Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and love all Things tech. And it is Friday. That
Speaker 1: means it's time for a classic episode. This episode originally
Speaker 1: published on March five. It is titled The History of
Speaker 1: Handheld Gaming, Part two. And if part two is throwing
Speaker 1: you for a loop, listen to last Friday's classic episode,
Speaker 1: because that is surprise, surprise, hard one. So let's listen
Speaker 1: in on this classic episode. The two video game systems
Speaker 1: that were about to talk about, because they were essentially
Speaker 1: the same thing but branded under two different names, they
Speaker 1: did not make the same impact on the market that
Speaker 1: the game gear did. They did get some popularity in
Speaker 1: Europe and South America, not in North America as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell. But these two systems, which again
Speaker 1: we're pretty much the same thing, we're branded the Mega
Speaker 1: Duck and Cougar Boy. It does sound like the worst
Speaker 1: superheroes ever, Mega Duck and Cougar Boy fighting crimes. It's yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: they're they're cartridge based handheld video game systems. Nothing nothing
Speaker 1: particularly notable about the mother than the fact that I
Speaker 1: thought their names were a door. Yeah. Yeah. If if
Speaker 1: you haven't heard of them, um, you're in pretty good company,
Speaker 1: especially here in North America. I don't think they ever
Speaker 1: came to this market. They were mostly in um, Europe
Speaker 1: and South America. Actually Brazil actually produced some thus Cougar Boy.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so Mega Duck apparently very popular in the
Speaker 1: Netherlands and Germany. By the way, if any of you
Speaker 1: own any of the game systems, clearly the more obscure
Speaker 1: ones that we're talking about, I welcome you to share
Speaker 1: a picture of holding the handheld game system and share
Speaker 1: it on our Facebook wall, and we will totally comment
Speaker 1: on those. Yeah, or or if you if you give
Speaker 1: us permission to, we will. We will push it along
Speaker 1: to our to our other yeah, like the tumb twitters
Speaker 1: and things. Yeah, because you know, I I have owned
Speaker 1: a couple of handheld gaming systems back in the day,
Speaker 1: but I never got my hands on a Mega Duck
Speaker 1: or a Cougar Boy. I I never owned a handheld
Speaker 1: huh wow. Learning something new about Lauren here. Actually the
Speaker 1: only one besides the the you know, I mentioned that
Speaker 1: I had a a football or a football to from
Speaker 1: MATEL Electronics. At least I think I did. I know
Speaker 1: I played one. I assumed that I owned it. It
Speaker 1: was back when I was a little kid. Uh, the
Speaker 1: only one that I can remember owning, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: that long ago when I got it. It It was a
Speaker 1: game Boy Advance and we'll talk about that in this episode.
Speaker 1: A little bit later. Moving on, that is when Sega
Speaker 1: released the Nomad, which was a handheld version of the Genesis. Right. So,
Speaker 1: the fact that it could actually play Genesis games meant
Speaker 1: that it had a big leg up over the competition
Speaker 1: because it already had an established live are to pull from.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, However, the form factor those game cartridges meant
Speaker 1: that this thing was pretty huge. Yeah, it was really
Speaker 1: really bulky. Not easy for it, Like it was called
Speaker 1: a handheld but sort of in the same way that
Speaker 1: early laptops were called laptop computers, but if you were
Speaker 1: to actually put it on your lap, you might crush
Speaker 1: your legs kind of similar to that. Also, um, from
Speaker 1: why I understand, you could only play for a very
Speaker 1: short while before it drained all the batteries and you
Speaker 1: had to replace them. So in fact, so much so
Speaker 1: that I remember that for some of these devices, including
Speaker 1: this one. One of the peripherals that was that was
Speaker 1: launched shortly after the system debut would be little a
Speaker 1: C adapters for a car, like a car adapter so
Speaker 1: that you could actually play in the car without the
Speaker 1: batteries dying after half an hour. So not terribly popular,
Speaker 1: partly also because Sega had this issue about releasing a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of different video game consoles within a relatively
Speaker 1: short amount of time, and those consoles were mostly incompatible
Speaker 1: with each other. Yeah, within like seven years they had
Speaker 1: released at least three and and that's yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: lot cutting down on your own market. It's never really
Speaker 1: the best idea. Yeah, I ended up saturating the market
Speaker 1: quite a bit, and so that also hurt them in
Speaker 1: the long run. This is an interesting one. It's the
Speaker 1: game dot com with the name of it right by
Speaker 1: Tiger Electronics. And this was a handheld device and remembered
Speaker 1: this is that had Internet connectivity, yes, built in specifically
Speaker 1: you could do things like check your email or read
Speaker 1: web pages in text. Yeah, you couldn't play games online.
Speaker 1: The internet functions were more for It was also kind
Speaker 1: of this dual function p D, a sort of thing
Speaker 1: because PDAs were so big in personal digital assistance for
Speaker 1: those who don't remember, right, Yeah, so this is that
Speaker 1: was what we called smartphones before there were phones in them.
Speaker 1: Like many other p d a's of the time, it
Speaker 1: had a monochrome screen, whereas everything else coming out at
Speaker 1: this point had a color screen, So that that injured
Speaker 1: it definitely in the marketplace, definitely, definitely, And you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of it's still kind of a cool idea.
Speaker 1: But apparently the games were also not very good, or
Speaker 1: some people would say incredibly bad. And so it did
Speaker 1: have a touch screen, which which was pretty innovative for
Speaker 1: the time for games anyway. Again, p d as frequently
Speaker 1: had them, but gaming systems did not. So this is
Speaker 1: you know, marking two things that would become popular in
Speaker 1: future game systems, the touch screen and the internet connectivity.
Speaker 1: So it was a little ahead of its time. It was.
Speaker 1: It was an ambitious product. Ultimately was not failure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something that was not a failure. One year later, and
Speaker 1: this was this was a decade after their last big one,
Speaker 1: Nintendo released the game Boy Color and that was the
Speaker 1: first real update to the game Boy. I mean there
Speaker 1: had been that those few others that we talked about
Speaker 1: and the little but the guts of the game Boy
Speaker 1: had remained largely the same since it had debut. There
Speaker 1: had not been a major overhaul apart from some of
Speaker 1: the aesthetics of the actual case itself. This is where
Speaker 1: we finally get to a brand new kind of technology,
Speaker 1: where we get color screens on game Boys. So no
Speaker 1: more monochromatic tetris unless you're actually playing an old game
Speaker 1: Boy cartridge. Because one the nice things about it was
Speaker 1: that it was backwards compatible, so if you bought a
Speaker 1: game Boy Color, you didn't have to worry about Well,
Speaker 1: now I have to tell all these games are useless
Speaker 1: and I have to have two devices with me if
Speaker 1: I want to Nope, you can play anything you want.
Speaker 1: Nintendo was really good about being backwards compatible with a
Speaker 1: few of its different consoles, not all of them, but
Speaker 1: so much enough so that whenever you had a console
Speaker 1: come out, whether it was handheld or otherwise that was
Speaker 1: not backwards compatible, people got upset because they got used
Speaker 1: to it. So but this one, definitely in that philosophy,
Speaker 1: did not have a backlit screen, just like the original
Speaker 1: game Boy, so again that meant that the battery consumption
Speaker 1: was a modest so it wouldn't die within half an hour,
Speaker 1: unlike the Sega Nomad. So uh. And then also that
Speaker 1: same year in n another company called Neo Geo released
Speaker 1: the Neo Geo Pocket in Japan, which was a monochromatic
Speaker 1: handheld video game system. It didn't do very well, but
Speaker 1: in nineteen nine they released the Neo Geo Pocket Color
Speaker 1: or in GPC, which ended up being a device that
Speaker 1: the company would sell around the world. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: a Japanese product. Yeah, it was a pretty good competitor
Speaker 1: to to the Game Boy Color. Yeah, it was less
Speaker 1: expensive than the Nintendo device is also power efficient just
Speaker 1: like the Game Boy Color was. But ultimately Nintendo's biggest
Speaker 1: advantage was again that amazing library of games. Neo Geo
Speaker 1: had some great games, but Nintendo had a tonnable yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and Neo Geo's strength and development was certainly in
Speaker 1: the console market at the time. Yeah. So that moves
Speaker 1: us up to that's when a Bandai, which was really
Speaker 1: known for those handheld hard coded l c D based games,
Speaker 1: the ones that would be like you know, uh, licensed
Speaker 1: after a particular product or whatever. Uh. It was really
Speaker 1: known for those the ones that weren't any kind of
Speaker 1: cartridge based games. That's when they released the Wonder Swan,
Speaker 1: which was a monochromatic gaming device, and it was designed
Speaker 1: by by Gumpey Yukoi. Yeah, the same guy who designed
Speaker 1: the game Boy, the original game Boy. So this was
Speaker 1: a notable entry in that it was designed by one
Speaker 1: of the most successful, most influential designers of the handheld
Speaker 1: gaming industry. Right, and it was also the exclusive mobile
Speaker 1: platform at the time for the Final Fantasy series, which
Speaker 1: was really huge, I mean mostly in Japan. Yeah. In
Speaker 1: fact that this game console never really got popular anywhere
Speaker 1: other than Japan. It was never sold in the United States,
Speaker 1: even after they updated it. They updated a couple of times.
Speaker 1: They had the Wonder Swan color, and then by night
Speaker 1: by two thousand two, rather they came out with the
Speaker 1: Swan crystal. I've seen pictures of them. Uh, I don't
Speaker 1: know how you were going to play games on these.
Speaker 1: He's like, there was one that it looked like it
Speaker 1: had two directional pads on the same side of the
Speaker 1: game console. Is another one of those where I had
Speaker 1: the screen in the middle and the controls were on
Speaker 1: either side, but one side had a directional pad laid
Speaker 1: out on top of another directional pad, or at least
Speaker 1: that's what look like to meet. The picture was not
Speaker 1: terribly great quality, and I've never seen one of these
Speaker 1: in person. If anyone has has one, send us a picture, yeah,
Speaker 1: or send us one. You've got an extra one, you
Speaker 1: can just send us one. That's fine. Send us some
Speaker 1: games too, because otherwise it's just not I mean, I'll
Speaker 1: be pretty good to look at. But yeah, so anyway,
Speaker 1: you can't. You can't program your own cartridge games for
Speaker 1: I don't have that kind of spare time. Want to
Speaker 1: see a game I have programmed, it'll it'll just be
Speaker 1: made entirely of puns. I do not want to see
Speaker 1: that russ festival. The game would be what it would
Speaker 1: be um at any rate. A brief note from the
Speaker 1: year two thousand, that is, we started seeing a lot
Speaker 1: of retro nostalgia for for early games. I think around
Speaker 1: this time that that has been pervasive. I mean, not
Speaker 1: that not that nerds will have never not talked about
Speaker 1: things that they're really excited about from twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: But um, but this is the year that Mattel re
Speaker 1: released its late seventies games football and baseball, and which
Speaker 1: you know, it makes sense because the the kids who
Speaker 1: got these as toys when they were kids have now
Speaker 1: grown up and are now able to purchase stuff on
Speaker 1: their own. Speaking of that, in the year two thousand
Speaker 1: that that is when Nintendo came out with the Game
Speaker 1: Boy Advance, which was its next big update to the
Speaker 1: Game Boy line. Yeah, they actually launched it in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one. They had been developing it for a while,
Speaker 1: and the this one ended up having a color screen,
Speaker 1: It had had a shoulder buttons as well as the
Speaker 1: regular buttons that you had on the games, so I
Speaker 1: increased the things you could do with it. I owned
Speaker 1: one of these at any rate. Um. It was backwards
Speaker 1: compatible with game Boy and game Boy Color cartridges, so
Speaker 1: that gave it a lot of utility. But you know,
Speaker 1: anything that was a Game Boy Advanced game was way
Speaker 1: more uh insticated. Yeah, and pretty exactly. You could you
Speaker 1: could do more stuff. Um, and they had about the
Speaker 1: same amount of firepower, you could say, as one of
Speaker 1: their former consoles, right, the SNS, the Supernintendo Entertainment System,
Speaker 1: which had debuted like like a decade earlier. And and
Speaker 1: I find it really impressive that miniaturization had had occurred
Speaker 1: to the point where in only ten years you were
Speaker 1: able to pack this huge bulky s nest handheld to
Speaker 1: the handheld. Yeah, and they would also update this line
Speaker 1: multiple times. So in two thousand three, Nintendo released a
Speaker 1: clamshell version of the game Boy Advanced, and then two
Speaker 1: five they released the game Boy Advanced Micro, which was
Speaker 1: a much smaller version of it. Because yeah, that first
Speaker 1: one they came out was a bit a bit clunky. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's the first version, is the one that I have.
Speaker 1: By the way, I don't have the Micro or the
Speaker 1: clamshell version. They also would even go on to offer
Speaker 1: a wireless adapter in two thousand four, so instead of
Speaker 1: using cables to connect your Game Boy Advance with someone
Speaker 1: else's machine, if you both had this wireless adapter, you
Speaker 1: could play games over wireless um and so yeah, very popular.
Speaker 1: I also gave you some connectivity with the Nintendo GameCube.
Speaker 1: So if you owned both the GameCube and a game
Speaker 1: Boy Advance, and you own the the compatible titles, you
Speaker 1: could have access to additional content on both. Right, Right,
Speaker 1: you would hook it up by by a special cable
Speaker 1: and and not that many games had this capacity, right,
Speaker 1: but you could you could access a little bit of
Speaker 1: simultaneous content. Yeah, you could. You could actually use your
Speaker 1: game Boy Advance as a controller and it would display
Speaker 1: extra information inside the game Boy Advances screen. So this
Speaker 1: kind of pre dates and it and it foreshadows the
Speaker 1: Nintendo We You, which wouldn't come out for another decade. Yees.
Speaker 1: So the we You, I mean we you know, it's
Speaker 1: got that tablet based controller where you can get extra
Speaker 1: stuff on it that you know. That's obviously not a
Speaker 1: new idea and Nintendo I've been playing that idea for
Speaker 1: a while. Also in two thousand one, over in Korea,
Speaker 1: there was a company called game Park that released the
Speaker 1: g P thirty two handheld gaming console, full color screen,
Speaker 1: typical kind of handheld, but it was a little bit
Speaker 1: different from the previous consoles we had seen. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: one was was really interesting because games were not stored
Speaker 1: on cartridges. They used little flash cards, yeah, smart media
Speaker 1: flash cards, which meant that anyone could develop a game
Speaker 1: for this and then store it. As long as you
Speaker 1: knew how to program for this device, you could build
Speaker 1: a game for it or an application for it, and
Speaker 1: store it on a smart media card and use it
Speaker 1: on the system because you know cartridges that's hard to
Speaker 1: program for. You're talking about actual physical circuits, you media, right, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a much more expensive so this was much
Speaker 1: easier to code for. It was a great boon to
Speaker 1: two independent developers who were interested in getting into it. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it also made things really easy to pirate, yeah, which
Speaker 1: made a lot of the established game companies say, you know,
Speaker 1: we're not going to develop for this because we don't
Speaker 1: want to have our stuff stolen everywhere. It doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense for us to pour a lot of money
Speaker 1: into development, marketing, sales, all that kind of stuff, only
Speaker 1: to see a handful of games go out before they're
Speaker 1: all pirated. So it didn't get a lot of support
Speaker 1: from the industry, but it was one of those things
Speaker 1: that really took off in the independent circle and the
Speaker 1: emulator circle, the people who wanted to create emulators that
Speaker 1: could play games based on other systems, and then you
Speaker 1: would have one handled console that could do practically anything.
Speaker 1: Two thousand three. Here's where we have one of our
Speaker 1: big flops stories. One of my favorites. Actually, I remember
Speaker 1: when this came out. Yeah, the Engage. Yeah, so um
Speaker 1: Engage also sometimes called the taco because it was vaguely
Speaker 1: taco shaped. And here's the crazy thing. Did you ever
Speaker 1: see anyone having to make a call on one of
Speaker 1: these things? I never saw anyone use one period. Okay.
Speaker 1: So the speaker and the receiver on it. If you
Speaker 1: think of a taco like a taco shell, the fold
Speaker 1: of the taco shell like a hard, crispy taco. Gosh,
Speaker 1: I want tacos now. But if you think of the
Speaker 1: fold of the shell, the speaker and the receiver were
Speaker 1: on the outside of that fold, so you actually like
Speaker 1: a like a taco out to the side of your face. Yes,
Speaker 1: didn't sit flat against your face. The edge was against
Speaker 1: your face. So the it was enormous. Okay. So this
Speaker 1: was clever in a way, and the concept was clever
Speaker 1: in the in the Nokio was a really dominant force
Speaker 1: in the cell phone business at the time, and they
Speaker 1: were trying to make a cell phone that was also
Speaker 1: a handheld gaming system and and hey, we we have
Speaker 1: some things that are kind of like that today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at the time, that was before the smartphone revolution had
Speaker 1: really taken off. So this was a really brand new
Speaker 1: kind of Oh sure, sure. Unfortunately, it was a terrible
Speaker 1: phone and a terrible gaming system. Yeah, it really was
Speaker 1: awful at both things that was supposed to do, and
Speaker 1: so it did not get very far. There was a
Speaker 1: sequel to the Engage, which was more about kind of
Speaker 1: a game system, like a game library that you could
Speaker 1: download to Nokia based phones. Yeah. Yeah. A couple of
Speaker 1: years later it would it would release an update to
Speaker 1: the Engage that was better than the Engage had been.
Speaker 1: It was called the q D Engage qt uh but
Speaker 1: it's still flopped and um and right. And then then
Speaker 1: after that they would they would release this a kind
Speaker 1: of app that was that was sort of an in
Speaker 1: in phone gaming system. It was getting away from that
Speaker 1: physical form factor that had burned them so badly. But
Speaker 1: but it would even abandon that and Heather in another
Speaker 1: few years, as as app stores became things, they realized
Speaker 1: that having a specific gaming app wasn't as useful. Yea.
Speaker 1: So two thousand four, this is where we see one
Speaker 1: of the big influential players get into the space finally yea, Sony, Yeah,
Speaker 1: with the where have you Been? Sony? Yeah. They had
Speaker 1: been developing the PlayStation Portable or PSP. They launched in
Speaker 1: Japan in December two thousand four, didn't get over into
Speaker 1: the United States and uh in Europe until the next year.
Speaker 1: Of course, being Sony at the time, it did not
Speaker 1: use cartridges or or even flash cards. It went straight
Speaker 1: for optical discs, which you're like, what you know, when
Speaker 1: you think about it, it's a real challenge to make
Speaker 1: any kind of portable device that uses optical discs because
Speaker 1: any kind of jost it's gonna it's gonna the laser,
Speaker 1: the laser of course. Yeah. And and these these are
Speaker 1: those those little mini optical discs. They look like a
Speaker 1: little yeah, universal media discs. S. Yeah. In this case,
Speaker 1: they did a really good job at designing it so
Speaker 1: that you you know, unless you were particularly rough with
Speaker 1: your PSP, or you were you know, maybe going down
Speaker 1: a dirt road, perhaps you're a good old boy, never
Speaker 1: meaning no harm, then you might have some issues, but
Speaker 1: are wise, it's pretty smooth. Uh. It had connectivity to
Speaker 1: the internet, you could connect other PSPs, connect to console. Um,
Speaker 1: pretty pretty good machine. I mean, I I remember getting
Speaker 1: the chance to play on them. Again, I didn't own
Speaker 1: one of these. Boy, that's just a story of my
Speaker 1: life here. I'm like, I'm actually craving some of these.
Speaker 1: Now I can see why collectors get so passionate about
Speaker 1: this hoblem. Yeah. We we looked at a lot of
Speaker 1: different collections while we were pulling together the information for
Speaker 1: this podcast, and there are a lot of people out
Speaker 1: there who have huge collections of handheld gaming devices. Oh yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another cool thing about this because you know, because it
Speaker 1: was a Sony property, Um, you could watch Sony films
Speaker 1: on these little mini discs in the correct aspect ratio, yeah,
Speaker 1: sixteen nine aspect ratio, so it wasn't that four three,
Speaker 1: which the old television sets were. And this is that
Speaker 1: wide screen format, so you didn't have the little black
Speaker 1: bars on the top and bottom. It actually would play
Speaker 1: in full view on the screen in the native aspect ratios.
Speaker 1: That was a really, really hard idea and it also
Speaker 1: was kind of again they were predicting how we were
Speaker 1: going to be using mobile devices to consume media. They
Speaker 1: were ahead of the game on this one, and it
Speaker 1: did pretty well. You know, it still wasn't really catching
Speaker 1: up to Nintendo's domination of the market, but they weren't
Speaker 1: hurting either, certainly not. Although it did not help their
Speaker 1: case that two four was the same year that Nintendo
Speaker 1: released their DS. Oh yes, another incredibly popular game platform. Now,
Speaker 1: this was where they said, you know that game Boy
Speaker 1: that we've been making, it's taken us a long way,
Speaker 1: and I think it's pretty much gone as far as
Speaker 1: it can go. We need to take the next step.
Speaker 1: We need to go a big jump beyond what the
Speaker 1: game Boy can do. And that's when they came out
Speaker 1: with the d S and the The innovative thing about
Speaker 1: the DS was something that we talked about from way
Speaker 1: back in the eighties on that game and watch series,
Speaker 1: the multi screen series all right, right, it had it
Speaker 1: had these two screens, and one of them was was
Speaker 1: was touch capable. Yeah, so you could actually have a
Speaker 1: touch capable part on that you're you're playing actively on
Speaker 1: and a second screen that could be displaying whatever else
Speaker 1: it needed to. Uh. You could also create games that
Speaker 1: didn't use the touch screen at all, but use both
Speaker 1: screens so that you could move your character between one
Speaker 1: or the other. I mean all kinds of different options.
Speaker 1: And some of the games that came out for this
Speaker 1: were so innovative, and I think that that's one of
Speaker 1: the huge selling points of it. It was that independent library,
Speaker 1: or not independent, but just just individual library of games
Speaker 1: that you couldn't get anywhere else. Absolutely, and so, you know,
Speaker 1: the PSP although it was an incredibly powerful device and
Speaker 1: and and if you were to look at the specs,
Speaker 1: it outstripped the Nintendo entirely. But Nintendo sold more than PSP.
Speaker 1: In fact, it was, according to at least some estimates,
Speaker 1: it was a two to one ratio twice as many
Speaker 1: Nintendo ds has sold as PSPs. It had half the
Speaker 1: screen resolution or just about. Yeah. Yeah, and like an
Speaker 1: eighth of the onboard RAM that was expandable via via slot.
Speaker 1: But nonetheless, and uh yeah it did, it did. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how the PSP connected to the internet, but
Speaker 1: the I I know that the d S had WiFi
Speaker 1: built in, which for two thousand four was was pretty impressive. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: WiFi was. Having something that could could connect to WiFi
Speaker 1: was a big advantage. Although, uh the WiFi was still
Speaker 1: fairly young in those early days, Like not everyone had
Speaker 1: a WiFi router at that time. A lot of people
Speaker 1: were using you know, wired connections. I know I was
Speaker 1: using wired connections for quite some time. Yeah, yeah, pry
Speaker 1: about two thousand seven or so. Well. On top of that,
Speaker 1: Nintendo would end up updating the DS line, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of similar to what they did with
Speaker 1: the Game Boy. They came out with things like the
Speaker 1: D S Light in this case it's l I T
Speaker 1: E uh, the D S I which had a larger
Speaker 1: display and front and rear cameras, but unfortunately at that
Speaker 1: point there was no more Game Boy advanced compatibility built
Speaker 1: into the device. Then eventually the d S I x Cell,
Speaker 1: which had the largest screens of that line ever, and
Speaker 1: so um, you know, that's an interesting development here we
Speaker 1: once again see Nintendo really having a stranglehold on the
Speaker 1: dominance of the handheld market. But Sony is doing a
Speaker 1: great job, and you know that's their first foray into
Speaker 1: the handheld gaming. Hey guys, Joathan from one Now, technically
Speaker 1: when I record this, man, time is time is hard, right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take a quick break, uh and listen
Speaker 1: to a couple of ads while I I sussed this
Speaker 1: out come with me. Alright, So now, Lauren, we talked
Speaker 1: about we talked about the Engage and how that was
Speaker 1: a massive flop. Surely there are no more high profile
Speaker 1: massive flops and the handheld gaming history, are there? Well,
Speaker 1: you referring to one right before the ad breaks, So
Speaker 1: I think, I think it's pretty likely. But yes, the
Speaker 1: Tiger Telematics released the Gizmondo two thousand five, and I
Speaker 1: can't believe that something with that cool of a name
Speaker 1: could possibly flop. Yeah, I know, with the world with
Speaker 1: a name like Gizmondo, the sky is the limit. Gizmondo
Speaker 1: originally was called the Game Track, but that's not nearly
Speaker 1: guess cool as Gizmondo Mondo. So I think that's coming
Speaker 1: out like the Nondo Mondo. So yeah. They showed off
Speaker 1: a prototype of this device back at c E S
Speaker 1: two thousand four, And this one is an interesting game
Speaker 1: system to me, partly because of the operating system it used. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was Windows based, Windows CE four point
Speaker 1: two to be specific, right, and so I mean it
Speaker 1: was the first handheld gaming device to actually use the
Speaker 1: Windows platform as its native operating system. And and and and
Speaker 1: partially due to that, it was also kind of hopping
Speaker 1: on to the to the very tail end of of
Speaker 1: that sort of p d A trend or maybe that
Speaker 1: was over, but but just people were thinking a lot
Speaker 1: more about combining different features into devices at this juncture.
Speaker 1: And uh so it also had a camera and GPS
Speaker 1: and texting capabilities, SMS and UH and Bluetooth Bluetooth, right,
Speaker 1: all of those things, and so you think, wow, this
Speaker 1: thing is packed. Why didn't it sell incredibly well? Part
Speaker 1: of that reason was because, uh, well, there were two
Speaker 1: different flavors of gizmutton Do that you could purchase. The
Speaker 1: first one that came out was four hundred dollars. Yes,
Speaker 1: that was unsubsidized four hundred dollars. And when you when
Speaker 1: I say unsubsidized, you may say, what do you mean,
Speaker 1: what was the subsidized version. It's because when the that
Speaker 1: that first one didn't sell basically at all, they came
Speaker 1: out with an ad supported version, Yeah, for two y
Speaker 1: nine dollars. Still didn't do well, and in fact, within
Speaker 1: eleven months of the product launching, the company goes bankrupt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was one of one of those devices that
Speaker 1: initially got a lot of people excited, but the longer
Speaker 1: the saga went, the more skepticism was involved. And by
Speaker 1: the time it launched, I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: felt exactly the opposite of how they had when you know,
Speaker 1: it was just an idea and non an actual product.
Speaker 1: So both the Gizmondo and the aforementioned Engage are frequently
Speaker 1: found on worst console lists ever, like worst console ever,
Speaker 1: not just worst handhelds, not like yeah, no, like this
Speaker 1: is going up against you know, those video game consoles
Speaker 1: that would come out and have three games and then
Speaker 1: disappear forever. These were way up there, and part of
Speaker 1: it is because they were really expensive. They ended up
Speaker 1: costing companies. You know, in this case, it cost a
Speaker 1: company its existence. So it's it's tough, you know. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things you don't want to see it happened.
Speaker 1: There's some schaden freuda there, I'm sure, but you don't
Speaker 1: want to see that ever happen to anybody. Oh sure,
Speaker 1: although okay, so so Strangely enough, the next entry on
Speaker 1: our on our list, which would turn into a huge um.
Speaker 1: I hate the word disruptor. I think it's overused, but
Speaker 1: disruptor in the market um was was another multi use device,
Speaker 1: and I'm talking about the iPhone, introduced by Apple in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven. Yes, so when it first came out,
Speaker 1: it just looked like an amazing device. I don't think
Speaker 1: any of us had uh, the inkling of how disruptive
Speaker 1: it was going to be until the app development really
Speaker 1: started to open up and people began to make games
Speaker 1: specifically for the iPhone. Sure, sure, I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: the iPhone is not a handheld gaming device except for
Speaker 1: the part where you can use it like one, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can have you. It's a handheld device that can
Speaker 1: play games, so it's really a multi use device. But
Speaker 1: the point here is that it had and it continues
Speaker 1: to have a really big influence on the handheld gaming
Speaker 1: industry as a whole, because you've got some consumers out
Speaker 1: there who say, well, I could buy this single use
Speaker 1: device even if it can play multiple games, it's still
Speaker 1: just a game device. Or I can buy this thing
Speaker 1: that's also a phone and an interactive map and lets
Speaker 1: me connect to the internet and etcetera, etcetera. So it's
Speaker 1: one of those that has really started to take a
Speaker 1: big bite out of the mobile gaming world. Now there
Speaker 1: are different markets, and some of those markets are more
Speaker 1: attuned to those gaming devices than to the smartphone world.
Speaker 1: So it's not the handheld gaming devices are now irrelevant.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not like they're they're going obsolete, but
Speaker 1: they're having a tougher time. Come on here and we
Speaker 1: will we will talk more about that um in in
Speaker 1: the the very end of our podcast as we get
Speaker 1: into the current years. But but for now, let's let's
Speaker 1: talk about that. This is a really interesting one to me.
Speaker 1: This came out in two thousand nine and it was
Speaker 1: the game pack GP two x Whiz. Yeah, the GP
Speaker 1: two x Whiz is one of those open source handheld
Speaker 1: gaming systems. It was actually made so that people could
Speaker 1: fiddle around with all the different programming for it and
Speaker 1: create all sorts of applications and games. Again kind of godly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's designed for independent developers and and emulators even right right,
Speaker 1: This is going back to that same one we talked
Speaker 1: about the Korean game system we talked about earlier. This
Speaker 1: is kind of similar to that. It had a thirty
Speaker 1: three Mega Hurts processors, so it was, you know, packing
Speaker 1: a bit of a wallet for an open source system,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, it was also had really awesome packaging.
Speaker 1: I mean I looked at the packaging. It looks like this,
Speaker 1: this kind of leather bound sort of box that says
Speaker 1: the Whiz on it, and I thought, I want I
Speaker 1: kind of just want the box at this point. It
Speaker 1: was it was really sleek and um and I think
Speaker 1: that two thousand nine was was one of those peaks
Speaker 1: of emulator use that that we've that we've you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a it's an undulating wave of people
Speaker 1: who don't really mind kind of pirrating games. Well, in
Speaker 1: some cases it's people who want to have access to
Speaker 1: old titles that are no longer supported. Oh sure, and
Speaker 1: and especially at this particular time point before a lot
Speaker 1: of studios had begun creating legal ports of their games
Speaker 1: for for app stores, because app stores were not in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine what they are today at all. Um So,
Speaker 1: so that was it was it was filling a piece
Speaker 1: of the market that Yeah, it was really quite clever.
Speaker 1: It was going unserved at that point. Yeah, for example
Speaker 1: that then now you can get ports of classic Arcade
Speaker 1: games delivered to like an iPad, you know, you can
Speaker 1: get their apps just for that. But at the time
Speaker 1: that really wasn't that wasn't something you would find. So
Speaker 1: Nintendo and not content to sit back upon its haunches
Speaker 1: and cackle maniacally releases the three D S which I
Speaker 1: was at the E three where the three D S
Speaker 1: D Yeah, uh, it was you know, the win a debut.
Speaker 1: It definitely got a lot of attention because people thought,
Speaker 1: this is it's a brand new handheld from Nintendo, which
Speaker 1: automatically made it really interesting. It also had this three
Speaker 1: D capability. The three D capability was was nifty, but
Speaker 1: also one of those things that people were skeptical about
Speaker 1: because three D has traditionally been a yeah, it's been
Speaker 1: hard to get into the consumer market, right sure, sure,
Speaker 1: although you know glasses free three D is there's always
Speaker 1: more um dynamic I think, to to the consumer market
Speaker 1: then then glasses Yeah, you know when you don't have
Speaker 1: to Yeah, you don't have to keep track of yet
Speaker 1: another piece of equipment, right right, Although of course you
Speaker 1: could also play games in two D, you can have
Speaker 1: to play them in three D. Had a special camera
Speaker 1: where you could take three D pictures, but you can
Speaker 1: only view them on the three D s obviously. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was neat and also had some augmented reality features
Speaker 1: to it. I didn't put that in the notes, but
Speaker 1: I remember getting to play with that where you you
Speaker 1: got like a little card and it had a symbol
Speaker 1: from Mario like it might have one of the question
Speaker 1: mark blocks, and you put it down on a table
Speaker 1: and you hold the camera to it. And you activate
Speaker 1: the correct app on the three D S because it
Speaker 1: wasn't just you know, magically recognizing it, but with the
Speaker 1: right app, it would then have a little virtual character
Speaker 1: pop up on the picture of the whatever card was
Speaker 1: that you had put down on the screen. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so on the screen it looks like there's an actual
Speaker 1: physical character walking around on your table. If you were
Speaker 1: to actually look without using the three D S, you
Speaker 1: would think the person was crazy. But, um, but it
Speaker 1: was really kind of a cool little gimmick. Uh. They'd
Speaker 1: also update this in two thousand twelve as the three
Speaker 1: D S XL. I bet you can guess what that means. Um,
Speaker 1: it didn't perform nearly as well as the company was
Speaker 1: kind of anticipating at first, and they would they would
Speaker 1: splash the price after it had only been on the
Speaker 1: market for a couple of months. Yeah. It was actually
Speaker 1: when I heard that, I thought at first it had
Speaker 1: to be a mistake because Nintendo is not known for
Speaker 1: doing that. Yeah. Yeah, they usually are very aware of
Speaker 1: what they want a price to be and are very
Speaker 1: savvy about what what the market will handle. Um. But
Speaker 1: but sales did start to pick up over time, and
Speaker 1: and eventually it would it would do really pretty well, um,
Speaker 1: certainly much better than the WEIU, which would launch the
Speaker 1: following year. Yeah. So again this is one of those
Speaker 1: long tail kind of approaches and uh and part of
Speaker 1: that I think was the fact that the games for
Speaker 1: the three D s started to get more and more
Speaker 1: sophisticated and that helped a lot. Also that same year,
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven, Sony comes out with a couple
Speaker 1: of things that were big news. One was Experience play
Speaker 1: I remember that at the three as well. People were
Speaker 1: calling it originally the PlayStation phone. Yeah. Yeah, because this
Speaker 1: was another like like the failed Engage uh phone plus
Speaker 1: handheld gaming system. Yeah. It used Android OS originally two well,
Speaker 1: originally two point three, which is gingerbread. It was supposed
Speaker 1: to get an upgrade to ice Cream Sandwich, which is
Speaker 1: Android four point oh. However, Sony did some tests on
Speaker 1: the phone. So Sony Ericsson really I should say, because
Speaker 1: that's the company that actually made the phone. The sub
Speaker 1: company under Sony Sony Ericson made the phone, tested it
Speaker 1: under Android four point oh ice Cream Sandwich and found
Speaker 1: out that it was not very stable, so they ultimately
Speaker 1: decided to keep it at two point three, which disappointed
Speaker 1: some consumers. The same year, Sony also launched the PlayStation Vita,
Speaker 1: which is much more successful than the experien play uh yeah,
Speaker 1: flagship handheld device. It's essentially the replacement for the PlayStation
Speaker 1: and portable to PSP. So Vita has an arm based
Speaker 1: to Giga Hurts processors. Let's got some serious firepower under
Speaker 1: the hood compared to other handheld devices. I know, if
Speaker 1: you're you know, talking about your mega awesome gaming PC
Speaker 1: at home, two giga hurt sounds like nothing, but for
Speaker 1: a handheld device at this time, it was really pretty powerful.
Speaker 1: And it was also one of the big features that
Speaker 1: they touted when they launched the Vita was how it
Speaker 1: could interact with PlayStation home consoles. It had two thumbsticks
Speaker 1: for control, had a lot of buttons, had directional pad
Speaker 1: as well, had WiFi and Bluetooth capability, and you could
Speaker 1: also get a more expensive one that had three G capability.
Speaker 1: Of course, you have to get a contract with that.
Speaker 1: All right, guys, we've got a little bit more to
Speaker 1: say about the history of handheld gaming. But first let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break. You can't plug in a PSP
Speaker 1: game and play it. It's not compatible in that sense,
Speaker 1: but you could download PSP games, yes, so you could
Speaker 1: purchase PSP games for download and play them on the
Speaker 1: Vita that way, So it's a digital download as opposed
Speaker 1: to reading the optical discs. The u m D from
Speaker 1: the old PSPs and the launch price was two fifty dollars,
Speaker 1: although it has since dropped in price, so you can
Speaker 1: you can buy one for less than that. Now, that
Speaker 1: is when we started getting into um gaming tablets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which you know again like you could look at something
Speaker 1: like the iPad and you can play games on the iPad, right,
Speaker 1: but it was a more devoted device. Yes, couple of
Speaker 1: these were more devoted. Yes, definitely marketed as gaming devices
Speaker 1: as opposed to this is a general purpose tablet that
Speaker 1: can also play games. So yeah, the Arcos game Pad
Speaker 1: is one of those, another Android based game and also
Speaker 1: open source. So this one, if you were to look
Speaker 1: at one, it looks like a tablet that's had to
Speaker 1: controller like handle things fused on the side. We'll be
Speaker 1: talking about another one in a second, but it's the
Speaker 1: razor edge, but that was a little different. I'll get
Speaker 1: to that in a minute. So these look like it's
Speaker 1: actually part of the case itself. Um. And they had thumbsticks,
Speaker 1: directional pad buttons on those little the little game controllers
Speaker 1: that are fused onto it um And uh yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a pretty powerful device. And the fact that it's
Speaker 1: open source is another one of those things that developers
Speaker 1: really love because they have the chance to make stuff
Speaker 1: without having to jump through any hoops. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: like some of the other companies like Nintendo for example,
Speaker 1: obviously they want to have a good control on quality
Speaker 1: because they learned that valuable lesson from way back in
Speaker 1: three with the video game Crash that you don't control quality,
Speaker 1: you flood the market with crappy stuff and then you
Speaker 1: suffer for it. Well, um, you know. The the downside
Speaker 1: to that is that if you're a little independent developer,
Speaker 1: you may not have the resources that you would need
Speaker 1: to make a game for the kind of platform. So
Speaker 1: this is a very attractive alternative, oh sure. And also
Speaker 1: at the time, game development for mobile platforms was was
Speaker 1: in a crazy boom. Um. In fact, the according to
Speaker 1: digital market analysis company app Annie Global iOS, app store
Speaker 1: game expenditures overtook in handhold console game expenditures overall, So
Speaker 1: so the amount of money being spent on on iOS
Speaker 1: Games was way more, or maybe not way more, but
Speaker 1: but it was. It was. It was edging out the
Speaker 1: handheld game system. That's that's big news. And again another
Speaker 1: one of those things where the handheld game industry has
Speaker 1: to take notice and say, we have to acknowledge that
Speaker 1: this is sure, especially after Google Play expenditures would do
Speaker 1: the same thing in early Yeah, and that's as as
Speaker 1: pretty eye opening. Also that's when Razor released the Razor Edge,
Speaker 1: another gaming tablet that I have to s Yes, this
Speaker 1: one run on Windows eight, so runs I guess it
Speaker 1: currently still exists, Yes, it does. It does still exist
Speaker 1: Windows eight, so it's a Windows eight machine. Um. And
Speaker 1: you know, again another one of those that that kind
Speaker 1: of splits off from the crowd. It's not Android or
Speaker 1: its own proprietary system and has an Intel processor. Depending
Speaker 1: upon which one you get, it might be an I
Speaker 1: five or an Ice seven, and uh, you know, is
Speaker 1: high resolution, high performance gaming tablet. It also had a
Speaker 1: snap on kind of case, and the snap on case
Speaker 1: had handles on either side that had additional controls to it,
Speaker 1: so it kind of looks like you're holding a steering
Speaker 1: wheel that's missing the top and bottom and the center
Speaker 1: of the steering wheel instead of it being the horn
Speaker 1: is the screen of the tablet, right, So you could
Speaker 1: actually use this and have a game that uses the
Speaker 1: orientation of the tablet as a control like a driving game,
Speaker 1: and then you steer with the two control sticks that
Speaker 1: you have or the control sticks also had you know,
Speaker 1: thumb sticks, button, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Um. Yeah, I got
Speaker 1: to play with one of these at ce S. It
Speaker 1: was actually as funny because it was, as I recall,
Speaker 1: razor originally would just have a representative holding the razor
Speaker 1: edge and showing it off, or it was inside a
Speaker 1: case and so that as as close as you could get.
Speaker 1: But the longer you stayed at c E S, the
Speaker 1: less they seem to care. So if you happen to
Speaker 1: walk up on the last day and say can I
Speaker 1: can I take the closer look at that, they would
Speaker 1: hand it to you and you're like, wow, this is
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. I need to remember to book my stay
Speaker 1: to come at the end of CS and not the
Speaker 1: beginning of c E S. Yeah, so it was neat. Again,
Speaker 1: it's pretty high. It's like a high price uh item.
Speaker 1: It's not one of those that I don't think that
Speaker 1: it's necessarily done a huge amount of business. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's gotten some flak for being gimmicky for what it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, for for being as expensive as
Speaker 1: it is having a relatively low capacity for what it does.
Speaker 1: Right and and again, like you were saying, I think
Speaker 1: around this time, we're talking about mobile games just taking off.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, the the amounts of money that people
Speaker 1: were spending on mobile games had been doubling or even
Speaker 1: quadrupling year over year. Handheld gaming was was also still
Speaker 1: climbing in sales, but by less than ten percent year
Speaker 1: of a year. Um And And by by this point
Speaker 1: I mentioned that that in iOS game expenditures had had
Speaker 1: edged out handheld they were far and away doing the best.
Speaker 1: By this point, the dust in absolutely in the dust.
Speaker 1: Um And one of the advantages I think for for
Speaker 1: mobile games here is that they seem to be way
Speaker 1: less seasonal, way less like a treat or a special
Speaker 1: occasion kind of purchase than handheld games tend to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I can I can imagine like it being
Speaker 1: a real impulse by for one thing, the entire experience
Speaker 1: is digital. You're not buying a physical but are like
Speaker 1: a cartridge. You never have to think about walking into
Speaker 1: a store, going to Amazon or whatever. And granted, a
Speaker 1: lot of the handheld devices these days work on that
Speaker 1: same principle, but but the smartphones just had an advantage
Speaker 1: because that's how they always had done it. So also
Speaker 1: in two thousand thirteen, that's when in Video released The Shield,
Speaker 1: another one of those devices I got to see it's
Speaker 1: the s and another when I got to hold after
Speaker 1: sticking around long enough. Um, this one looks a lot
Speaker 1: like an Xbox controller that has a clamshell screen kind
Speaker 1: of welded onto it, although you know you can't open
Speaker 1: and close the screen. It's not like it's stuck in place.
Speaker 1: A touch screen by the way, Yeah, it's touch screen
Speaker 1: and it can run Android games. So if you ever
Speaker 1: wanted to play an Android game using a actual Xbox controller,
Speaker 1: you could totally do that. Uh and I shouldn't say
Speaker 1: it's an Xbox controller, it just looks like one. But
Speaker 1: it also it also could run streaming games that you're
Speaker 1: streaming from a PC, right right, So yeah, you run
Speaker 1: like a PC game, but you want to be able
Speaker 1: to play it in the living room or you want
Speaker 1: to lay down in bed and play this game. You
Speaker 1: don't want to and you don't want to take your
Speaker 1: alien wear enormous desktop computer to bed with you because
Speaker 1: it would set the sheets on fire. So you have
Speaker 1: the Nvidios shield instead and just stream the content directly
Speaker 1: to your game, to your your device. And so, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was pretty cool. The launch price was
Speaker 1: three dollars, which a lot of people kind of you know,
Speaker 1: ball that it is now down to two, so it
Speaker 1: they have cut the price on it again. One of
Speaker 1: those devices that I think has its devoted followers, but
Speaker 1: it's a niche market. Sure was was a good year
Speaker 1: for downgrading. Really. Nintendo released the two DS the year,
Speaker 1: which is a scaled down version of three D S.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's one D list. Yeah, also doesn't. When I
Speaker 1: first heard of the two D S, I just imagined
Speaker 1: that it was a three D S that had the
Speaker 1: three D stuff removed. But in fact the foreign factor
Speaker 1: itself is a little different. Instead of being a clamshell,
Speaker 1: it looks it looks like a tablet that has two screens,
Speaker 1: one screen mounted on top of another with a divider
Speaker 1: in between. And it was marketed to a younger audience.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was definitely its own separate product. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that there are people who question Nintendo's strategy
Speaker 1: with that, but I mean it was really when you
Speaker 1: look at how the Nintendo three DS initially performed, you
Speaker 1: could understand the impetus behind the Sword of Decisions. Sure,
Speaker 1: and Nintendo was also struggling pretty hard. And in this
Speaker 1: general time, they you know that the WEIU was basically
Speaker 1: a flop, and uh they they merged their console and
Speaker 1: handheld teams that year in order to just give anyone
Speaker 1: a boost, or they were pretty desperate, yep, yep. And
Speaker 1: also this most recently three was when we started seeing
Speaker 1: companies like Microsoft and Sony show off the interoperability between
Speaker 1: tablets and their their new consoles, the Xbox One in
Speaker 1: the PlayStation four. The idea being that you could use
Speaker 1: a tablet to play a play along with a game
Speaker 1: that's already in the going on in some other format,
Speaker 1: ye to have a second screen for mini games or
Speaker 1: side information, or you have just a totally different, um,
Speaker 1: a totally different function to fulfill in the team. Right.
Speaker 1: So the one that I kept on seeing over and
Speaker 1: over again was let's say it's a squad based kind
Speaker 1: of game where you've got four or five people playing
Speaker 1: on an Xbox on their Xbox one with their controllers
Speaker 1: and everything, and then you have another member who's using
Speaker 1: the tablet as a tactical uh kind of interface, so
Speaker 1: they're coordinating. They're saying, okay, uh, you know, Uni, bravo,
Speaker 1: you need to advance two feet and then turn left,
Speaker 1: you know. So they could actually kind of be extra
Speaker 1: set of eyes, which I thought was a really cool idea.
Speaker 1: I have yet to see that in action in a
Speaker 1: way that really has grabbed me, but I love that.
Speaker 1: I love the concept. Yeah, justin it's a really good application.
Speaker 1: That killer app. It's got to have that killer app.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is kind of bringing us up to today.
Speaker 1: We talked about how Nintendo has been really kind of struggling.
Speaker 1: There's been rumors about them getting into some form of
Speaker 1: partnerships with phones. Yeah, they're so so they've been operating
Speaker 1: at a loss for a solid two years in a
Speaker 1: row as of as of when we're recording this podcast
Speaker 1: in I'm late February to be specific. Um, and it's
Speaker 1: it's sounding like they're they're considering developing like device hardware
Speaker 1: that will help link their handheld and sold markets and
Speaker 1: focusing on that rather than trying to port their games
Speaker 1: and characters to existing smartphone experiences. And Nintendo has a
Speaker 1: reputation for really wanting to control everything about the experience,
Speaker 1: so I can understand why they would be reluctant to say,
Speaker 1: license their characters or to port their games over to
Speaker 1: a platform they don't have control over, which is what
Speaker 1: would happen if they created You know, Super Mario for
Speaker 1: iOS doesn't stop people from trying to create clone games
Speaker 1: of it, but certainly not and and emulators do exist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you can understand why Nintendo says, no, we want
Speaker 1: to be able to make sure that our players have
Speaker 1: the best experience possible. Now you can debate on whether
Speaker 1: or not, you know, how successful they are in their
Speaker 1: own right on doing that, but there's no debate on
Speaker 1: the fact that if you don't have control the platform,
Speaker 1: you can't make that guarantee at all. So that's their idea.
Speaker 1: And then also finally kind of wrapping this up, and
Speaker 1: those some of the most recent news you have this
Speaker 1: about a a Samsung device right right, it's called the
Speaker 1: game pad right right now, I think it's only in
Speaker 1: Germany and Korea, but they're planning on rolling it out worldwide.
Speaker 1: I believe it's a It's a Bluetooth smartphone accessory, which
Speaker 1: I think is really interesting because because again going back
Speaker 1: to the fact that mobile apps are really overtaking other
Speaker 1: forms of handheld gaming, and it lets you it lets
Speaker 1: you dock your device in in this controller plus screen
Speaker 1: holder thing. You're you're not literally docking, You're not connecting,
Speaker 1: You're not connecting the device to this stuff only via Bluetooth.
Speaker 1: Only via Bluetooth, right, um and and it turns your
Speaker 1: phone into a handheld Android based gaming system. You can
Speaker 1: use any Android based phone or many Android based phones anyway,
Speaker 1: as long as they have appropriate Bluetooth connectivity. They don't
Speaker 1: just have to be Samsung's um and and and there
Speaker 1: are plenty of other products on the market that have
Speaker 1: done similar stuff. I know that, like Logitech has one
Speaker 1: for for iOS SUM or iPhones. Specifically, it would have
Speaker 1: to be much larger to accommodate uh iPad um. But
Speaker 1: I just thought it was interesting that it was being
Speaker 1: offered by a device company and and therefore kind of
Speaker 1: being this entry into the market that's like, hey, uh yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe ignore those handheld gaming devices over there and really
Speaker 1: just turn turn your phone into your new gaming device. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially if that means they can get in on the
Speaker 1: peripheral side and not have the burden of producing a
Speaker 1: full handheld system that could totally tank in the marketplace.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, exactly. I mean, and it's only I think
Speaker 1: it's only like ninety bucks or thereabouts and in the
Speaker 1: equivalent euro got gotcha. So we might see that expand beyond.
Speaker 1: And uh, they'll be interesting to see how handheld gaming
Speaker 1: progresses from here. There are a lot of people who
Speaker 1: still predict that smartphones will essentially obliterate handheld gaming, and
Speaker 1: the only the only people that will are the only
Speaker 1: companies that remain will be the open source ones that
Speaker 1: are cattering to a very specific niche audience. So they're
Speaker 1: doing it on a much more modest basis. They're not
Speaker 1: they're not producing millions and millions of units. They might
Speaker 1: be producing maybe a hundred thousand. But we'll have to see,
Speaker 1: because yeah, I could I don't know, I could see
Speaker 1: some systems kind of kind of going away. But I
Speaker 1: would be really personally sad if Nintendo didn't have an
Speaker 1: active handheld on the market. Yeah, well, especially seeing as
Speaker 1: how they've struggled so much with the the home with
Speaker 1: the consoles. Consoles, yeah recently so in anyway, that is
Speaker 1: the history of the handheld electronic gaming device. Like we said,
Speaker 1: we didn't mention in everything that's out there, certainly not
Speaker 1: if we missed one of your favorites. Here's what you
Speaker 1: can do. You can send us a message and say, hey,
Speaker 1: Lauren and Jonathan, I know you didn't have time to
Speaker 1: mention x handheld gaming console, but it's really cool and
Speaker 1: here's why. And here's a picture of me with my
Speaker 1: ex gaming console and here's a list of my favorite
Speaker 1: games for EX gaming console. That's the way to do it.
Speaker 1: Don't say you guys are stupid because you didn't mention
Speaker 1: the blah blah blah, because that's that's the email equivalent
Speaker 1: of unplugging someone's controller when they're in the middle of
Speaker 1: a really good a bout of I like like punch out.
Speaker 1: And that wraps up that classic episode of tech stuff.
Speaker 1: Hope you guys enjoyed it. I do hope that I
Speaker 1: can go back and revisit this, maybe do another intrigue
Speaker 1: into the series, or you know, I tend to do
Speaker 1: things a little differently now than I did a few
Speaker 1: years ago. So maybe I'll even like take a much
Speaker 1: deeper dive into handheld gaming. Who knows. If you guys
Speaker 1: have interest in that, or if there's some other topic
Speaker 1: you would love for me to cover on tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: reach out and let me know. The best way to
Speaker 1: do that is over on Twitter, where we use to
Speaker 1: handle tech stuff hs W and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.