Mobile and TV Platforms
So, this is the part where I talk about using mobile devices and televisions as gaming platforms. This will naturally be a shorter post, as mobile and TV gaming has a lot less history to cover! So, here goes! :D
So, mobile platforms. Mobile platforms have to be self-contained (an all in one unit, with a screen of some kind!) and self-powered (battery). It is also important for a mobile game to be, well, mobile!
Strangely enough, the very first mobile games had flashing LED lights, to act as a kind of screen. Back in that time, they were a lot bigger success than the mobile games of these days. I think this is because it was a very new and exciting concept back then, as they were so used to a usual console box.
It was mainly Mattel that released these LED games, and sold them as sports games. They were very simple, and very cheap to create - and of course could only run one game!
LCD games began to take over the market, the screens, filled with a liquid crystal (like in a calculator) were even still, really low-tech. You could see each possible position for the liquid crystal in the screen! Nintendo released a series of games on their early Game and Watch consoles, such as titles like Donkey Kong and Mario. A big advantage of the small LCD screen, is that it allowed companies to make the graphics clearer, because the screen was physically smaller, and easier to make clearer, due to the LCD technology.Although these games were incredibly basic, they also brought in a lot of new innovative designs and technologies to the video gaming market in the long-term, such as the D-Pad (directional pad). The directional pad is seen even in today's 8th generation of consoles (Xbox One and PS4).
So, what was the next major movement in the handheld world? If you've been paying extreme attention to the rest of article, you should be able to guess it!
The Nintendo Game boy of course! and I've really been waiting to sing its praises once more in this article! The Nintendo Game Boy was really the big game-changer in the mobile world, it brought in the capability to swap out different games. The Game boy also offered supreme build quality, which really did make it a cut above the rest on the market. It also offered very popular Nintendo games, with all of the big titles, such as Tetris, Mario and Pokemon. Another reason that the Game Boy was a big success, is that it allowed (although inconvenient) network play via cable. Very very short cable.The Game Boy took off with a vicious launch, and in typical Nintendo style, saw many many revisions, some with colour, and some with sound. It seems they really did hit the spot with this one!
So, although the Game Boy was so clearly the lead competitor, it also had its rivalries. Sega later released the Game Gear Handheld console, which featured a much better, colour screen - surely to trump the Game Boy, no?
The Game Gear really lacked in build quality and software quality, and obviously, by the time it was released, a lot of people already had the Game Boy!
Atari were next to jump on the handheld bandwagon, with their Lynx console. The Lynx had absolutely spot-on hardware, it boasted a "leading edge" screen, with a 4096 colour palette! Sadly, via poor titles released and poor battery life, its sales really took a hit.
The next handheld to take a shot at the market, was the Neo Geo Turbo. This was the most powerful little console to come to the market at that time, and really could have stormed the market, if it was built with quality and with good marketing.
Mobile gaming started to have the need to become more and more convenient and less bulky. In the year 1998, the addictive Nokia mobile phone game "Snake" was released. This was the birth of the mobile phone gaming era.
Mobile phone gaming nowadays is much more for the everyday casual gamer, a lot of touch screen smartphones see revisions of AAA titles, such as Call of Duty and FIFA. Smartphones also see huge titles such as Angry Birds. Even in-app purchases make quite a profit in mobile gaming, let alone the one-time price of the games. It seems mobile phone gaming is booming!
The next generation of mobile games, to follow the Game Boy, were the Nintendo DS and PSP. Could the DS live up to the legacy that the Game Boy left?
The Nintendo DS sold incredibly well, it offered brand new technology at the time, such as a touch screen, and a microphone. It seems Nintendo really dominates the mobile market, if not necessarily the console market!
The DS and the PSP saw recent revisions, such as the 3DS and the PS Vita. Nintendo has released a lot of revisions of the DS, similarly to the Game Boy, simply because they got it right! They really do their market research, and hit the sweet spot each time.
TV... As a Gaming Platform?
This still seems really hard for me to get my head around, that video games are to be played on televisions. In my lifetime I have never experienced a single TV game, I do not own a Smart TV either!
So, TV gaming was born in 1974, by BBC! It came along with the information channel called Ceefax. Ceefax offered a range of different things, such as football results, news headlines, and video games. Yes, video games.
The video games featured on Ceefax were incredibly simple too, utilising just the coloured buttons on the TV remote! Ceefax really was for the family or casual gamer, you would not see anybody playing this competitively.
Recently, TV gaming has grown rather exponentially, with production of Smart TVs. Smart TVs run their own operating system, where you are allowed to download games from the internet and play them (usually for a fee!). a few game developers, such as Gameloft, have really backed this movement, designing (and porting) their games to them. In most cases, you can even plug in a USB controller and start playing them with a controller! It seems that most companies do offer Smart TVs, offering very similar specs, so the sales of them really depend on user brand preference.
Now of course, TVs do not offer console-like graphics and gameplay, but Sony, who have huge experience in both console and TV production. They could very easily pop a PS4 into a TV! (If this happens in the future, I called it!)
If this is the case, Sony's direct competitor - Microsoft, should be scared, very scared, as they have zero experience in the TV market.
Apparently 48% of people in the US already watch their TV on a Smart TV, it seems this is the way it is going!
Follow this link for more oddly scary TV gaming facts!
So that's my section on mobile and TV gaming, I will post later about my findings throughout this blog, and I suppose I will have to pick between whether I think console or PC is better (which I do not want to have to decide!)
Anyhow! Thank you for reading, I will now conclude what I have learned!
Matt :D
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