Rise and Fall of the Nintendo Portables

It was 1989

Believe it or not, there was once a time when Nintendo wasn't considered regressive and laughably quixotic in its reluctance to embrace technological change. In fact, back in 1989, they were considered cutting edge.

I owned the first Gameboy back in 1989. It doesn't look like much now--brick shape, pea-green screen, 2 buttons, games with less memory than some Flash games now--but in its time, it was an amazing achievement for a portable system. The Gameboy was essentially a portable NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) without any color and crappy sound. Its competition were extremely limited Tiger handhelds that consisted of a simple "game" that utilized 2 or 3 endlessly repeated motions. The Gameboy, on the other hand, could play games that had levels, scrolling, bosses, beginnings and endings. Which would you choose: a Castlevania that consisted of a stick figure who could move two places on the screen and whip at a pixelated blob that was supposed to be a bat or a game that played just like the classics you loved on the NES? I chose the second, and so did most other people.

Although most Nintendo games from this early period played much like (and in some cases, were ports of) early NES games, this eventually changed due to the adoption of the SuperNES and later Nintendo64. Gameboy games began to increasingly evolve into very specific genres and types that did not correspond to the console games of the time. Perhaps the Gameboy's ultimate "killer app", Pokemon, was released in 1995 in Japan (1996 in US), a year after the NES was finally phased out. But as a whole, Nintendo's product maintained a certain level of consistency based on 3 points:
1. aimed at a younger audience

2. affordable for said audience (cost was always less than $30.00 US)
3. innovative at the time of creation
Even as Nintendo entered the 2000s with the Gameboy Advance, the pattern of success was maintained, and why not? Nintendo's handhelds had no competitors since its one steadily pushed adversary, the Sega GameGear, was discontinued.  Even though Nintendo's "core product" was always for the kiddies, the margin of success was so great that publishers could afford to take risks on things like Japanese RPGs, sidescrollers, and reissues of arcade classics.

The ride started to end in 2006, with the transition to Nintendo's first post-Gameboy handheld, the DS (dual screen). Several problems began to emerge. The cost of most game releases increased from $5 to $10 over the Advance's games, despite the fact that DS flashcarts were theoretically cheaper to manufacture.  For the first time, Nintendo faced a dangerous rival in the portable market with Sony's PSP. Although Sony managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, due to excessive system costs ($250), obsession with DRM, and an unsuccessful media format for films (UMD disks), the DS can't truly be called a success either.

Many DS games were either "shovelware" releases aimed at young children or casual puzzle games aimed at older adults. The more esoteric releases became rarer and rarer over the DS' lifespan, although there were always a few. Profit margins on the games that did exist were further hurt due to rampant piracy of the DS flashcart format, and the cost jump made games more difficult to afford anyway. The DS was essentially a system saved by Brain Age and Pokemon sales that was never a great match for other genres. Whenever a release like Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword was announced, it was like rainfall in the desert.

It was 2011 that finally saw the straw that broke the camel's back: the release of the Nintendo 3DS. This system was a virtual catalog of everything gamers love to hate. Excessive costs? $250 new and all games cost at least $40! Sick of 3D gimmicks? Enjoy ours, and our 4 hour battery life! Think Nintendo doesn't do enough to attract third party developers? You'll love this!

Nintendo is under severe threat from smartphone gaming from two ends. One, the "casual" gamer market has essentially shifted to low cost apps like Angry Birds that can be had for little money and played by virtually everyone. Two, the "hardcore" gamer market is slowly but surely appearing as games such as Street Fighter 4 and Grand Theft Auto III appear for Apple iOS devices. Nintendo's response to this seems to be to hard-sell its old franchises and audience appeal in a rapidly changing game world.

So far, its not working. The 3DS seems to be suffering from a fatal case of "wrong idea, wrong place, wrong time". With no killer apps at release and less of a reason to buy a dedicated game handhold than a smartphone, the 3DS is a severe blow to Nintendo's most reliable revenue stream and first Nintendo handheld to become a commercial failure. If we end up seeing Nintendo games on Apple or Android devices, perhaps it will all be worth it. But it's always sad to see the end of an era, particularly a run of success that lasted over twenty years.