Why are handhelds so.......weak?

[Fox5]

When the gba came out, sure, it was a big step up from gbc, but I was expecting at least near saturn quality 2d. Why? Well, the 32x came out in 1994, was very compact(about old gameboy size), cost $200 at the time, and offered near saturn 2d quality, so I would have thought technology had advanced some, and they could trim down the size and cost.

And currently, nintendo could take the gecko from the gamecube, add in a simple sound chip and graphics chip, and give it maybe 3 or 4 megs of normal ram(not embedded) and have a monster of a handheld for a low price. It'd probably be larger than a gba by a bit, but that's not such a big deal.

Really, how come scaled down versions of already cheap, small, and old hardware is not being used in handhelds?

 

[PC-Engine]

Why are handhelds so.......weak?

Because people are buying them as is.

 

[Geeforcer]

Its always been Features Vs Power consumption and so far the public has been reluctant to pick the former over the latter. That might change in the future.

 

[Phil]

Nintendo hasn't been pushing it in lack of proper competition. Now that PSP is announced and on the way, I expect Nintendo to pull up their pants and raise the bar quite a bit in order to stay competitive.

 

[PC-Engine]

Nintendo hasn't been pushing it in lack of proper competition. Now that PSP is announced and on the way, I expect Nintendo to pull up their pants and raise the bar quite a bit in order to stay competitive.

Or they could just lower the price of GBA SP considering the sheer number of games available.

 

[Tahir2]

Primary reason is still power consumption.

 

[Fox5]

Hmm...still, I don't think the gecko uses a lot of power, and I would really think it'd be a prime chip for a new handheld, but somehow, I expect nintendo's next handheld to use another underpowered chip.(if it even has a quarter of gecko's power, I'd be very surprised)

 

[Phil]

Or they could just lower the price of GBA SP considering the sheer number of games available.

I doubt Nintendo would be that supid actually. If Sony shows something truly revolutionary, it might get ugly for Nintendo if the best they can offer is an agressive pricing with old hardware.

 

[Teasy]

Hmm...still, I don't think the gecko uses a lot of power

Gecko uses loads of power compared to the CPU in GBA though.

 

[Goldni]

I'm very happy with GBASP. I'm sure Nintendo is too. They're not going to do anything drastic. There will be at least 50 million GBA's installed around Christmas 2004 when the PSP is supposed to launch (barring any delays). Nintendo should let Sony launch PSP. By then GBA will be at $79.00 (or maybe $69.00). PSP will be probably $129.00 at the very least. It'll definitly not be as small as GBASP. It'll probably be about the size as the Nomad or Gamegear (with a totally diff look but about that size). Then around late 2005 or even 2006 Nintendo breaks out the GBA Next. But by the PSP coming out so late behind the GBA this works well for Nintendo. This hurt the DC. Imo Nintendo will use it to their advantage just like Sony did.

Back on topic. The PS2 is "weak" but that has'nt hurt it any. The GBA has a great little CPU but the 256k of RAM is what is paltry. It's got some awsome fun games that are addictive. It's selling well with every age demographic out there (now that the SP has arrived). It's library is second to none. It uses little power even with a backlight. But the power consumption thing is what is hard to tackle on handhelds. This is what is gonna hurt the Nokia N-gage. 3hrs? come on!

Edit: What I meant by the DC thing is that it was 'in between' generations if you will. Imo the PSP will be also. There's still alot of life in the GBA (it's only just beginning really) and if anything it'd be good for Sony to launch a product beside the next Nintendo Gameboy imo.

 

[Almasy]

Pretty much because Nintendo doesn´t have any competition, and they can get away with disgusting, 1992 level hardware. Heck, now that I think about it, SNES was 2 years younger than Genesis if I recall correctly, and it certainly didn´t look like it. That´s why Nintendo shouldn´t be the market leader of anything IMO.

 

[Phil]

Goldni:

PS2 is 'weak', but hardly as weak as the GBASP will be in 1 1/2 years down the road compared to a brandnew PSP. PS2 is still strong enough to be more than just competitive in the eyes of the general consumer outthere. I think if Nintendo just lets time pass up with nothing new in the works, things just might get ugly. Imagine this:

Come christmas 2004, Sony reveals something revolutionary. Insanely good graphics, long battery life, attractive 'cool' design with mass market appeal and great connectivity to go with PS2/3. Imagine this little portable handheld being able to do lots of stuff to get people interested. Sure, GBA will have about 50 million users - but those people will be keeping an eye on the market aswell. They know that it's Sony - the maker of the best selling consoles in history. They will know it's powerful. I'm by no means suggesting that PSP is just going to kill everything - no, I just think things could turn ugly for Nintendo if they sit and wait and think they can compete just because of a 50+ million market share. As of yet, we don't know what PSP can do, we also don't know the price of which it's going to be sold.

 

[Panajev2001a]

The GBA SP uses a front light like the Afterburner kit and not a back light ( it is frontlit and not backlit )...

 

[Blade]

Well, we know that Nintendo is working on the next Game Boy.. and there's a lot of time between now and Christmas 2004. Realistically speaking, there's a good chance that Nintendo could counter the PSP. It's more of a question of should they?

What if the PSP doesn't make the big splash that some expect it to? Sony, like Nintendo in the 90's, might just learn that they can't dominate the market forever. Last I checked, Sony's giving up their head-start on Xbox/GCN's successors to work on PSP; very risky. The competition is gaining strength, and one slip could possibly send Sony into 2nd or even 3rd place in the 2006 console war.

 

[Tahir2]

The Sega handheld and the Atari Lynx were both way ahead of the Gameboy technically but that meant nothing.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

in going more powerful than GBA you get several issues..

battery life goes to hell
more graphics power isnt needed, its a 2 inch screen, think playing something like Halo would be even remotely enjoyable there? the only games that truely work well are sprite based sidescrollers, where everything you need to see is right up close, where you can see it clearly.. I cant even play my PS2 or GC on anything smaller than a 15" TV without wanting to throw it out the window.

 

[Blade]

Howdy: Lots of genres.. like FPS.. have proved to work on GBA though, as shown by games like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D.

Just give the GBA the analog pad(s), more buttons, and more horsepower..

And eventually you've got a complete PC port of Quake III running on it.

 

[Fox5]

I still think the gba should have been at least 50% more powerful, and definetely have more ram.
And yeah, I guess the gecko does use a lot of energy compared to the gba's cpu...I was thinking more in comparision to a lightbulb or other consoles, but the gecko probably uses at least 5x as much energy.(definetely wouldn't be powered long on double A's) Oh, and I would have liked a wireless link add on for gba, something like a range of 30 feet, so the gameboys don't have to be so close together.

And I think the PSP has a good chance of taking the handheld market, except for sony has basically no plans for it right now, but just because it is sony, it will recieve tons of 3rd party support, and be hyped to all hell, plus it will be significantly better than the gba, and I really think the market is very willing for any competition. I wonder what the battery life on the psp will be though with a disc drive.(wasn't it using mini dvds?)

 

[jvd]

I still think the gba should have been at least 50% more powerful, and definetely have more ram.
And yeah, I guess the gecko does use a lot of energy compared to the gba's cpu...I was thinking more in comparision to a lightbulb or other consoles, but the gecko probably uses at least 5x as much energy.(definetely wouldn't be powered long on double A's) Oh, and I would have liked a wireless link add on for gba, something like a range of 30 feet, so the gameboys don't have to be so close together.

And I think the PSP has a good chance of taking the handheld market, except for sony has basically no plans for it right now, but just because it is sony, it will recieve tons of 3rd party support, and be hyped to all hell, plus it will be significantly better than the gba, and I really think the market is very willing for any competition. I wonder what the battery life on the psp will be though with a disc drive.(wasn't it using mini dvds?)

Its all about a blance between power (rendering power) and power (battery life) Look we get what 12 hours on a gba on a pair of double a's ? If it was 50% more powerfull we would get alot less. The math would be a pain to do but we'd have to find out how many more watts of power the cpu would use. Then find out how long the batterys would last with that power drain on them .

The second thing going on is screen quality. Does anyone even want to know how crapy 3d games would look on the gba screen ?
The next step up from that are the screens used for the xbox , ps2 and game cube , they are much to big for a hand held and yet the games still look like crap on them. So really even if the psp pushes the same amount of polygons as the ps2 would u really want to play on a screen the size of your fist ? I know i wouldn't . I would rather play the 92 graphics .

 

[DeadmeatGA]

...

The answer is rather easy.

32X cost $150 back in 1994, sans color LCD.

The GBA SOC(There is only one major chip on GBA) costs Nintendo less than $10 each.