Featured Discussion: The Future of the Handheld

Featured Discussion: The Future of the Handheld

After last week's discussion on the iPad and how it may impact portable gaming, I felt that a talk about the future of portable gaming as a whole needed to happen.  Ever since the iPhone came out coming up on three years ago, followed by the App Store one year later, the talks and rumors have gone so far as to claim that the iPhone platform is the future and that Apple is going to enter the gaming arena themselves.  I think this is a little far-fetched, but let's take a look at the current state of the handheld, and imagine what the future might hold.
It seems to me that by this time in the lifecycle of handheld gaming, there should be rumors, if not announcements, of "next-generation" hardware. It has now been more than five years since the launch of the original Nintendo DS.  Although we may be technically on the third revision of the system, the DS itself has remained largely unchanged.

After a year and a half, the first revision was released in the form of the DS Lite. This was the system that many critics said was what the original DS should have been, as far as its form-factor and screen quality was concerned.  Once the DS Lite came about, it was a staggering three years before the next update to the hardware, the DSi.  Finally, not more than a year after that, we're getting the DSi XL later this year.

We are only one month away from the PSP having been available for five years also.  After two and a half years, Sony updated the PSP's form factor and gave us the PSP Slim.  Just as with the DS, many people claim that this, its second iteration, was far superior to the original launch hardware.  One year later, Sony tweaked the hardware with an improved screen and a few other improvements with the PSP-3000.  One year after that, we were graced with the confusing PSP Go.

Now think about this:  Essentially, we've been playing our portable games on the same systems that we were five years ago.  In the world of gaming, that seems like an awfully long time, and yet, there seems to be nothing new on the horizon.  The reason I find this so curious is because it doesn't seem to bother anybody.  Typically at this point in the game, we'd all be pushing for new systems with some newfangled technology or faster processors or what have you.

I've got a DS Lite and I've used a PSP, and they're both excellent systems and, to me, they don't feel dated at all.  This is mostly because the outsides have been consistently updated to keep them fresh, but the insides really haven't changed that much.  So the question becomes: what's next?

I think two things are happening right now.  The first is that we're seeing "the next" technological push for portable gaming coming from, to an extent, outside portable gaming.  I'm talking about touchscreen technology.  Yes, the Nintendo DS was using this five years ago, about the time that Verizon should have been saying "yes" to Apple's top-secret proposal, instead of saying "nah, let AT&T have it."  But partly because of the iPhone and the iPod Touch, touchscreens have become truly ubiquitous.

Every new cellphone has a touchscreen, the DS has a touchscreen, some people think the PSP could have a touchscreen, but is this really the future of handheld gaming?  As a gamer, I don't think that touchscreens will truly replace anything.  The DS shows that they can certainly compliment and enhance a portable gaming experience, but they can't completely replace the systems, and buttons, that we're so used to.

So where does that leave us?  Nintendo's next DS is an odd one, being nothing but a much larger version of their current hardware.  I believe Nintendo's Satoru Iwata said one of the advantages of the bigger screens are so that multiple people can watch the game at the same time, but that's hardly any kind of evolution.  The PSP Go isn't selling at all, and there are rumors of a relaunch.  Sony seems to think that digital downloads are the future, but its obvious that a digital-only system just isn't going to cut it right now.

I just don't know what we'll see next.  Nintendo could continue to ride the DS cash cow for several more years without batting an eye, and the PSP has certainly carved itself a nice chunk of the marketplace, and those who have them are generally very satisfied with them.  Anyone who has been with ITC for a while knows that my favorite portable system is the GameBoy Micro, a "slim" update to a system whose technology is nine years old, and the games I play on it are great.

This column doesn't really have an end, because I don't know what it would be.  I'm very curious to see what the other ITC'ers think about the future of handheld gaming.  What do you guys want to see?  Those of us who have DS's and PSP's, how satisfied are we with them and do we see a need for something new?

Let's talk about it.

-Phil