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State Of The Handheld Industry 2005

Posted by Zonk on from the i-heart-my-ds dept.

Jack writes "The State of the Handheld Industry 2005 is back. The yearly feature includes roundtables with journalists and handheld developers. A report by GCAdvanced indicates that this year it is a 4-day feature at Nintendo Insider. The developer roundtable is already up. It talks about not only the GBA, DS, and PSP, but the Gizmondo, N-Gage, and mobile phone gaming. GCAdvanced also reports there is an interview with Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan. Although she seems to dodge some questions, it gives new information about the Game Boy Micro faceplates and Nintendo DS online with the Wi-Fi connection." To provide some first hand opinions, The Game Chair has a piece on the meaning behind handheld gaming.

3 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The state is bleak by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    If a system surpasses 10 Million units sold in it's first year it can hardly be called a flop; and the Nintendo DS looks like it will surpass that point.

    What is really holding back both systems right now is that there are dramatically less games being made for them due to the larger cost of development; the Gameboy and Gameboy advance could have a development team of 4-12 people, the PSP in comparison is 20-40 people.

  2. Handheld gaming's future never looked brighter by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Up until now consumers have had one choice for the most part, and that was the GameBoy. Everything else that was put up against the GameBoy was slaughtered by it. Now Sony has come with deep pockets and the ability to support something else.

    Personally, I really don't like the PSP (it's just an expensive portable PS2 for the most part), but I can see the advantages that it brings. The graphics on the GameBoy have never been all that great. Many games have looked good despite the GB or GBA's inability to throw out high polygon counts. The PSP makes 3D gaming possible on a handheld in ways that it has never been before. However, it seems as though most companies are intent on throwing rehashes of PS2 games on it. I really haven't seen any originality on the system. It has a lot of potential, but right now it seems a lot of that potential is being wasted. The only reason I'd buy one is Lumines, but I'm not paying almost $300 for the experience.

    The DS on the other hand is really an odd duck. Like the PSP there is a lot of untapped potential on the system that's going to waste. However after playing games like Kirby's Canvas Curse, I've been blown away by some of the possibilities of the system. The DS is just begging people to think outside of the box and come up with something new and innovative.

    The most important thing though, is that consumers have a choice in what type of gaming philosophy they want to subscribe to. You can buy into the innovation and new style of gaming brought about by the DS, or you can get the mainstream rich-graphic games that the PSP has to offer. No matter what your preference is, consumers have more of a choice now.

  3. Will people buy a PSP solely for watching movies? by LKM · · Score: 2, Interesting

    On page three of the developer roundtable, there's a question asking whether the developers think that the non-gaming features of the PSP could eat into game sales. Almost all interviewees seem to think that the opposite is true: People will buy the PSP for watching UMD movies and then discover that it can play games, too, thereby bringing in new gamers.

    I think this is a bit delusional, but I'm wondering: Has anyone of you bought a PSP solely as a portable movie player? Do you know anyone who has? If you own a PSP, have you even bought a UMD movie?