With the recent unveiling of both the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP, I thought it would be nice to look at the handheld scene over the past few years.
For 15 years, Nintendo has ruled the handheld side of the video game world. The first major handheld consoles were Nintendo's GameBoy and SEGA's GameGear. Both had their pros and cons, but after a long fight, Nintendo came out with its head above the water.
For a long time, Nintendo's monopoly on the traveling console was all but unopposed. And in that time we have seen several incarnations of the GB, the latest of these being the GameBoy Advance and GameBoy Advance SP.
It wasn't really until last year that another company tried to get a hold on the handheld market. When Nokia released its N-Gage, it started a trend to take that monopoly away. Though the N-Gage didn't take off as well as its developers had hoped, there were some sales and people took notice.
That same year, Sony announced its PlayStation Portable (PSP) and the race was on. After that, rumors of a new handheld from Nintendo started circulating - these rumors would lead to the Nintendo DS.
This year at E3, both the PSP and the DS were on display. Though only the DS was playable, they both made a major impact on the attitude and energy in the air on the showroom floor.
Meanwhile, Nokia released its next rendition of its system. The N-Gage QD is Nokia's answer to many of the complaints raised in the last year over the phone/gaming device since it hit the market. For more information concerning the N-Gage QD, click here.
The coverage of the DS is here and PSP's coverage can be found here.
I know this article sounds more like a fanboy rant over the GB, but it is hard to talk handheld without going back to the GameBoy over and over again. Nintendo has had their claim over that market for a long time, and in that time they were safe and made very few startling advances. It seems like Nintendo didn't try coming out with something radically different and new until these rivals popped up.
So maybe competition is good for the soul and maybe these systems will help advance gaming a lot faster than if Nintendo was still the only boat in the portable water.
But now a fierce battle is ahead, and not all of these portables may survive. Who will survive, and who will find themselves gone the way of the GameGear? Only time will tell.