Nintendo has always understood the business handheld gaming. That is why the company has dominated the gaming sector ever since.
Doing its own way is a matter that Nintendo has always assumed, and that is why it has completely conquered the handheld gaming segment. There were indeed other corporations striving for a slice of the market when handy electronic games first started in the late seventies, but it was Nintendo that realized worth, battery lifespan, form factor, and cuteness were going to be crucial characteristics of a product to be successful.
Nintendo identified intuitively that one can think of miniature games as something appealing. There is something about the compact form factor that lets players to relish presumably some degree of and child-like practices. The industrial design myth Donald Norman speaks about how humans see a series of potentials onto things, and how inventors need to recognize these in order to make effective goods. In short, people kind of want small things to be adorable, and Nintendo comprehends that.
However, Nintendo's adversaries have usually made the mistake of discerning that to compete with Nintendo, they have to compete with it in terms of technology. The Bandai Wonderswan and Neo Geo Pocket absolutely understand the demand of cuteness, but they were largely limited to the Japanese trade. In terms of global rivals from the Sega Game Gear through the Atari Lynx to the PSP and Vita, the viewpoint has been bringing the home console practice to the pocket. Not only has that attested overpriced to the consumer in terms of retail value and battery lifespan but it also grates in contradiction of what a lot of people want from a handy experience.
The PSP was not cute. PS Vita was not cute either. Both tried to contend, in industrial designs, with home consoles and with smartphones, plummeting into an uncomfortable space between them. When gamers first saw Ridge Racer on the Sony PSP, players wheezed in marvel, but it turns out that not many people wanted that. Not just because PSP was more luxurious, but because it just felt creepy to sit on a bus with this flashy piece of cold and sleek gaming equipment.
The notion of the Vita as a mini PS3 has hushed the imagination of designers. Undersized conceded spin-offs of big console games like Call of Duty and Uncharted have done very diminutive except underline the alterations between a portable gadget and a home console. It is no accident that the most popular chains on Sony's handheld consoles are very much in the Nintendo mold of highly friendly labels with child-like collection classifications.
The GameBoy, GameBoy DS, and GameBoy 3DS have not just conquered this segment because they got the fundamentals correct, they conquered because Nintendo recognizes that small things are appealing and that lovability permeates the whole practice. This is precisely what is ongoing in the smartphone division. Bringing a handheld game to work or to school is a very particular understanding that has nothing to do with technology or gadgetry.
