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Microsoft Handheld Gaming in 2007?
1up is reporting on speculation from analysts 'The Diffusion Group', who have forecast a handheld gaming device from Microsoft sometime in the next two years. From the article: "It's an analyst group's speculation and should be taken as such, but simultaneously one has to wonder what is the likelihood of Microsoft bringing a PGC to its platform library. A portable entry seemed like the next logical step for Microsoft before E3 -- and that logic was confirmed by the announcement of Live Anywhere at E3 -- a handheld platform would certainly make a solid launching pad for the mobile arm of Live Anywhere, wouldn't it?"
...so those totally-unfounded rumors of someone playing Halo on an Origami prototype start seeming a bit more substantial.
Sega Game Gear ...
... if they ever want to trun a profit though ...
Atari Linx
Neo Geo Pocket
Wonderswan Color
N-Gage
(potentially) PSP
and many more
Every company that has ever thought of entering the gaming market has decided to produce a handheld device, which is (almost) always assumed to be the end to Nintendo's dominance. Every last one of them has had all success limited to a region and been eventually knocked out of the market by Nintendo.
Essentially, if Microsoft wanted to lose another billion dollars a year with limited success in the gaming market I would advise them to produce a handheld gaming device
Lets face it ( I have ) Nintendo dominates in hand held gaming. Like the iPod and digital music players, the Gameboy is iconic for this market.
The PSP is an utter failure. Sony tried to make a portable game console that uses the same gaming concepts that makes its PS and PS2 popular, but they ignored that portable gaming is not about sports games, or even complicated RPGs or First person shooters. Portable gaming is about 20 - 60 minutes of diversion while sitting on a bus or riding a plane or putting your feet up at home. What few puzzler and other "quick fix" like games are available on the PSP are generally poorly though out (like Smart Bomb). There isn't even a tetris game out for the PSP. Instead, Sony focuses on sprawling adventure games, RPS, sports franchises, and other non-arcade or puzzle games.
Microsoft will fail too because the most popular gaming titles that are played on Live are Halo/FPS, Sports Games, and MMORPG's. All these genres do not make successful portable gamining titles. Live will fail as a portable product because if your travelling, your never going to have WiFi access long enough to play any of these games. You will have to be a home, or in some dedicated environment to play Live on a portable console, and if you HAVE to be in a specific location, then why not just play it on the Xbox or Xbox360?
Sony has, and Microsoft will, fail to understand what makes the portable gaming franchise successful. Sony still hasn't gotten a clue as to what would have made the PSP a successful product. The fact that Sony tried to make a device that works with both games and multimedia pretty much sealed the PSP fate because even the PSP's multimedia handling is poorly implemented. Music playback could be significantly improved on the device (i.e. get rid of the necessity for a folder structure and use a database file like the iPod) and video playback without TV out support? I mean, Sony failed in every aspect of the PSP, from its multimedia handling, to its games, to the fact that there is a strong community of people that WANT to develop for it, but Sony considers them criminals. Sony failed in ever way.
Microsoft might gain a little more success if they base a portable game system on their Mobile Windows platform. If Microsoft allows for homebrew applications which can be developed easily using Visual Studio with a familiar API like DirectX and Windows SDK then they could make a ubiquitous device that will have more then just gaming potential, but Mirosoft won't allow this. Microsoft will bastardize a version of Windows Mobile to prevent homebrew applications. Microsoft will err the way Sony has, buy trying to release a portable version of Halo with Live support or other non-portable genre's of games that won't work in most mobile cases. Unless something like WiMax is released in 2007 where you can have ubiquitous online access across a city or even country, a portable version of Live will fail.
In the end, I think that Nintendo has a strong grip hold in the portable gaming market. Devices like the NGage and PSP have failed to captivate an audience, all Nintendo did to counter these releases is come out with a different color of their Gameboy or DS and they still get more sales then the other devices combined. Also consider that by 2007 Nintendo should be on schedule to release a next generation Gameboy or sucessor to the DS. Microsoft won't be able to compete with the anticipation of a new Nintendo portable game system.
Microsoft will offer just another portable system that will have mediocre appeal and will most likely cripple its success by implementing too many poorly implemented features and DRM protection schemes.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.