Technical Trend - Handheld Consoles

Handheld consoles are portable game consoles with built-in screen, controllers and speakers, allowing the user to play anywhere at any time.

The earliest handheld consoles were seen in the 1970s and users were only capable of playing one game on them. The first all-digital handheld game is known to be Auto Race, manufactured by Mattel Electronics and released in 1977. The game had LED light and simple sound, and it used about 512 bytes on memory.

Figure 1 - Mattel's Auto Race game consoe

Handheld consoles became popular after the release of the Game Boy by Nintendo in 1989, which included some of the most popular games, like Tetris and Pokémon. The Game Boy used four AA batteries that needed to be replaced after 20 hours of gameplay. Nintendo is still the most popular company for handheld game consoles, with the Nintendo 2DS and 3DS.

Figure 2 - Nintendo's Game Boy handheld console

Even though handheld consoles are being replaced by mobile phones for gaming, they are still very popular nowadays. In fact, new versions of classic consoles are being produced and released to this day. The PlayStation Vita is the handheld game console released by Sony in 2011. It features a 5-inch touchscreen with two analog sticks, two cameras, speakers, microphone and also Wi-Fi, 3G and Bluetooth connectivity.

Figure 3 - Sony's PlayStation Vita handheld game console

One of the latest handheld consoles released is the New Nintendo 3DS, developed by Nintendo and put on the market on October 2014. This console features additional processor cores, an increase to 256 MB of RAM, Micro-SD cards for data storage, that can be transferred wirelessly using a PC.

Handheld game consoles made such a huge impact on the industry, that now certain games are specifically developed for mobile phones. In fact, John Geleynse, a director at Apple has even called the iPhone a “gaming console” and that “it’s not a phone, it’s a console experience.”  

Bibliography:

Wikipedia.org, (2015). PlayStation Vita. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Vita [Accessed 24 May 2015]

Wikipedia.org, (2015). Mattel Auto Race. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattel_Auto_Race [Accessed 24 May 2015]

Wikipedia.org, (2015). New Nintendo 3DS. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Nintendo_3DS [Accessed 24 May 2015]

Wikipedia.org, (2015). Handheld game console. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handheld_game_console [Accessed 24 May 2015]

Engadget.com, (2008). Apple: "the iPhone is a gaming console". [online] Available at: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/12/apple-the-iphone-is-a-gaming-console/ [Accessed 24 May 2015]