handheld market as well) is simply not true. Nintendo is not selling the Gamecube at a loss. Sony is not selling the PS2 at a loss. Nintendo did not sell the SNES at a loss. Sega did not sell the Genesis at a loss. I can go on and on.
Furthermore, how does a hardware manufacturer make money on the product? Is it solely by making games? No, there is also licensing money to be made. If a company has a successful piece of hardware, they make money on the hardware (although it is usually a slim profit margin) and they make money on any games they make and they make money on licenses to other companies. Honestly, yes, it's more "safe" to sell educational games for the GBA but the possible returns on this would be significantly less. Did you not even read the story blurb? This is an untapped market meaning that no parents are buying their young children GBAs. Leapfrog has a chance to bring in a piece of hardware that will cement them in place. It also helps the Leapfrog brandname if they sell the actual device rather than just games for the GBA.
I can't believe you got modded up as insightful. Show me ANY EVIDENCE that a handheld console is being sold at a loss (with the obvious exception of a company trying to dump stock in order to get out of the business). Come on, any bit of evidence - please. That search will fail BECAUSE THERE ISN'T ANY!!!
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Will it play Bible Adventure, or other real 'classic' edutainment games?
... before it outsells N-Gage.
Give it a dumb knock-off name ending in -ster. This will ensure that your users think it's hip and that using it makes them badasses.
See you, space cowboy...
Give it a dumb knock-off name ending in -gage. This will ensure that your users think it's hip and that using it makes them badasses.
Santa still loves you and won't be bringing you any of these lame "educational" games.
Good old-fashioned cops and robbers for all of you this year! Yay! And you get to choose whether you want to be the good guy cop or the bad (fun!) guy robber!
Now come sit on Santa's lap!
N-Gage, Tapwave, PSP...now, Leapster? It took these companies how long to figure out that there's a handheld market?
So, I hear that you can pick up a new handheld console in Corn Pops all this month.
Launching their own system? Why not develop software for the GBA? There is already a monster user base, kids already think the GBA is cool, it seems like a no brainer.
By making their own handheld, all they are going to do is make life miserable for the poor kid who's parents buys him/her one of the leapfrogs while all his friends get the GBA's. "Ha ha Jimmy got the baby game boy" Please! lets think of Jimmy here!
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
I don't know why this irks me, but what is really wrong with something like Zelda on the GBA, from an educational standpoint? Sure, it might not have "hard" educational material, but I think that it can help teach basic reading, problem resolution, memory, hand/eye coordination, etc.
The Leapfrog solution seems to a shortcut with questionable intent. It seems like a parent would give this to their child and say, "Here, I bought you this, now go learn something with it," instead of teaching them using real-world examples. I mean just because the GBA is a videogame system doesn't mean it kills braincells.
All rights reserved. All wrongs reversed.
Don't look at this from the vantage point of a gamer. It's not that kind of system. Look at it from the vantage point of a parent with a child in the target age group. This is NOT a "video game". It's a learning tool that's fun. This is a product that will be advertised to the buyer (parent), not the consumer (child). Parents will dig this. It's fairly cheap and should have a decent lifespan (play span if you will).
I have purchased several Leapfrog products for my 16 month daughter. My daughter loves them (strong, noisey and responsive). This should be a hit.
Leapfrog doesn't make things for teenagers. The users that Leapfrog is aiming for would tear a GBA to shreds in a few hours.
My 16 month old son LOVES Leapfrog toys. They keep his attention far longer than any of the other toys he has. They are also educational, brightly colored, and fun looking. GBA's are small, have tiny buttons, are boring to look at from a toddler's point of view, have many opening to stick crumbs and other things into, and the clamshell design on the new ones would almost immedeately get torn in half.
Looking at it from the perspective of a parent, I think my son would love one of these. When he's a teenager, he'll want something more advanced, but for now this would be great for him. I think Leapfrog knows what they're doing here.
That's a dumb knock-off name starting in N. The "-gage" is the normal part of the word.
A whole generation of "leapsters" getting bullied for having parents that got them the leapster instead of a gba for x-mas.
Poor bastards.
So who else thinks this will sell more than N-Gage?
Napster was 5 years ago... why must that 'ster suffix still be so popular? Isn't it about time to come up with something new?