Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff dot com. Hey there, every one, and welcome to
Speaker 1: text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren Bulkle Bums.
Speaker 1: And today we're going to conclude our two part series
Speaker 1: on handheld games, their history and the importance thereof. Yes,
Speaker 1: we are not again covering every single handheld gaming system
Speaker 1: that has ever come out. No, that would that would
Speaker 1: lead to madness, that would Yeah, So we're going to
Speaker 1: We're hitting some of the big names and also some
Speaker 1: of the funny stories, because there are a couple in
Speaker 1: here that I could not resist, including absolutely our first
Speaker 1: entry here is is more one of those, because I
Speaker 1: don't think that these so much made a tremendous impact
Speaker 1: on the market as much as they're just really funny
Speaker 1: that this this is We left off after after Sega
Speaker 1: releasing the Game Gear in nineteen the last episode this
Speaker 1: one that the two count or 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. Does sound like the worst superheroes
Speaker 1: 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, particularly the more obscure
Speaker 1: ones that we're talking about, I welcome you to share
Speaker 1: a picture of you holding the handheld game system and
Speaker 1: share it on our Facebook wall and we will totally
Speaker 1: comment on those, yeah, or or if you if you
Speaker 1: give us permission to, we will. We will push it
Speaker 1: along to our to our other yeah, like the tumble
Speaker 1: twitters and things yeah, because you know, I I have
Speaker 1: owned 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
Speaker 1: episode a little bit later. Um. Moving on that is
Speaker 1: when Sega released the Nomad, which was a handheld version
Speaker 1: of the Genesis. Right. So, the fact that it could
Speaker 1: actually play Genesis games meant that it had a big
Speaker 1: leg up over the competition because it already had an
Speaker 1: established library to pull from. Oh sure, However, the form
Speaker 1: factor of those game cartridges meant that this thing was
Speaker 1: pretty huge. Yeah, it was really really bulky. Not easy
Speaker 1: for it like it was called a handheld, but sort
Speaker 1: of in the same way that early laptops were called
Speaker 1: laptop computers, but if you were to actually put it
Speaker 1: on your lap, you might crush your legs, kind of
Speaker 1: similar to that. Also, um from why I understand, you
Speaker 1: could only play for a very short while before it
Speaker 1: drained all the batteries and you had to replace them.
Speaker 1: So in fact, so much so that I remember that
Speaker 1: for some of these devices, including this one, one of
Speaker 1: the peripherals that was that was launched shortly after the
Speaker 1: system debut would be little a C adapters for car,
Speaker 1: like a car adapter so that you could actually play
Speaker 1: in the car without the batteries dying after half an hour.
Speaker 1: So not terribly popular, partly also because Sega had this
Speaker 1: issue about releasing a whole bunch of different video game
Speaker 1: consoles within a relatively short amount of time, and those
Speaker 1: consoles were mostly incompatible with each other. Yeah, within like
Speaker 1: seven years they had released at least three and and
Speaker 1: that's yeah, it's a lot cutting down on your own market.
Speaker 1: It's never really the best idea. Yeah, ended up saturating
Speaker 1: the market quite a bit, and so that also hurt
Speaker 1: them in the long run. Seven This is an interesting one.
Speaker 1: It's the game dot Com with the name of it
Speaker 1: all right, by Tiger Electronics. And this was a handheld device.
Speaker 1: And remember this that had Internet connectivity, yes, built in
Speaker 1: specifically you could do things like check your email or
Speaker 1: read web pages in text. Yeah, you couldn't play games online.
Speaker 1: The internet functions were more for it was all so
Speaker 1: kind of this dual function p d a sort of
Speaker 1: thing because PDAs were so big 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. Uh,
Speaker 1: Like many other PDAs of the time, it had a
Speaker 1: monochrome screen, whereas everything else coming out at this point
Speaker 1: had a color screen. So that that injured it definitely
Speaker 1: in the marketplace, definitely, definitely, And you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of it's still kind of a cool idea. But apparently
Speaker 1: the games were also not very good, or some people
Speaker 1: would say incredibly bad. And so it did have a
Speaker 1: touch screen, which which was pretty innovative for the time
Speaker 1: for games anyway. Again, p d as frequently had them,
Speaker 1: but gaming systems did not. So this is you know,
Speaker 1: marking two things that would become popular in future game systems,
Speaker 1: the touch screen and the Internet connectivity. So it was
Speaker 1: a little ahead of its time. It was it was
Speaker 1: an ambitious product. Ultimately was not success failure. Yeah, something
Speaker 1: that was not a failure. One year later, and 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: the at but the guts of the game Boy had
Speaker 1: remained largely the same since it had debut. There had
Speaker 1: not been a major overhaul apart from some of the
Speaker 1: aesthetics of the actual case itself. This is where we
Speaker 1: finally get to a brand new kind of technology where
Speaker 1: we get color screens on game boys. So no more
Speaker 1: monochromatic tetris unless you're actually playing an old game Boy cartridge.
Speaker 1: Because one of the nice things about it was that
Speaker 1: it was backwards compatible, so if you bought a game
Speaker 1: Boy Color, you didn't have to worry about Well, now
Speaker 1: I have to tell all these games are useless and
Speaker 1: I have to have two devices with me if I
Speaker 1: want to Nope, you can play anything you want. Nintendo
Speaker 1: was really good about being backwards compatible with a few
Speaker 1: of its different consoles, not all of them, but so
Speaker 1: much enough so that whenever you had a console come out,
Speaker 1: whether it was handheld or otherwise that was not backwards compatible,
Speaker 1: people got upset because they got used to it. So
Speaker 1: but this one, definitely in that philosophy, did not have
Speaker 1: a backlit screen, just like the original Game Boy. So
Speaker 1: again that meant that the battery consumption was a modest share,
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't die within half an hour, unlike the
Speaker 1: Sega Nomad. So uh. And then also that same year
Speaker 1: in another company called Neo Geo released the Neo Geo
Speaker 1: Pocket in Japan, which was a monochromatic handheld video game system.
Speaker 1: It didn't do very well, but in nine they released
Speaker 1: the Neo Geo Pocket Color or in GPC, which ended
Speaker 1: up being a device that the company would sell around
Speaker 1: the world. It wasn't just a Japanese product. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a pretty good competitor to to the Game Boy Color. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was less expensive than the Nintendo device is also
Speaker 1: power efficient just like the Game Boy Color was, but
Speaker 1: ultimate late Nintendo's biggest advantage was again that amazing library
Speaker 1: of games. Neo Geo had some great games, but Nintendo
Speaker 1: had a tonnable Yeah. Yeah, And and Neo Geo's strength
Speaker 1: and development was was certainly in the console market at
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, so that moves us up to that's
Speaker 1: when a Bandai, which was really known for those handheld
Speaker 1: hard coded l c D based games, the ones that
Speaker 1: would be like you know, uh licensed after a particular
Speaker 1: product or whatever. Uh, it was really known for those
Speaker 1: the ones that weren't any kind of cartridge based games.
Speaker 1: That's when they released the Wonder Swan, which was a
Speaker 1: monochromatic gaming device, and it was designed by by Gumpey Yokoi. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the same guy who designed the game Boy, the original
Speaker 1: game Boy. So this was a notable entry in that
Speaker 1: it was designed by one of the most successful, most
Speaker 1: influential designers of the handheld gaming industry. Right, and it
Speaker 1: was also the exclusive mobile platform at the time for
Speaker 1: the Final Fantasy series, which is really huge, I mean
Speaker 1: most lee in Japan. Yeah. In fact that this game
Speaker 1: console never really got popular anywhere other than Japan. It
Speaker 1: was never sold in the United States even after they
Speaker 1: updated it. They updated a couple of times, they had
Speaker 1: the Wonder Swan color and then by night by two
Speaker 1: thousand two, rather they came out with the Swan crystal.
Speaker 1: I've seen pictures of them. I don't know how you
Speaker 1: were gonna play games on these. He's like, there was
Speaker 1: one that it looked like it had two directional pads
Speaker 1: on the same side of the game console. Is another
Speaker 1: one of those where I had the screen in the
Speaker 1: middle and the controls were on either side, but one
Speaker 1: side had a directional pad laid out on top of
Speaker 1: another directional pad, or at least that's what look like
Speaker 1: to me. The picture was not terribly great quality, and
Speaker 1: I've never seen one of these in person. If anyone
Speaker 1: has has one, send us a picture, yeah, or send
Speaker 1: us one. You've got an extra one, you can just
Speaker 1: send us one. That's fine, send us some games too,
Speaker 1: because otherwise it's just not gonna I mean, I'll be
Speaker 1: pretty good to look at. But yeah, so anyway, you can't.
Speaker 1: You can't program your own cartridge games for I don't
Speaker 1: have that kind of spare time to see a game
Speaker 1: I have programmed. I it'll it'll just be made entirely
Speaker 1: of puns. I do not want to see that Renaissance
Speaker 1: festival the game what it would be um at any rate.
Speaker 1: A brief note from the year two thousand, that is
Speaker 1: we started seeing a lot of retro nostalgia for for
Speaker 1: early games. I think around this time that that has
Speaker 1: been pervasive. I mean not that not that nerds will
Speaker 1: have have never not talked about things that they're really
Speaker 1: excited about from twenty years ago. But um, but this
Speaker 1: is the year that Mattel re released its late seventies
Speaker 1: games Football and Baseball, and which you know, it makes
Speaker 1: sense because the the kids who got these as toys
Speaker 1: when they were kids have now grown up and are
Speaker 1: now able to purchase stuff on their own. Speaking of that,
Speaker 1: in the year two thousand that that is when Nintendo
Speaker 1: came out with the Game Boy Advance, which was its
Speaker 1: next big update to the Game Boy line. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: actually launched it in two thousand one. They had been
Speaker 1: developing it for a while and the this one ended
Speaker 1: up having a color screen, it had had a show
Speaker 1: were um buttons as well as the regular buttons that
Speaker 1: you had on the games, so that increased the things
Speaker 1: you could do with it. I owned one of these
Speaker 1: at any rate. Um, it was backwards compatible with game
Speaker 1: Boy and game Boy Color cartridges, so that gave it
Speaker 1: a lot of utility. But you know that anything that
Speaker 1: was a game Boy Advanced game was way more uh pratisticated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and pretty exactly. You could you could do more stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: and they had about the same amount of firepower, you
Speaker 1: could say, as one of their former consoles, right, the SNS,
Speaker 1: the Supernintendo Entertainment System, which had debuted like like a
Speaker 1: decade earlier. And and I find it really impressive that
Speaker 1: miniaturization had had occurred to the point where in only
Speaker 1: ten years you were able to pack this huge bulky
Speaker 1: s NES handheld to the handheld. Yeah, and they would
Speaker 1: also update this line multiple times. So in two thousand three,
Speaker 1: Nintendo released a clamshell version of the Game Boy Advanced,
Speaker 1: and then two five they released the Game Boy Advanced Micro,
Speaker 1: which was a much smaller version of it, because yeah,
Speaker 1: that first one that came out was a bit a
Speaker 1: bit clunky. Uh, that's the first version, is the one
Speaker 1: that I have. By the way, I don't have the
Speaker 1: micro or the clamshell version. They also would even go
Speaker 1: on to offer a wireless adapter in two thousand four,
Speaker 1: so instead of using cables to connect your Game Boy
Speaker 1: Advance with someone else's machine, if you both had this
Speaker 1: wireless adapter, you could play games over wireless um and
Speaker 1: so yeah, very popular. I also gave you some connectivity
Speaker 1: with the Nintendo GameCube. So if you owned both the
Speaker 1: GameCube and a game Boy Advance, and you own the
Speaker 1: the compatible titles, you could have access to additional content
Speaker 1: on both right, right, you would hook it up by
Speaker 1: by a special cable and and not that many games
Speaker 1: had this capacity, right, but you could. You could access
Speaker 1: a little bit of simultaneous content. Yeah, you could. You
Speaker 1: could actually use your game Boy Advance as a control
Speaker 1: roller and it would display extra information inside the Game
Speaker 1: Boy Advances screen. So this kind of pre dates and
Speaker 1: it and it foreshadows the Nintendo We You, which wouldn't
Speaker 1: come out for another decade. Yea. So the we You,
Speaker 1: I mean we you know, it's got that tablet based
Speaker 1: controller where you can get extra stuff on it that
Speaker 1: you know, that's obviously not a new idea, and Nintendo
Speaker 1: I've been playing with that idea for a while. Also
Speaker 1: in two thousand one, over in Korea, there was a
Speaker 1: company called game Park that released the g P thirty
Speaker 1: two handheld gaming console, full color screen, typical kind of handheld,
Speaker 1: but it was a little bit different from the previous
Speaker 1: consoles we had seen. Yeah, this one was was really
Speaker 1: interesting because games were not stored on cartridges. They use
Speaker 1: little flash cards, yeah, smart media flash cards, which meant
Speaker 1: that anyone could develop a game for this and then
Speaker 1: store it. As long as you knew how to program
Speaker 1: for this device, you could build a game for it
Speaker 1: or an application for it, and store it on a
Speaker 1: smart media card and use it on the system. Because
Speaker 1: you know, cartridges, that's hard to program for. You're talking
Speaker 1: about actual physical circuits, you media, right, Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: much more expensive, so this was much easier to code for.
Speaker 1: It was a great boon too, two independent developers who
Speaker 1: were interested in getting into it. Unfortunately, it also made
Speaker 1: things really easy to pirate, yeah, which made a lot
Speaker 1: of the established game companies say, you know, we're not
Speaker 1: going to develop for this because we don't want to
Speaker 1: have our stuff stolen everywhere. It doesn't make any sense
Speaker 1: for us to pour a lot of money into development, marketing, sales,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff, only to see a handful
Speaker 1: of games go out before they're all pirated. So it
Speaker 1: didn't get a lot of support from the industry, but
Speaker 1: it was one of those things that really took off
Speaker 1: in the independent circle and the emulator circle, the people
Speaker 1: who wanted to create emulators that could play games based
Speaker 1: on other systems, and then you would have one handled
Speaker 1: console that could do practically anything. Uh two thousand three,
Speaker 1: here's where we have one of our big flops stories.
Speaker 1: One of my favorites. Actually, I remember when this came out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Engage. Yeah so um Engage also sometimes called the
Speaker 1: Taco because it was vaguely taco shape. And here's the
Speaker 1: crazy thing. Did you ever see anyone having to make
Speaker 1: a call on one of these things? I never saw
Speaker 1: anyone use one period. Okay. So, the the speaker and
Speaker 1: the receiver on it. If you think of a taco
Speaker 1: like a taco shell, the fold of the taco shell
Speaker 1: like a hard, crispy taco. Gosh, I want tacos now.
Speaker 1: But if you think of the fold of the shell,
Speaker 1: the speaker and the receiver were on the outside of
Speaker 1: that fold, so you actually like a taco out to
Speaker 1: the side of your face. Yes, it didn't sit flat
Speaker 1: against your face. The edge was against your face. So
Speaker 1: the it was enormous. Okay. So this was clever in
Speaker 1: a way, and the concept was clever in the in
Speaker 1: the Nokio was a really dominant force in the cell
Speaker 1: phone business at the time, and they were trying to
Speaker 1: make a cell phone that was also a handheld gaming
Speaker 1: system and and hey, we we have some things that
Speaker 1: are kind of like that today. Yeah. At the time,
Speaker 1: that was before the smartphone revolution had really taken off,
Speaker 1: So this was a really brand new kind of Oh sure, sure.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately it was a terrible phone and a terrible gaming system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really was awful at both things that was supposed
Speaker 1: to do, and so it did not get very far.
Speaker 1: There was a sequel to the Engage, which was more
Speaker 1: about kind of a game system, like a game library
Speaker 1: that you could download to Nokia based phones. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: A couple of years later, it would it would release
Speaker 1: an update to the Engage that was better than the
Speaker 1: Engage had been. It was called the q D Engage
Speaker 1: qt uh but it's still flopped and um and right.
Speaker 1: And then then after that they would they would release
Speaker 1: this a kind of app that was that was sort
Speaker 1: of an in in phone gaming system. I was getting
Speaker 1: away from that physical form factor that had burned them
Speaker 1: so badly. But but it would even abandon that and
Speaker 1: Heather in another few years, as as app stores became things.
Speaker 1: They realized 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? They had been
Speaker 1: developing the PlayStation Portable or PSP. They launched it in
Speaker 1: Japan and 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 jos bouncy, right, it's gonna it's gonna
Speaker 1: the laser, the laser of course. Yeah. And and these
Speaker 1: these are those those little many optical discs. They look
Speaker 1: like a little yeah, universal media discs d s. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In this case, they did a really good job at
Speaker 1: designing it so that you you know, unless you were
Speaker 1: particularly rough with your PSP, or you were you know,
Speaker 1: maybe going down a dirt road, perhaps you're a good
Speaker 1: old boy never meaning no harm. Then you might have
Speaker 1: some issues, but otherwise it's pretty smooth. Uh. It had
Speaker 1: connectivity to the internet, you could connect to other PSPs,
Speaker 1: you connect to console. Um, pretty pretty good machine. I
Speaker 1: mean I I remember getting the chance to play on them. Again,
Speaker 1: I didn't own one of these. Boy, that's just a
Speaker 1: story of my life here. I'm like, I'm actually craving
Speaker 1: some of these. Now, I can see why collectors get
Speaker 1: so passionate about this problem. We we looked at a
Speaker 1: lot of different collections while we were pulling together the
Speaker 1: information for this podcast, and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people out there who have huge collections of handheld gaming devices.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. Another cool thing about this because you know,
Speaker 1: but because it was a Sony property, Um, you could
Speaker 1: watch Sony films on these little min disks in the
Speaker 1: correct aspect ratio, yes, sixteen nine aspect ratio, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't that four three which the old television sets were.
Speaker 1: And this is that wide screen format, so you didn't
Speaker 1: have the little black bars on the top and bottom.
Speaker 1: It actually would play in full view on the screen
Speaker 1: in the native aspect ratio. Is that was a really
Speaker 1: really smart idea and It also was kind of again
Speaker 1: they were predicting how we were going to be using
Speaker 1: mobile devices to consume media. They were ahead of the
Speaker 1: game on this one, and it did pretty well. You know,
Speaker 1: It's still wasn't really catching up to Nintendo's domination of
Speaker 1: the market, but they weren't hurting either, certainly not, although
Speaker 1: it did not help their case that two four was
Speaker 1: the same year that Nintendo released their DS. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: another incredibly popular game platform. Now, this was where they said,
Speaker 1: you know that game Boy that we've been making, it's
Speaker 1: taken us a long way, and I think it's pretty
Speaker 1: much gone as far as it can go. We need
Speaker 1: to take the next step. We need to go a
Speaker 1: big jump beyond what the game Boy can do. And
Speaker 1: that's when they came out with the DS and the
Speaker 1: The innovative thing about the DS was something that we
Speaker 1: talked about from way back in the eighties on that
Speaker 1: game and watch series, the multi screen series right right.
Speaker 1: It had it had these two screens and one of
Speaker 1: them was was was touch capable. Yeah, so you could
Speaker 1: actually have a touch capable part on that you're you're
Speaker 1: playing actively on and a second screen that could be
Speaker 1: displaying whatever else. It needed to. Uh, you could also
Speaker 1: create games that didn't use the touch screen at all,
Speaker 1: but use both screens so that you could move your
Speaker 1: character between one or the other. I mean, all kinds
Speaker 1: of different options. And some of the games that came
Speaker 1: out for this were so innovative, and I think that
Speaker 1: that's one of the huge selling points of it. It
Speaker 1: was that independent library, or not independent, but just just
Speaker 1: individual library of games that you couldn't get anywhere else. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And so you know, the PSP although it was an
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful device, and and and if you were to
Speaker 1: look at the specs, it outstripped the Nintendo Fly but
Speaker 1: Nintendo sold more than PSP. In fact, it was according
Speaker 1: to at least some estimates, it was a two to
Speaker 1: one ratio twice as many Nintendo ds has sold as PSPs.
Speaker 1: It had half the screen resolution or just about yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and like an eighth of the onboard RAM that
Speaker 1: was expandable via via slot. But nonetheless, and uh, yeah
Speaker 1: it did, it did. I'm not sure how the PSP
Speaker 1: connected to the Internet, but the I I know that
Speaker 1: the d S had WiFi built in, which for two
Speaker 1: thousand four was was pretty impressive. Yeah, yeah, WiFi was yeah,
Speaker 1: having something that could could connect to WiFi was a
Speaker 1: big advantage, although, uh, the WiFi was still fairly young
Speaker 1: in those early days, Like not everyone had a WiFi
Speaker 1: router at that time. A lot of people were using
Speaker 1: you know, wired connections. I know I was using wired
Speaker 1: connections for quite some time. Yeah, yeah, probably about two
Speaker 1: thousand seven or so. Well. On top of that, Nintendo
Speaker 1: would end up updating the DS line, which is you know,
Speaker 1: kind of similar to what they did with the Game Boy.
Speaker 1: They came out with things like the D S Light
Speaker 1: in this case it's L I T E. Uh, the
Speaker 1: D S I which had a larger display and front
Speaker 1: and rear cameras, but unfortunately, at that point there was
Speaker 1: no more Game Boy Advanced compatibility built into the device.
Speaker 1: Then eventually the d S I XL, which had the
Speaker 1: largest screens of that line ever, and so um, you know,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting development here we once again see Nintendo
Speaker 1: really having a stranglehold on the dominance of the handheld market.
Speaker 1: But Sony is doing a great job, and you know,
Speaker 1: that's their first foray into the handheld gaming. We got
Speaker 1: a lot more to talk about, including the other big flop,
Speaker 1: but before we do that. Let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. 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 in the handheld gaming history, are there? Well,
Speaker 1: you refer in to one right before the ad breaks,
Speaker 1: So I think I think it's pretty likely. But yes,
Speaker 1: the Tiger Telematics released the Gizmondo two thousand five, and
Speaker 1: I can't believe that something with that cool of a
Speaker 1: name could possibly flop. Yeah, I know, with the word
Speaker 1: with a name like Gizmondo, the sky is the limit.
Speaker 1: Gizmondo originally was called the Game Track, but that's not
Speaker 1: nearly as cool as Gizmondo Mondo. So I like that's
Speaker 1: coming out like Nondo mondou. 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 partially
Speaker 1: due to that. It was also kind of hopping on
Speaker 1: to the to the very tail end of of that
Speaker 1: sort of pd A trend or maybe that was over,
Speaker 1: but but just people were thinking a lot more about
Speaker 1: combining different features into devices at this juncture. And uh
Speaker 1: so it also had a camera and GPS and texting capabilities,
Speaker 1: SMS and uh and Bluetooth Bluetooth, right, all of those things,
Speaker 1: and so you think, wow, this thing is packed. Why
Speaker 1: didn't it sell incredibly well? Part of that reason was because, uh, well,
Speaker 1: there were two different flavors of gizmutton Do that you
Speaker 1: could purchase. The first one that came out was four
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. Yes, that was unsubsidized four hundred dollars. And
Speaker 1: when you when I say unsubsidized, you may say, what
Speaker 1: do you mean? What was the subsidized version? It's because
Speaker 1: when the that the first one didn't sell basically at all,
Speaker 1: they came out with an ad supported version for two years,
Speaker 1: still didn't do well, and in fact, within eleven months
Speaker 1: of the product launching, the company goes bankrupt. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it was one of one those devices that initially got
Speaker 1: a lot of people excited, but the longer the saga went,
Speaker 1: the more skepticism was involved, and by the time it launched,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people felt exactly the opposite
Speaker 1: of how they had when you know, it was just
Speaker 1: an idea and non an actual product. So both the
Speaker 1: Gizmondo and the aforementioned Engage are frequently found on worst
Speaker 1: console lists ever, like worst console ever, not just worst handhelds,
Speaker 1: not like yeah, no, like this is going up against
Speaker 1: you know, those video game consoles that would come out
Speaker 1: and have three games and then disappear forever. These were
Speaker 1: way up there, and part of it is because they
Speaker 1: were really expensive. They ended up costing companies. You know,
Speaker 1: in this case, it cost a company its existence. So
Speaker 1: it's it's tough, you know. It's one of those things
Speaker 1: you don't want to see it happened. There's some schaden
Speaker 1: freuda there, I'm sure, but you don't want to see
Speaker 1: that ever happen to anybody. Sure, although okay, so so
Speaker 1: Strangely enough, the next entry on our on our list,
Speaker 1: which would turn into a huge UM. I hate the
Speaker 1: word disruptor. I think it's overused, but disruptor in the
Speaker 1: market UM was was another multi use device, and I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the iPhone, introduced by Apple in two thousand seven. Yes,
Speaker 1: so when it first came out, it just looked like
Speaker 1: an amazing device. I don't think any of us had, uh,
Speaker 1: the inkling of how disruptive it was going to be
Speaker 1: until the app development really started to open up and
Speaker 1: people began to make games specifically for the iPhone. Sure, sure,
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, the iPhone is not a handheld
Speaker 1: gaming device except for the part where you can use
Speaker 1: it like one, Yeah, you can have you it's a
Speaker 1: handheld device that can play games. So it's really a
Speaker 1: multi use device. But the point here is that it
Speaker 1: had and it continues to have a really big influence
Speaker 1: on the handheld gaming industry as a whole, because you've
Speaker 1: got some consumers out there who say, well, I could
Speaker 1: buy this single use device, even if it can play
Speaker 1: multiple games, it's still just a game device. Or I
Speaker 1: can buy this thing that's also a phone and an
Speaker 1: interactive map and let's me connect to the internet and etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So it's one of those that has really started to
Speaker 1: take a big bite out of the mobile gaming world.
Speaker 1: Now there are different markets, and some of those markets
Speaker 1: are more attuned to those gaming devices than to the
Speaker 1: smartphone world. So it's not the handheld gaming devices are
Speaker 1: now irrelevant, you know, it's not like they're they're going obsoletely,
Speaker 1: but they're having a tougher time now that this come
Speaker 1: on here, and we will we will talk more about
Speaker 1: that um in in the the very end of our
Speaker 1: podcast as we get into the current years. But but
Speaker 1: for now, let's let's talk about that. This is a
Speaker 1: really interesting one to me. This came out in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine and it was the game pack GP two
Speaker 1: x Whiz. Yeah, the GP two x Whiz is one
Speaker 1: of those open source handheld gaming systems. It was actually
Speaker 1: made so that people could fiddle around with all the
Speaker 1: different programming for it and create all sorts of applications
Speaker 1: and games. Again kind of going pendently. Yeah, it's designed
Speaker 1: for independent developers and and emulators even right right, This
Speaker 1: is going back to that same one we talked about,
Speaker 1: the Korean game system we talked about earlier. This is
Speaker 1: kind of similar to that. It had a thirty three
Speaker 1: Mega Hurts processors, so it was you know, packing a
Speaker 1: bit of a wallet for an open source system, and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, it was also had really awesome packaging. I mean,
Speaker 1: I looked at the packaging. It looks like this this
Speaker 1: kind of leather bound sort of box that says the
Speaker 1: Whiz on it, and I thought, I want I kind
Speaker 1: of just want the box. At this point, it was
Speaker 1: it was really sleek and um and I think that
Speaker 1: two thousand nine was was one of those peaks of
Speaker 1: emulator use that that we've that we've you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's an undulating wave of 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 game
Speaker 1: games for for app stores, because app stores were not
Speaker 1: in 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: I was going unserved at that point. Yeah, for example,
Speaker 1: that that now you can get ports of classic arcade
Speaker 1: games uh delivered to like an iPad, you know, you
Speaker 1: can get their apps just for that. But at the
Speaker 1: time that really wasn't that wasn't something you would find.
Speaker 1: So Nintendo and not content to sit back upon its
Speaker 1: haunches and cackle maniacally releases the three D S, which
Speaker 1: I was at the E three where the three D
Speaker 1: S dah yeah, uh it was you know, the win
Speaker 1: the debut. It definitely got a lot of attention because
Speaker 1: people thought this is it's a brand new handheld from Nintendo,
Speaker 1: which automatically made it really interesting. It also had this
Speaker 1: three D capability. The three D capability was was nifty
Speaker 1: but also one of those things that people were skeptical
Speaker 1: about because three D has traditionally been a real it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been hard to get into the consumer market, right sure, sure,
Speaker 1: although you know glasses free three D is it's always
Speaker 1: more um dynamic, I think, to to the consumer market
Speaker 1: than than 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't have
Speaker 1: to play them in three D. And has a special
Speaker 1: camera where you could take three D pictures, but you
Speaker 1: can 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 DS, you would
Speaker 1: think the person was crazy. But um, but it was
Speaker 1: really kind of a cool little gimmick. Uh. They'd also
Speaker 1: update this in two thousand twelve as the three D
Speaker 1: 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 sophisticated. Sure,
Speaker 1: and that helped a lot. Also that same year, in
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, Sony comes out with a couple of
Speaker 1: things that were big news. One was the 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 too 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 Ericson 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 experience of play
Speaker 1: uh yeah. Flagship handheld device. It's essentially the replacement for
Speaker 1: the PlayStation portable to PSP. So Vita has an arm
Speaker 1: based to Giga Hurts processors. It's got some serious firepower
Speaker 1: under the hood compared to other handheld devices. I know,
Speaker 1: if you're you know, talking about your mega awesome gaming
Speaker 1: PC at home, two Giga hurt sounds like nothing, but
Speaker 1: for a handheld device at this time, it was really
Speaker 1: pretty powerful. And it was also one of the big
Speaker 1: features that they touted when they launched the Vita was
Speaker 1: how it could interact with PlayStation home consoles. It had
Speaker 1: two thumbsticks for control, had a lot of buttons, had
Speaker 1: directional pad as well, had WiFi and Bluetooth capability, and
Speaker 1: you could also get a more expensive one that had
Speaker 1: three G capability. Of course you have to get a
Speaker 1: contract with that and then uh, you know, you you
Speaker 1: can't plug in a PSP game and play it. It's
Speaker 1: not compatible in that sense. But you could down the
Speaker 1: PSP games, yes, so you could purchase PSP games for
Speaker 1: download and play them on the Vita that way, so
Speaker 1: it's a digital download as opposed to reading the optical discs.
Speaker 1: The u m D from the old PSPs and the
Speaker 1: launch price was two fifty dollars, although it has since
Speaker 1: dropped in price, so you can you can buy one
Speaker 1: for less than that. Now, that is when we started
Speaker 1: getting into um gaming tablets. Yeah, which you know again
Speaker 1: like you could look at something like the iPad and
Speaker 1: you can play games on the iPad because it was
Speaker 1: a more devoted device. A couple of these were more
Speaker 1: definitely marketed as gaming devices as opposed to this is
Speaker 1: a general purpose tablet that can also play games. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the Arcos game Pad is one of those, another Android
Speaker 1: based game and also open source. So this one, if
Speaker 1: you were to look at one, it looks like a
Speaker 1: tablet that's had to controller like handle things used on
Speaker 1: the side we'll be talking about another one in a second,
Speaker 1: but it's the razor edge, but that was a little different.
Speaker 1: I'll get to that in a minute. So these look
Speaker 1: like it's actually part of the case itself. Um. And
Speaker 1: they had thumbsticks, directional pad buttons on those little the
Speaker 1: little game controllers that are fused onto it. Um. And uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a pretty powerful device. And the fact that
Speaker 1: it's open source is another one of those things that
Speaker 1: developers really love because they have the chance to make
Speaker 1: stuff 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 downside to
Speaker 1: that is that if you're a little independent developer, you
Speaker 1: may not have the resources that you would need to
Speaker 1: make a game for the kind of platform. So this
Speaker 1: is a very attractive alternative. Oh sure. And also at
Speaker 1: the time, game development for mobile platforms was was in
Speaker 1: a crazy boom. Um. In fact, according to digital market
Speaker 1: analysis company app annie uh Global, iOS app store game
Speaker 1: expenditures overtook in handhold console game expenditures overall. So so
Speaker 1: the amount of money being spent on on iOS games
Speaker 1: was way more, or maybe not way more, but but
Speaker 1: it was. It was it was edging out the handheld
Speaker 1: game system. That's that's big news. And again another one
Speaker 1: of those things where the handheld game industry has to
Speaker 1: take notice and say, we have to acknowledge that this
Speaker 1: is sure, especially after Google Play expenditures would do the
Speaker 1: same thing in early Yeah, and that's as as pretty
Speaker 1: eye opening. Also that's when Razor released the Razor Edge,
Speaker 1: another gaming tablet that I'll have to see it a
Speaker 1: c Yes, this one run on Windows eight, so it runs.
Speaker 1: I guess it currently still exists, Yes it does. It
Speaker 1: does still exist Windows eight, so it's a Windows eight machine. Um.
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 case,
Speaker 1: and so that was 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 like, wow, this is pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: I need to remember to book my stay to come
Speaker 1: at the end of CS and not the beginning of
Speaker 1: ce S. Yeah, so it was ne Again, it's pretty high.
Speaker 1: It's like a high price, uh item. It's not one
Speaker 1: of those that I don't think that it's necessarily done
Speaker 1: a huge amount of business. Yeah, and it's gotten some
Speaker 1: flak for being gimmicky for what it is, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, for for being as expensive as it is,
Speaker 1: having a relatively low capacity for what it does. Right.
Speaker 1: And and again, like you were saying, I think around
Speaker 1: 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: over year. Um And And by by this point I
Speaker 1: mentioned that that iOS game expenditures had had edged out
Speaker 1: handheld They were far and away doing the best. By
Speaker 1: this point. The dust in absolutely in the dust. Um And.
Speaker 1: One of the advantages I think for for mobile games
Speaker 1: here is that they seem to be way less seasonal,
Speaker 1: way less like a treat or a special occasion kind
Speaker 1: of purchase than handheld games tend to be yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I can. I can imagine like it being a
Speaker 1: real impulse by for one thing, the entire experience is digital.
Speaker 1: You're not buying a physical are like a cartridge. You
Speaker 1: never have to think about walking into a store, going
Speaker 1: to Amazon or whatever. And granted a lot of the
Speaker 1: handheld devices these days work on that same principle. But
Speaker 1: but the smartphones just had an advantage because that's how
Speaker 1: they always had done it. So Also in two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: that's when in Video released the Shield, another one of
Speaker 1: those devices I got to see its c s and
Speaker 1: another one I got to hold after sticking around long enough. Um,
Speaker 1: this one looks a lot like an Xbox controller that
Speaker 1: has a clamshell screen kind of welded onto it. Although
Speaker 1: you know you can't open and close the screen. It's
Speaker 1: not like it's stuck in place. A touch screen by
Speaker 1: the way, Yeah, it's touch screen and it can run
Speaker 1: Android games. So if you ever wanted to play an
Speaker 1: Android game using a actual Xbox controller, you could totally
Speaker 1: do that. Uh and I shouldn't say it's an Xbox controller,
Speaker 1: it just looks like one. But it also it also
Speaker 1: could run streaming games that you're streaming from a PC. Right, So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you run like a PC game, but you want to
Speaker 1: be able to play it in the living room or
Speaker 1: you want to lay down in bed and play this game.
Speaker 1: You don't want to and you don't want to take
Speaker 1: your alien wear enormous desktop computer to bed with you
Speaker 1: because it would set the sheets on fire, so you
Speaker 1: have the Invidios shield instead and just stream the content
Speaker 1: directly 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 hundred dollars, which a lot of people kind of
Speaker 1: you know, balked at. It is now down to two
Speaker 1: so it they have cut the price on it. Uh. Again,
Speaker 1: one of those devices that I think has its devoted followers,
Speaker 1: but it's a niche market. Sure was was a good
Speaker 1: year for downgrading. Really. Nintendo released the two DS that year,
Speaker 1: which is a scaled down version of the 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 form 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 recent E three was when we started
Speaker 1: seeing companies like Microsoft and Sony show off the interoperability
Speaker 1: between tablets and their their new consoles, the Xbox One
Speaker 1: in the PlayStation four. The idea being that you could
Speaker 1: use a tablet to play a play along with a
Speaker 1: game 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 are coordinating. They're saying, okay, uh, you know, Unit 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, it's a really good applications
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 in console 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 of 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, some
Speaker 1: of the most recent news you have this about a
Speaker 1: a Samsung uh device right right. It's called the game
Speaker 1: pad right right now. I think it's only an Germany
Speaker 1: 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, UH it would
Speaker 1: have to be much larger to accommodate uh iPad UM
Speaker 1: but I just thought it was interesting that it was
Speaker 1: being offered by a device company and and therefore kind
Speaker 1: of being this entry into the market that's like, hey,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, maybe ignore those handheld gaming devices over there
Speaker 1: and really just turn turn your phone into your new
Speaker 1: gaming device. Yeah, especially if that means they can get
Speaker 1: in on the peripheral side and not have the burden
Speaker 1: of producing a full handheld system that could totally tank
Speaker 1: in the marketplace. Oh sure, exactly. I mean, and it's
Speaker 1: only I think it's only like ninety bucks or thereabouts,
Speaker 1: and in the equivalent euro gotcha, gotcha. So we might
Speaker 1: see that expand beyond, and uh, they'll be interesting to
Speaker 1: see how handheld gaming progresses from here. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who still predict that smartphones will essentially
Speaker 1: obliterate handheld gaming, and the only the only people that
Speaker 1: will are the only companies that remain will be the
Speaker 1: open source ones that are cattering to a very specific
Speaker 1: niche audience. So they're doing it on a much more
Speaker 1: modest basis. They're not they're not producing millions and millions
Speaker 1: of units. They might be producing maybe a hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: But we'll have to see, because yeah, I could, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I could see some systems kind of kind
Speaker 1: of going away. But I would be really personally sad
Speaker 1: if Nintendo didn't have an an active handheld on the market. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: especially seeing as how they've struggled so much with the
Speaker 1: the home with the consoles consoles, yeah recently, so in anyway,
Speaker 1: that is the history of the handheld electronic gaming device.
Speaker 1: Like we said, we didn't mention in everything that's out there,
Speaker 1: certainly not if we missed one of your favorites. Here's
Speaker 1: what you can do. You can send us a message
Speaker 1: and say, hey, Lauren and Jonathan, I know you didn't
Speaker 1: have time to mention X handheld gaming console, but it's
Speaker 1: really cool and here's why. And here's a picture of
Speaker 1: me with my ex gaming console, and here's a list
Speaker 1: of my favorite games for ex gaming console. That's the
Speaker 1: way to do it. Don't say you guys are stupid
Speaker 1: because you didn't mention the blah blah blah, because that's
Speaker 1: that's the email equivalent of unplugging someone's controller when they're
Speaker 1: in the middle of a really good about of yeah,
Speaker 1: like punch out. Yeah, if I were if I were
Speaker 1: going up against in hurricane and you unplugged my controller,
Speaker 1: just as I was about to go into that combo,
Speaker 1: I would be so ticked off. I was gonna say
Speaker 1: a Super street Fighter t turbo. Okay, that's also fair.
Speaker 1: Also fair. Uh so, make sure you send us your messages.
Speaker 1: You can send it to us in email our addresses. Hi,
Speaker 1: ducan at you know, I'm just kidding. It's clearly it's
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