Ever since the original Nintendo GameBoy hit the scene in the late 80s, the handheld gaming market has enjoyed a long and mostly healthy lifespan. However, as time has gone by and technology has changed rapidly before my very eyes, I've started to question whether the handheld market could possibly disappear or transform into something different within the next decade or two. Could handheld consoles, as we know them, possibly vanish?
I'm not saying that mobile games are at risk of disappearing; far from it. In fact, the rise and popularity of the mobile phone gaming market are why I feel traditional handheld consoles may fall to the wayside. With games being available on your phones, similar to the music on iPods, what reason is there for most people to buy a separate just for handheld games?
While Nintendo has enjoyed near-universal domination within the handheld market, other companies haven't been so lucky. Sony's PSP had slight success, but later handheld consoles such as the PSP Go and the PS Vita weren't that successful. Other companies, such as SEGA and Atari, tried to compete with their own handheld systems, all of them failed to even come close to chipping away Nintendo's stranglehold on the handheld market.
As of now, Nintendo is the only company still competing in the traditional handheld market. They even released the Nintendo Switch, a home console that can double as a handheld. We are witnessing home and handheld becoming one in the same. Within the next few decades, we might even witness the end of home consoles as a separate technology and just become another option built into most televisions.
Gaming on the go is not a concept that's really going away any time soon. However, we might be witnessing the end of them as unique consoles built solely for gaming. Almost all forms of recreational technology are moving toward this image of a unified multimedia hub. You don't just get games from your game console and you don't just get cable channels from your television. Gaming, in general, will become another option on televisions and phones, and I believe we are seeing the beginning of that trend with mobile gaming.
This is not an inherently bad thing. It's always interesting to watch how technology changes over time to meet the demands of a new generation that are unique to that generation. However, it does seem a little sad because we could be witnessing the end of an era in technological gaming over the next few decades. The ways we played games as kids will one day be no more and it tugs a little at your nostalgic heartstrings unless you're a child who's wondering what all those 20 or 30 somethings are getting slightly sad about.
Certain technologies come and go in the blink of an eye, and it's always good to see technology move forward. This, however, doesn't change the fact that sometimes you feel a little sadly nostalgic when you witness a piece of technology you grew up with suddenly be discontinued. It reminds us of our youth (I can't believe I'm saying that at 26) and that certain technologies aren't as disposable as we think.
