176-609: The PlayStation Vita ( PS Vita ) is a handheld game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment . It was first released in Japan on December 17, 2011, then in other international territories on February 22, 2012, and was produced until discontinuation on March 1, 2019. The console is the successor to the PlayStation Portable (PSP), and a part of the PlayStation brand of gaming devices; as part of
352-482: A bullet train , saw a bored businessman playing with an LCD calculator by pressing the buttons. Yokoi then thought of an idea for a watch that doubled as a miniature game machine for killing time. Starting in 1980, Nintendo began to release a series of electronic games designed by Yokoi called the Game & Watch games. Taking advantage of the technology used in the credit-card-sized calculators that had appeared on
528-902: A social media / GPS like app that allowed the user to see other Vita players in the area, and what games or applications they had been using, with the opportunity for some limited interactivity and communication, although most of its functionality was disabled in 2015. A number of other third party apps commonly found on mobile devices have also been made available on the Vita: Crunchyroll , Facebook (removed in 2015), Flickr (broken), Google Maps (removed in 2015), Hulu , Live Tweet (Sony's third-party client for Twitter ), MLB.tv (broken), Netflix , Redbox Instant (discontinued), Skype (removed in 2016), TuneIn (broken), Twitch , WeatherNation and YouTube (removed in 2015). Facebook, Flickr, Google Maps, Twitter and YouTube no longer function as Vita apps, but continue to be available by using
704-791: A 16-bit bus. The SM83 is a hybrid between two other 8-bit processors: the Intel 8080 and the Zilog Z80 . The SM83 has the seven 8-bit registers of the 8080 (compared to 14 on the Z80), but uses the Z80's programming syntax and extra bit manipulation instructions. Like the Game Boy Color, the SM83 in the Advance could be commanded to operate at either 4.194304 MHz when playing games compatible with
880-576: A PS4 version more to appeal to North America's larger user-base. The March 2017 launch of the Nintendo Switch , which operates on a similar concept of providing high budget video games on a portable unit, further overshadowed the Vita, though niche support through indie games and JRPGs continued into the year. In mid-2017, Glixel estimated the Vita userbase to be around 15 million. On September 20, 2018, Sony announced at Tokyo Game Show 2018 that
1056-710: A PlayStation button and Start and Select buttons. Motion control is also possible through Sony's Sixaxis motion sensing system, consisting of a three-axis gyroscope and a three-axis accelerometer . In addition to these input methods, specific to just the Vita, is a secondary touchpad that is on the back of the device. Other hardware includes stereo speakers , a microphone , built-in Wi-Fi , and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR connectivity, and two cameras . The cameras are both 0.3 megapixel and run at 640×480 (VGA) at 60 frames/s, or at 320×240 at 120 frames/s. They can be used to take photos or videos using built-in applications on
1232-646: A Pokémon Center sticker on the back), Celebi edition (olive green with Celebi images on bezel), and Latias/Latios edition (pink/red and purple, with images of Latias and Latios on bezel). With hardware performance comparable to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System , the Game Boy Advance represents progress for sprite -based technology. The system's library includes platformers, SNES-like role-playing video games , and games ported from various 8-bit and 16-bit systems of
1408-561: A USB cable from a PC. The GP32 was redesigned in 2003. A front-lit screen was added and the new version was called GP32 FLU (Front Light Unit). In summer 2004, another redesign, the GP32 BLU, was made, and added a backlit screen. This version of the handheld was planned for release outside South Korea; in Europe, and it was released for example in Spain (VirginPlay was the distributor). While not
1584-557: A Vita successor, stating that "climate is not healthy for now because of the huge dominance of mobile gaming." At E3 2015 , he had stated that Sony would not be making any more AAA, big budget games to the system, but by October, the comment had been revised that Sony would not be making any more games for it at all. Reasons cited included the company focusing on supporting the PS4, and the fact that it felt that third party Japanese developers and Western indie developers were sufficiently supporting
1760-602: A backlit screen was released in some regions around the same time. Along with the GameCube , the GBA also introduced the concept of "connectivity": using a handheld system as a console controller. A handful of games use this feature, most notably Animal Crossing , Pac-Man Vs. , Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles , The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures , The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker , Metroid Prime , and Sonic Adventure 2: Battle . As of December 31, 2007,
1936-421: A color Game Boy only when technology addressed the limitations of existing color handhelds. Internally, however, a team led by Satoru Okada , who played a key role in the original Game Boy's design, was already experimenting with color displays. Their early-1990s prototype, codenamed "Project Atlantis," featured a color screen and a powerful 32-bit processor designed by Advanced RISC Machines (ARM). The team
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#17327762278362112-590: A commercial success on a level with mainstream handhelds (only 30,000 units were sold), it ended up being used mainly as a platform for user-made applications and emulators of other systems, being popular with developers and more technically adept users. Nokia released the N-Gage in 2003. It was designed as a combination MP3 player, cellphone, PDA, radio, and gaming device. The system received much criticism alleging defects in its physical design and layout, including its vertically oriented screen and requirement of removing
2288-467: A continued role in future hardware development at the time. In December, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kazuo Hirai stated that Sony aimed to appeal to a wide demographic of people by using multiple input methods on future hardware; buttons and joysticks for traditional handheld game system users, and touchscreens for smart phone users. The device was officially announced by Sony on January 27, 2011, at their "PlayStation Meeting" press conference held by
2464-549: A cost-cutting move rather than hard plastic cases that Japanese and European releases were shipped in may have also hurt US sales. The WonderSwan Color is a handheld game console designed by Bandai . It was released on December 9, 2000, in Japan, Although the WonderSwan Color was slightly larger and heavier (7 mm and 2 g) compared to the original WonderSwan, the color version featured 512 KB of RAM and
2640-471: A dearth of compelling games, and Nintendo's aggressive marketing campaign, and despite a redesign in 1991, the Lynx became a commercial failure . Despite this, companies like Telegames helped to keep the system alive long past its commercial relevance, and when new owner Hasbro released the rights to develop for the public domain, independent developers like Songbird have managed to release new commercial games for
2816-655: A flight simulator, included a "head-to-head" dogfight mode that can only be accessed via TurboLink. However, very few TG-16 games offered co-op play modes especially designed with the TurboExpress in mind. The Bitcorp Gamate is one of the first handheld game systems created in response to the Nintendo Game Boy. It was released in Asia in 1990 and distributed worldwide by 1991. Like the Sega Game Gear, it
2992-572: A handheld device. Like all processors using the ARM architecture , the ARM7TDMI uses a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) design with sixteen 32-bit registers . Although the console was marketed as a 32-bit system, to reduce costs, Nintendo mixed 16-bit and 32-bit buses between the different modules within the CPU ;AGB. As a result, the majority of the console's memory is only accessible through
3168-463: A laptop computer), as well as a frontlit color display and rechargeable battery. Despite the smaller form factor, the screen remained the same size as that of the original. In 2005, the Game Boy Micro was released. This revision sacrifices screen size and backwards compatibility with previous Game Boys for a dramatic reduction in total size and a brighter backlit screen. A new SP model with
3344-475: A larger color LCD screen. In addition, the WonderSwan Color is compatible with the original WonderSwan library of games. Prior to WonderSwan's release, Nintendo had virtually a monopoly in the Japanese video game handheld market. After the release of the WonderSwan Color, Bandai took approximately 8% of the market share in Japan partly due to its low price of 6800 yen (approximately US$ 65). Another reason for
3520-406: A line of calculator-sized sports games that became the world's first handheld electronic games. The project began when Michael Katz, Mattel's new product category marketing director, told the engineers in the electronics group to design a game the size of a calculator, using LED (light-emitting diode) technology." The result was the 1976 release of Auto Race . Followed by Football later in 1977,
3696-473: A lot of CPU resources. For sound, the Game Boy Advance features two PCM sample player channels, which work in combination with the Audio Processing Unit (APU), a programmable sound generator first used by the legacy Game Boy. The APU has four channels: a pulse wave generation channel with frequency and volume variation, a second pulse wave generation channel with only volume variation,
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#17327762278363872-546: A lot of power, they were not battery-friendly like the non-backlit original Game Boy whose monochrome graphics allowed longer battery life. By this point, rechargeable battery technology had not yet matured and so the more advanced game consoles of the time such as the Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx did not have nearly as much success as the Game Boy. Even though third-party rechargeable batteries were available for
4048-432: A lower budget." ROM hacks , fan games, and Homebrew games are developed for the GBA. Nintendo hoped to sell 1.1 million Game Boy Advance units by the end of March with the system's Japanese debut, and anticipated sales of 24 million units before the end of 2001; many marketing analysts believed this to be a realistic goal due to the company's lack of major competition in the handheld video game market. Within
4224-452: A lower-cost LCD display. The model also roughly added about an extra hour of battery life. The newer model also comes with 1 GB of internal storage memory, although it is not possible to use both the internal memory and memory card concurrently. Upon inserting a PS Vita memory card, the system will offer to copy the existing data from the internal memory to the new card. This model has a micro USB Type B port, which can be used to charge
4400-444: A major feature of the Game Boy line, since it allowed each new launch to begin with a significantly larger library than any of its competitors. As of March 31, 2005, the Game Boy and Game Boy Color combined to sell 118.69 million units worldwide. The console is capable of displaying up to 56 different colors simultaneously on screen from its palette of 32,768, and can add basic four-color shading to games that had been developed for
4576-570: A major leap in innovation, particularly in the second half with the release of the DS and PSP . In 2001, Nintendo released the Game Boy Advance (GBA or AGB), which added two shoulder buttons, a larger screen, and more computing power than the Game Boy Color. The design was revised two years later when the Game Boy Advance SP (GBA SP), a more compact version, was released. The SP features a " clamshell " design (folding open and closed, like
4752-444: A maximum of 100 applications and games can be stored on the device at a time, regardless of data storage available. When the limit is reached, applications or games must be moved or deleted in order to access those beyond the limit. This limit was later raised to 500 applications in system software version 3.10 released in 2014. Due to the high price of official Sony memory cards, inexpensive third-party "SD2Vita" adapter cards which allow
4928-463: A microphone, though the report mentioned that overheating issues had since caused them to move away from the design in favor of a model more similar to the original PlayStation Portable device. Throughout 2010, Sony would not confirm these reports of a PSP successor but would make comments regarding making future hardware. Shuhei Yoshida , President of SCE Worldwide Studios revealed that his studio, despite usually being more involved with software, had
5104-600: A million units were sold in the US. As of March 31, 2005, the Game Boy and Game Boy Color combined to sell over 118 million units worldwide. In 1987, Epyx created the Handy Game; a device that would become the Atari Lynx in 1989. It is the first color handheld console ever made, as well as the first with a backlit screen. It also features networking support with up to 17 other players, and advanced hardware that allows
5280-490: A much higher resolution, and can display 64 sprites at once, 16 per scanline, in 512 colors. Although the hardware can only handle 481 simultaneous colors. It has 8 kilobytes of RAM . The Turbo runs the HuC6820 CPU at 1.79 or 7.16 MHz . The optional "TurboVision" TV tuner includes RCA audio/video input, allowing users to use TurboExpress as a video monitor. The "TurboLink" allowed two-player play. Falcon ,
5456-421: A new form-factor for the handheld, known as the Game Boy Advance SP (model AGS-001). The redesigned unit features a clamshell design that resembles a pocket-size laptop computer, including a folding case approximately one-half the size of the original unit. It has a rechargeable lithium-ion battery , a significantly brighter LCD screen, and an internal front-light that can be toggled on and off. The redesign
PlayStation Vita - Misplaced Pages Continue
5632-472: A quad-core SGX543MP GPU. The PS Vita 2000 series, a revised version of the system, was released across 2013 and 2014. It has all of the same features with a slightly smaller size, extended battery life, and an LCD panel instead of an OLED. Sony released the PlayStation TV , a short-lived, re-purposed version of the Vita that uses a television screen like a home video game console , discontinued at
5808-563: A second redesign of the Game Boy Advance. This model, dubbed the Game Boy Micro, is similar in style to the original Game Boy Advance's horizontal orientation, but is much smaller and sleeker. The Game Boy Micro allows the user to switch between several colored faceplates to allow customization, a feature which Nintendo advertised heavily around the Game Boy Micro's launch. Nintendo also hoped that this "fashion" feature would help target audiences outside of typical video game players. Unlike
5984-567: A similar drop had been seen by Nintendo with its transition from the Nintendo DS to the Nintendo 3DS . Christian Phillips, a former senior director in Sony, said they had underestimated the impact of mobile gaming at the time of the Vita's release. They had considered gaming on smartphones to be "just good enough for gameplay" and instead felt tablet computers to be more their competitors to
6160-596: A successor to the Game Boy Color, with news of the project emerging at the Space World trade show in late August 1999. The project, codenamed the Advanced Game Boy (AGB), would bring the 32-bit processing power envisioned in Project Atlantis to market. Nintendo officially announced the Game Boy Advance on September 1, 1999, revealing details about the system's specifications and teasing that
6336-518: A television like a home console, though the device was discontinued in the West by the end of 2015, and did not fare well in Japan's handheld-focused region either. In November 2014, SCEA president Shawn Layden suggested that the new approach was working on hardware level, stating that Vita sales had increased since the implementation of PS4 Remote Play, though he and another Sony representative did not give specific figures. Sony continued to make games for
6512-401: A television screen. Handheld electronic games, in turn, find their origins in the synthesis of previous handheld and tabletop electro-mechanical devices such as Waco 's Electronic Tic-Tac-Toe (1972) Cragstan's Periscope-Firing Range (1951), and the emerging optoelectronic -display-driven calculator market of the early 1970s. This synthesis happened in 1976, when "Mattel began work on
6688-534: A touch screen and stylus. However, Tiger hoped it would also challenge Nintendo's Game Boy and gain a following among younger gamers too. Unlike other handheld game consoles, the first game.com consoles included two slots for game cartridges, which would not happen again until the Tapwave Zodiac, the DS and DS Lite, and could be connected to a 14.4 kbit/s modem. Later models had only a single cartridge slot. The Game Boy Color (also referred to as GBC or CGB)
6864-471: A traditional home video game console , and is controlled though the use of a DualShock 3 or DualShock 4 controller. Due to the difference in controller input between the Vita and a DualShock controller, Vita games that are dependent on the system's touch-screen, rear touchpad, microphone, or camera are not compatible. It also shares the Remote Play and PS Now functionality of a regular Vita. The system
7040-451: A wave channel that can reproduce any waveform recorded in RAM, and a white noise channel with volume variation. The Game Boy Advance features a D-pad (directional pad) and six action buttons labeled 'A,' 'B,' 'L,' 'R,' 'SELECT,' and 'START.' The top of the console has a link port that allows it to be connected to other Game Boy devices using a Game Link Cable or a Wireless Adapter , or
7216-524: A wider audience, becoming the best-selling handheld console with over 150 million units sold worldwide. This table describes handheld games consoles by generation, with over 1 million sales. No handheld achieved this prior to the fourth generation of game consoles. This list does not include dedicated consoles , such as LCD games and the Tamagotchi . The origins of handheld game consoles are found in handheld and tabletop electronic game devices of
PlayStation Vita - Misplaced Pages Continue
7392-519: Is 240 pixels wide by 160 pixels high in a 3:2 aspect ratio . Foreground objects are sprites with up to 128 per frame, sized from 8×8 to 64×64 pixels, and with 16 or 256 colors. Backgrounds can be rendered in one of six different modes. The first three are the "character modes," which use traditional tile map graphics: Mode 0 offers four static layers, Mode 1 has three layers with one affine transformation layer (which can be rotated and/or scaled), and Mode 2 has two affine layers. The other three are
7568-589: Is Nintendo's successor to the Game Boy and was released on October 21, 1998, in Japan and in November of the same year in the United States. It features a color screen, and is slightly bigger than the Game Boy Pocket . The processor is twice as fast as a Game Boy's and has twice as much memory. It also had an infrared communications port for wireless linking which did not appear in later versions of
7744-573: Is a 32-bit handheld game console developed, manufactured, and marketed by Nintendo as the successor to the Game Boy Color . It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001, in North America on June 11, 2001, in the PAL region on June 22, 2001, and in mainland China as iQue Game Boy Advance on June 8, 2004. The GBA is part of the sixth generation of video game consoles . The original model
7920-401: Is a redesigned version of the original Game Boy having the same features. It was released in 1996. Notably, this variation is smaller and lighter. It comes in seven different colors; red, yellow, green, black, clear, silver, blue, and pink. It has space for two AAA batteries , which provide approximately 10 hours of game play. The screen was changed to a true black-and-white display, rather than
8096-524: Is essentially a basic GPU that renders visuals using 96 kilobyte (KB) of Video RAM located inside the CPU CGB. Inside the PPU itself is 1 KB of object attribute memory and 1 KB of palette RAM, which are optimized for fast rendering. The display itself is a 2.9-inch (diagonal) thin-film transistor (TFT) color liquid-crystal display (LCD), measuring 61.2 millimeters (2.41 in) wide by 40.8 millimeters (1.61 in) high. The screen
8272-565: Is only a little more than half of the sales of its actual market competitor, the DS, which was more than 150 million units by the end of 2011. Rumors of a successor to the PSP came as early as July 2009 when Eurogamer reported that Sony was working on such a device, which would utilize the PowerVR SGX543MP processor and perform at a level similar to the original Xbox . Through mid-2010, websites continued to run stories about accounts of
8448-598: Is the Milton Bradley Microvision in 1979. Nintendo is credited with popularizing the handheld console concept with the release of the Game Boy in 1989 and continues to dominate the handheld console market. The first internet -enabled handheld console and the first with a touchscreen was the Game.com released by Tiger Electronics in 1997. The Nintendo DS , released in 2004, introduced touchscreen controls and wireless online gaming to
8624-704: Is the final first-party-developed game for the system, released on August 3, 2006. An add-on for the GameCube , known as the Game Boy Player , was released in 2003 as the successor to the Super Game Boy peripheral for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System . This add-on allows Game Boy Advance, Game Boy, and Game Boy Color games to be played on the GameCube. However, some games may have compatibility issues due to certain features requiring extra hardware; for instance, WarioWare: Twisted! would require
8800-670: The ARM7TDMI running at a clock rate of 16.78 megahertz (MHz) for Game Boy Advance games and the Sharp SM83 running at either 4.194304 MHz or 8.388608 MHz for backward compatibility with Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. As such, the console has two operating modes: GBA mode using the ARM7TDMI and the backward-compatible CGB mode using the SM83. The ARM7TDMI is a 32-bit processor developed by Advanced RISC Machines (ARM) that maximizes performance under power and storage constraints, making it more suitable for use in
8976-565: The Expansion Pack tier. For the first time, players are able to play multiplayer games in their emulated form, online. This application emulates the Game Boy Player , meaning that games that support GameCube controller rumble work with the vibration of the Switch controllers. Nintendo released various addons for the Game Boy Advance, which include: Other accessories for the Game Boy Advance include: In early 2003, Nintendo introduced
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#17327762278369152-556: The GP2X , use standard alkaline batteries . Because the mAh rating of alkaline batteries has increased since the 1990s, the power needed for handhelds like the GP2X may be supplied by relatively few batteries. Nintendo released the Game Boy on April 21, 1989 (September 1990 for the UK). The design team headed by Gunpei Yokoi had also been responsible for the Game & Watch system, as well as
9328-1284: The GameCube home console with a special GameCube – Game Boy Advance link cable . The Game Boy Advance was available in numerous colors and limited editions throughout its production. It was initially available in Arctic, Black, Orange (Japan Only), Fuchsia (translucent pink), Glacier (translucent blue), and Indigo. Later in the system's lifespan, additional colors and special editions were released, including: Red, Clear Orange/Black, Platinum, White, Gold (Japan Only), Hello Kitty edition (pink with Hello Kitty and logo on bezel ), The King of Fighters edition (black with images on bezel and buttons), Chobits edition (translucent light blue, with images on bezel and buttons), Battle Network Rockman EXE 2 (light blue with images on bezel), Mario Bros. edition (Glacier with Mario and Luigi on bezel), and Yomiuri Giants edition (Glacier with images on bezel). Several Pokémon -themed limited-edition systems were made available in Pokémon Center stores in Japan. These editions include: Gold Pokémon edition (Gold with Pikachu and Pichu on bezel), Suicune edition (blue/grey with greyscale Pikachu and Pichu on bezel, and
9504-563: The JRPG and visual novels genre to help keep a steady flow of mid-level releases coming to the system. Additionally, big games such as Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster sold well and roughly in-line with their home console counterparts. The heavier support from Japan, in turn, also helped support the system in the West as well, with many games in the Atelier , Ys , Danganronpa , Persona , and Trails series localized into English on
9680-735: The Master System , which gave Sega the ability to quickly create Game Gear games from its large library of games for the Master System. While never reaching the level of success enjoyed by Nintendo, the Game Gear proved to be a fairly durable competitor, lasting longer than any other Game Boy rivals. While the Game Gear is most frequently seen in black or navy blue, it was also released in a variety of additional colors: red, light blue, yellow, clear, and violet. All of these variations were released in small quantities and frequently only in
9856-417: The Nintendo 3DS , where it would sell millions of copies for Sony's main competitor. With support diminishing, Shahid Ahmad, Sony's Director of Strategic Content, instead began a new approach to software, through directly reaching out to, and making accommodations for, smaller, independent developers who had previously released games for mobile and PC platforms. While not completely reversing the sales trends of
10032-579: The Nintendo Entertainment System games Metroid and Kid Icarus . The Game Boy came under scrutiny by Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi , saying that the monochrome screen was too small, and the processing power was inadequate. The design team had felt that low initial cost and battery economy were more important concerns, and when compared to the Microvision, the Game Boy was a huge leap forward. Yokoi recognized that
10208-467: The PlayStation 2 's previous record of 20,000 units. In 2004, the system's sales in the United Kingdom surpassed one million units. On December 1, 2006, Nintendo of America released launch-to-date information indicating that the company had sold 33.6 million units of the Game Boy Advance series in the United States. In a Kotaku article published on January 18, 2008, Nintendo revealed that
10384-548: The PlayStation Network via the PlayStation Store , although not all games are released physically. Since its launch, digital-only releases have slowly become more prominent, partially in an effort to reduce production costs for release on the platform's comparatively smaller user-base, and partially due to the influx smaller-scale indie mobile phone games that have always been digital-only releases. Like
10560-552: The Wii U 's Virtual Console in April 2014. The first set of GBA games, including Advance Wars , Metroid Fusion , and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga , were released on April 3, 2014. All Virtual Console releases are single-player only, as they do not emulate multiplayer features enabled by Game Link cables. In February 2023, Nintendo added Game Boy Advance games to its Nintendo Switch Online service, exclusively to those with
10736-408: The eighth generation of video game consoles , it primarily competed with the Nintendo 3DS . The original model of the handheld includes a 5-inch (130 mm) OLED multi-touch capacitive touchscreen , a rear touchpad, two analog joysticks , and front and shoulder push-button input, and supports Bluetooth , Wi-Fi , and optional 3G . The Vita features a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU and
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#173277622783610912-418: The "Mixed" rating, and 0 in the "Bad" or "Awful" rating. Its initial launch sales were generally seen as positive, selling over 300,000 units in Japan, and 200,000 units in North America. However, a large dropoff occurred in both regions. In Japan, second-week sales dropped 78%, and leveled off at selling about 12,000 units per week. Similarly, sales dropped off to about 30,000 to 50,000 units sold per month for
11088-481: The "bitmap modes" which allow for rendering 3D geometry : Mode 3 has a single full-sized, fully-colored (32,768 colors) frame, Mode 4 provides two full-sized frames with 256 colors each, and Mode 5 provides two half-sized (160×128 pixels), fully-colored frames. Having two bitmaps allows "page-flipping" to avoid the artifacts that can sometimes appear when re-drawing a bitmap. While the bitmap modes were considered cutting-edge, most games avoided using them because they cost
11264-408: The "economics simply don't work with the traditional process". Sony addressed the "economics of Vita game development" issue with beginning on focusing on the fact that almost all PlayStation 4 games could be streamed and played through a Vita through Remote Play . Sony attempted to attach the device to the PS4 due to its extreme popularity; it took only a few weeks for the sales to surpass the sales of
11440-479: The "pea soup" monochromatic display of the original Game Boy. Although, like its predecessor, the Game Boy Pocket has no backlight to allow play in a darkened area, it did notably improve visibility and pixel response-time (mostly eliminating ghosting ). The first model of the Game Boy Pocket did not have an LED to show battery levels, but the feature was added due to public demand. The Game Boy Pocket
11616-506: The "portrait" form factor (designed by Gunpei Yokoi ), the Game Boy Advance has a "landscape" form factor, putting the buttons to the sides of the device instead of below the screen. It was designed by the French designer Gwénaël Nicolas and his Tokyo-based design studio Curiosity Inc. Nintendo revealed the Game Boy Advance to the public on August 24, 2000, along with the Japanese and North American launch dates and 10 launch games . The GBA
11792-414: The 1970s and early 1980s. These electronic devices are capable of playing only a single game, they fit in the palm of the hand or on a tabletop, and they may make use of a variety of video displays such as LED , VFD , or LCD . In 1978, handheld electronic games were described by Popular Electronics magazine as "nonvideo electronic games" and "non-TV games" as distinct from devices that required use of
11968-431: The 4 million mark at the end of 2012. Views on the hardware dropped to more moderate levels in 2013, after the platform's initial sales lulls. Surveys in Japan showed that consumers were not purchasing the device due to its high retail price and perceived lack of software variety, and that current Vita owners only showed a 46% rate of approval for the device and its software library. Similarly, many Western critics felt that
12144-454: The Asian market, possibly as late as 1994. The total number of games released for the system remains unknown. Gamate games were designed for stereo sound, but the console is only equipped with a mono speaker. The Game Gear is the third color handheld console, after the Lynx and the TurboExpress; produced by Sega. Released in Japan in 1990 and in North America and Europe in 1991, it is based on
12320-399: The Asian market. Following Sega's success with the Game Gear, they began development on a successor during the early 1990s, which was intended to feature a touchscreen interface, many years before the Nintendo DS . However, such a technology was very expensive at the time, and the handheld itself was estimated to have cost around $ 289 were it to be released. Sega eventually chose to shelve
12496-477: The GBA, GBA SP, and the Game Boy Micro combined have sold 80.72 million units worldwide. The original GP32 was released in 2001 by the South Korean company Game Park a few months after the launch of the Game Boy Advance. It featured a 32-bit CPU, 133 MHz processor, MP3 and Divx player, and e-book reader. SmartMedia cards were used for storage, and could hold up to 128mb of anything downloaded through
12672-496: The Game Boy Advance, with options to play such games on either their standard aspect ratios or a stretched fullscreen. Game Boy Advance cartridges are compatible with Nintendo DS models that support them with a dedicated GBA cartridge slot beneath the touch screen (specifically the original model and the Nintendo DS Lite ), although they do not support multiplayer or features involving the use of GBA accessories due to
12848-412: The Game Boy needed a killer app —at least one game that would define the console, and persuade customers to buy it. In June 1988, Minoru Arakawa , then-CEO of Nintendo of America saw a demonstration of the game Tetris at a trade show. Nintendo purchased the rights for the game, and packaged it with the Game Boy system as a launch title . It was almost an immediate hit. By the end of the year more than
13024-424: The Game Boy, such as the Game Boy Advance. The Game Boy Color was a response to pressure from game developers for a new system, as they felt that the Game Boy, even in its latest incarnation, the Game Boy Pocket, was insufficient. The resulting product was backward compatible, a first for a handheld console system, and leveraged the large library of games and great installed base of the predecessor system. This became
13200-526: The LCD-based Microvision , designed by Smith Engineering and distributed by Milton-Bradley, became the first handheld game console and the first to use interchangeable game cartridges. The Microvision game Cosmic Hunter (1981) also introduced the concept of a directional pad on handheld gaming devices, and is operated by using the thumb to manipulate the on-screen character in any of four directions. In 1979, Gunpei Yokoi , traveling on
13376-539: The Neo Geo Pocket Color was dropped from both the US and European markets, purportedly due to commercial failure. The system seemed well on its way to being a success in the U.S. It was more successful than any Game Boy competitor since Sega 's Game Gear , but was hurt by several factors, such as SNK's infamous lack of communication with third-party developers, and anticipation of the Game Boy Advance. The decision to ship U.S. games in cardboard boxes in
13552-519: The PS3 and PS4, the Vita contains Trophy support for games. The system was designed so that it would be easy for developers to extract PS3 game assets and in turn use them to make Vita versions of games. Prior to the Vita's release, several third-party studios showcased tech demos of the device by exporting existing assets from their PlayStation 3 counterpart and then rendering them on the device, high budget examples including Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of
13728-564: The PS3". The Vita's internal battery has between 3–5 hours of power for game playing, depending on the processing power required for the game, screen brightness, sound level and network connections, as well as other factors. Additionally, the battery can supply about five hours for video watching, and up to nine hours of music listening with the screen off. The system does allow for additional external battery solutions as well. The PlayStation Vita has 512 MB of system RAM and 128 MB of VRAM. The amount of RAM allows cross-game chat to be used on
13904-491: The PS3] because the battery would last five minutes and it would probably set fire to your pants". Its power was later described by Sony engineers as about halfway between the PSP and PS3. As rumors had suggested, the device was designed to present "the best of both worlds" between mobile and handheld gaming, including a 5-inch OLED touchscreen, a rear touchpad coupled with physical buttons and dual analog sticks. Sony also revealed that
14080-678: The PS4 as well, with Vita/PS4 releases becoming common due to the spread of their userbases – Vita versions for Japan, where the Vita was larger in its initial years, and PS4 versions of games for North America and Europe, where the PS4 userbase was substantially larger. Few PlayStation 2 titles were ported to the Vita due to the PS2's complicated infrastructure – games that did, such as Final Fantasy X/X2 Remaster and Persona 4 Golden required extensive reworking, or were based on their PS3 counterparts, such as Jak and Daxter Collection , Ratchet and Clank Collection , and Sly Cooper Collection . Towards
14256-660: The Patriots , Yakuza 4 , and Lost Planet . While none of these particular high budget tech demos materialized into actual game releases, and few big-budget Western games would be made for both outside of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale , many Japanese development teams would go on to develop mid-level games that would release for both platforms, including the first two games from Falcom's Trails of Cold Steel series, Compile Hearts' original Hyperdimension Neptunia trilogy, and many entries from Tecmo Koei's Atelier and Dynasty Warriors series. The trend continued on
14432-449: The Vita contains a multitude of input methods . The device features a " super oval " shape similar to the design of the original PlayStation Portable, with a 5-inch (130 mm) qHD OLED capacitive touchscreen in the centre of the device. The device features two analog sticks, a D-pad , a set of standard PlayStation face buttons ( [REDACTED] , [REDACTED] , [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] ), two shoulder buttons (L and R),
14608-460: The Vita had been released too late into the main PlayStation console cycle and too close to the PlayStation 4 's release in November 2013. As one of Sony's flagship products, many of their first-party developers had put more focus on games for that system rather than the Vita as a result. The lack of interest from Sony's first-party teams reverberated to third-party developers, who felt the Vita
14784-544: The Vita model revision, the PCH-2000, which was generally well received by critics as well for addressing a number of prior complaints about the system, which included a price and size reduction. However, reviewers felt more mixed on the decision to change from OLED to LCD screen in the revised model, with some feeling it led to a minor downgrade in image quality. While not giving specific figures, Sony stated that Vita sales beat projections in North America in 2014, which it
14960-407: The Vita over the course of almost two years. In July 2014, Yoshida stated that the company would focus on it less as a dedicated handheld video game console, and more on its combination of uses, stating "it's not about individual Vita games any more. It's more about how Vita can have multiple uses – with PS4 Remote Play , PS3 games with PS Now , and the dedicated games. The whole ecosystem with PS4 at
15136-429: The Vita would be discontinued in 2019, ending its hardware production. Production of new physical Vita games in Europe and America ceased by the end of Sony's 2018 fiscal year, which ended on March 31, 2019. At the time of the announcement, USgamer estimated that the Vita userbase had grown to approximately 16 million units. Production of Vita hardware officially ended on March 1, 2019. In March 2021, Sony announced that
15312-460: The Vita's actual hardware design and operating system, but expressed some concern on its practicality, namely competing in 2012 onward, with a large size and price, where mobile phones with large screens and cheap games were prevalent as an alternative. As of its initial Western launch in February 2012, out of 44 professional critic reviews, 9 fell in the "Great" rating, 29 in the "Good" rating, 6 in
15488-401: The Vita's online storefront would be closing on August 27, 2021, making it impossible to purchase digital games for the platform, though still allowing for the download of previously purchased games; this decision was later reversed following consumer feedback. In line with Sony's ambition to combine aspects of traditional video game consoles with mobile devices like smartphones and tablets ,
15664-606: The Vita's web browser. Unlike the PSP and PlayStation 3, the PlayStation Vita does not use the XrossMediaBar interface. Instead, it uses a touchscreen-based UI dubbed LiveArea , which includes various social networking features via the PlayStation Network . Each game or application is represented by its own circle icon, and selecting it leads the user to a panel with multiple options present, including running software itself, going to its respective website through
15840-436: The Vita, according to Phillips. While some technologists in Sony had cautioned that mobile device computational power could outpace current consoles around 2010–2011, the design of the Vita did not incorporate this caution. Thus, the Vita was released at the same time that mobile gaming was greatly expanding, losing potential consumers to that market. John Koller, the former vice president of marketing at Sony, also believed that
16016-483: The Vita, or made playable through the system's backward compatibility with digital PSP games. While the system managed to stay afloat as a minor success, other issues continued to persist, including the high price of the system in comparison to its main competitor, the Nintendo 3DS , and its sibling device, the PS3, the high price of its memory cards used for game and data storage, and the increasing popularity of smartphones and tablets . In August 2013, Sony addressed
16192-405: The Vita, some initially pre-loaded on the device, while others are available via Sony's PlayStation Store . Pre-loaded apps include an internet browser , a "Content Manager" app for monitoring data saved to the device, an email client , a music app, a photo app, and a video player. The system's web browser supports HTML5 , cookies, and JavaScript , but not Adobe Flash . Also included was "Near",
16368-434: The Vita, the lower costs of making or porting smaller-budget games made it easier for developers to make a profit on the system's smaller userbase, and in turn, increased consumer attention on the console, keeping the device afloat. Fez , Spelunky , Hotline Miami , and OlliOlli all found success with releases on Vita. Ahmad also maintained interest in the device by directly interacting with consumers on social media;
16544-430: The Vita, with the Vita being used for the controller input, and the image and sound being transmitted to the Vita's screen and speakers instead of a television . The end result is similar to what a Wii U console does with its GamePad controller through Off-TV Play . The Vita technically has Remote Play functionality with the PlayStation 3 as well, though very few PS3 games supported the feature due to limitations with
16720-495: The Vita/PSP line of handhelds. With the success of the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck handhelds moving into the 2020s, publications questioned Sony's decision to abandon the market. In 2023, Sony announced "Project Q", a controller with an 8-inch screen for the PlayStation 5 that would replicate the experience of remote play on a Vita or Off-TV Play of the Wii U GamePad . The product was later named PlayStation Portal and
16896-486: The West, combined with strong support from mid-level Japanese companies, helped keep the platform afloat. Though this led to less diversity in its game library, it strengthened support in JRPGs , visual novels , and Western-developed indie games . This built moderate sales in Japan and a smaller yet passionate userbase in the West. Though Sony has not released exact sales figures, estimates are around 15 to 16 million units. In
17072-530: The WonderSwan's success in Japan was the fact that Bandai managed to get a deal with Square to port over the original Famicom Final Fantasy games with improved graphics and controls. However, with the popularity of the Game Boy Advance and the reconciliation between Square and Nintendo, the WonderSwan Color and its successor, the SwanCrystal quickly lost its competitive advantage . The 2000s saw
17248-485: The absence of the GBA's external peripheral port on the DS. They can also be used to unlock original content found in Nintendo DS games. The Nintendo DSi and Nintendo DSi XL lack a GBA cartridge slot, and therefore do not support backward compatibility with the GBA. Since the Game Boy Advance was discontinued, many of its games have been re-released via digital distribution on later Nintendo consoles, mainly in
17424-545: The battery to change game cartridges. The most well known of these was " sidetalking ", or the act of placing the phone speaker and receiver on an edge of the device instead of one of the flat sides, causing the user to appear as if they are speaking into a taco . The N-Gage QD was later released to address the design flaws of the original. However, certain features available in the original N-Gage, including MP3 playback, FM radio reception, and USB connectivity were removed. Game Boy Advance The Game Boy Advance ( GBA )
17600-446: The battery-hungry alternatives to the Game Boy, these batteries employed a nickel-cadmium process and had to be completely discharged before being recharged to ensure maximum efficiency; lead-acid batteries could be used with automobile circuit limiters (cigarette lighter plug devices); but the batteries had mediocre portability. The later NiMH batteries, which do not share this requirement for maximum efficiency, were not released until
17776-467: The center, the Vita's a part of that." Sony later announced that the Vita will have PlayStation VR integration in the form of a second screen as well. Open beta trials for PlayStation Now functionality on the PS Vita began on October 14, 2014, in North America. The PlayStation TV , released across late 2013 and 2014, also aimed to expand the system's userbase by allowing for Vita games to be played on
17952-403: The company in Japan. The system, only known by its code name "Next Generation Portable" (NGP), was announced to be a handheld gaming device that aimed for PlayStation 3 quality visuals, which was later clarified to not be taken at a literal level because, according to David Coombes, platform research manager at Sony Computer Entertainment America , "Well, it's not going to run at 2 GHz [like
18128-402: The console to be rotated manually due to its nature as a tilt sensor game. The GBA is the last Nintendo handheld system to bear the Game Boy name. Games developed for it are incompatible with older Game Boy systems, and each game's box carries a label indicating that the game is "not compatible with other Game Boy systems." Conversely, games designed for older Game Boy systems are compatible with
18304-570: The device afloat in the West, in Japan, no such measures were necessary, as the Vita maintained moderate hardware sales. While it was routinely outsold by its main competitor, the Nintendo 3DS, the Vita still managed to be one of the top consoles sold overall, partially due to Japan's preference towards handheld gaming. Strong support by Japanese developers also helped, with companies such as Bandai Namco , Falcom , Koei Tecmo , 5pb , Compile Heart , Spike Chunsoft , and Atlus releasing many games in
18480-423: The device along with any standard micro USB cable. The model was released in six colors in Japan (white, black, light blue, lime green, pink, and khaki), although it was only released in black and light blue in North America and Europe. The PlayStation TV is a non-portable variant of the Vita; instead of featuring its own display screen like a handheld video game console , it connects to a television via HDMI like
18656-424: The device would be using a mix of retail and digital distribution of games. Further details were announced at Game Developers Conference 2011, including that Sony would be dropping the PSP's UMD disc format in favor of small game cartridges of 2 GB or 4 GB size variants. along with two cameras, facial detection, head detection and tracking capabilities. On June 6, 2011, at E3 2011 , Sony announced that
18832-399: The device's official name would be the PlayStation Vita, with the word "vita" being Latin for "life". Mark Cerny was the lead architect of the device. Despite reports of the 2011 earthquakes in Japan delaying the release of the device, Sony reconfirmed that it was on track for a late 2011 release in Japan and a February 2012 release date for other major regions of the world. The release date
19008-513: The device, a report later confirmed by Mortal Kombat Executive Producer Shaun Himmerick. By November, Senior Vice President of Electronic Arts , Patrick Soderlund, confirmed that he had seen that the PlayStation Portable successor existed, but could not confirm details. In the same month, VG247 released pictures of an early prototype version showing a PSP Go -like slide-screen design along with two analog sticks, two cameras and
19184-423: The device, though in smaller number than in past. The last major Sony-developed title, Freedom Wars , still found success, selling over 188,000 copies in its first week of release in Japan. The debut was the highest Sony game debut for the system, and the second highest, only to Namco Bandai's late 2013 release of God Eater 2 on the platform. In September 2015, Yoshida stated that Sony had no current plans for
19360-412: The device. At the 2016 Game Developers Conference , research analyst firm EEDAR estimated the sales of the Vita to be about at 10 million units sold through the end of 2015. Multi-platform releases with the PS4 have also incidentally helped sustain the Vita's stream of software, even in the west, through 2016 and 2017; games receive a Vita version more to appeal to Japan's larger Vita user-base, and receive
19536-508: The device. In March 2016, Sony announced that instead, it would be forming a new company, "Forward Works", and be instead concentrating on bringing PlayStation-based games to mobile platforms like iOS and Android . Despite Sony's focus on the PS4 and mobile for the future, the Vita still continued to receive substantial third party company game support in the way of Japanese-style role-playing games and visual novels and Western-style indie video games through 2017. Minecraft in particular
19712-405: The end of 2015, research firm EEDAR estimated the sales of the Vita worldwide to be around 10 million. Despite the smaller userbase, the platform continued to be viable for game releases into 2017 due to the high attach rate of software sold per hardware user. Limited Run Games and various indie game developers praised the platform for its wide selection of more original and niche video games, and
19888-432: The end of 2015. The Vita's design was intended to meld the experience of big-budget, dedicated video game platforms with the then up-and-coming trend of mobile gaming as seen on smart phones and tablets . However, in the year after the device's successful launch, sales of the hardware and its bigger budget games stalled, threatening to end its lifespan. A concentrated effort to attract smaller independent developers in
20064-423: The end of its lifespan, Vita versions of games began to be cancelled, in favor of PS4 or Nintendo Switch releases. The device is backward compatible with most PSP games; however, its lack of a UMD disc drive limits this capability to those titles which have been digitally released on the PlayStation Network via the PlayStation Store , but not physical PSP games or films. The Vita is also backward compatible with
20240-556: The existence of a "PSP 2". Reports arose during the Tokyo Game Show that the device was unveiled internally during a private meeting during mid-September held at Sony Computer Entertainment's headquarters in Aoyama, Tokyo. Shortly after, reports of development kits for the handheld had reportedly already been shipped to numerous video game developers including both first-party and third-party developers to start making games for
20416-402: The first handheld electronic game with the release of Auto Race . Later, several companies—including Coleco and Milton Bradley —made their own single-game, lightweight table-top or handheld electronic game devices. The first commercial successful handheld console was Merlin from 1978, which sold more than 5 million units. The first handheld game console with interchangeable cartridges
20592-411: The first two, dropping the price to $ 199 in North America and €199 in Europe, and cutting the suggested retail price of the memory cards as well. The price cut also coincided with the release of a slight redesign of the system, the "PS Vita 2000" model. The redesign included making the system 20% thinner and 15% lighter, while adding 1 GB of internal storage, and an extra hour of battery life. However,
20768-523: The first week of its North American launch in June, the Game Boy Advance sold 500,000 units, making it the fastest-selling video game console in the United States at the time. In response to strong sales, Nintendo ordered 100,000 units to ship to retail stores, hoping to ship another half million of them by the end of June. The Game Boy Advance also became the fastest-selling system in the United Kingdom, selling 81,000 units in its first week of release and beating
20944-578: The following weeks. Similarly, in the United States, the system debuted with 200,000 units sold in the first month, before slinking down into an amount of about 50,000 a month. 1.2 million units were reported as sold as of February 26, 2012 – after it had launched in most regions. The system continued to get high-profile games over the course of 2012, including Gravity Rush , LittleBigPlanet PS Vita , Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed , Persona 4 Golden , Assassin's Creed III: Liberation , and Call of Duty: Black Ops: Declassified . Despite this,
21120-615: The form of emulation . As part of an Ambassador Program for early adopters of the Nintendo 3DS system, ten GBA games, along with ten Nintendo Entertainment System games, were made available free for players who bought a 3DS system before the price drop on August 12, 2011. Unlike other Virtual Console games for the system, features such as the Home menu or save states are missing, since the games are running natively instead of via emulation. In January 2014, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata announced that Game Boy Advance games would be released on
21296-420: The game Tales of Hearts R was localized into English only because it was number one in a survey of games desired on the platform. Sony continued to support the system with games through 2013 as well, albeit lesser so, with titles such as Killzone: Mercenary and Tearaway , along with a handful of other Western-developed ports such as FIFA 13 and Rayman Legends . While the focus on indie games kept
21472-474: The game (usually for the Pokémon series; Pokémon Emerald , for example, being a clear emerald green). Others have special built-in features, including rumble features ( Drill Dozer ), tilt sensors ( WarioWare: Twisted! , Yoshi's Universal Gravitation ), and solar sensors ( Boktai ). In Japan, the final game to be released on the system was Final Fantasy VI Advance on November 30, 2006, which
21648-590: The handheld would first be released in Japan in August 2000, with the North American and European launch dates slated for the end of the same year. On August 21, 2000, IGN showed images of a GBA development kit running a demonstrational port of Yoshi's Story , and on August 22, pre-production images of the GBA were revealed in Famitsu magazine in Japan. Unlike the Game Boy and Game Boy Color, which have
21824-546: The idea and instead release the Genesis Nomad , a handheld version of the Genesis , as the successor. The Watara Supervision was released in 1992 in an attempt to compete with the Nintendo Game Boy. The first model was designed very much like a Game Boy, but it is grey in color and has a slightly larger screen. The second model was made with a hinge across the center and can be bent slightly to provide greater comfort for
22000-499: The internet, seeing if there are downloadable updates available for the software, and seeing a newsfeed -like list of activities related to it, such as installing it or obtaining trophies, for both the user and others the user has interacted with recently. According to review aggregator Metacritic , the Vita's original hardware release was generally well-received with critics, although a few concerns persisted as well. Metacritic editor Jason Dietz noted that reviewers tended to praise
22176-477: The late 1990s, years after the Game Gear, Atari Lynx, and original Game Boy had been discontinued. During the time when technologically superior handhelds had strict technical limitations, batteries had a very low mAh rating since batteries with heavy power density were not yet available. Modern game systems such as the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable have rechargeable Lithium-Ion batteries with proprietary shapes. Other seventh-generation consoles, such as
22352-403: The less-powerful PS3 hardware. More PS3 games are available for streaming on the Vita through Sony's cloud gaming service PlayStation Now , though they are streamed over the internet in the form of cloud computing rather than directly from a physical PS3 console. First implemented in 2014, the service was announced to be discontinued on the Vita on August 15, 2017. A revised model of the Vita
22528-470: The low sales through 2013 would lead to an early death for the product. From 2013 onward, Sony was able to reverse the trajectory of the system by changing focus, aiming to be more of a niche product than one with mass market appeal – focusing more on small Western mobile phone games and mid-level Japanese developed games, and attaching it to the rise of popularity of its PlayStation 4 platform with its remote play connectivity functions. Sony also released
22704-630: The majority of the PS one Classics – the group of PlayStation 1 games Sony has made available digitally for download, and PlayStation Minis – small-budget downloadable titles originally created for the PSP and PS3. Games from Sony's PlayStation Mobile initiative had initially been compatible but were removed when the service was shut down in September 2015. In Japan, select downloadable PC Engine and PocketStation titles became backward compatible as well. A number of applications are available to run on
22880-490: The market, Yokoi designed the series of LCD-based games to include a digital time display in the corner of the screen. For later, more complicated Game & Watch games, Yokoi invented a cross shaped directional pad or "D-pad" for control of on-screen characters. Yokoi also included his directional pad on the NES controllers, and the cross-shaped thumb controller soon became standard on game console controllers and ubiquitous across
23056-457: The original Game Boy or at 8.388608 MHz when playing games designed for the Game Boy Color. The SoC also contains a 2 KB "bootstrap" ROM which is used to start up the device in CGB mode. The CPU CGB incorporates an updated version of Nintendo's venerable Picture Processing Unit (PPU), which was used in the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Super Nintendo Entertainment System . The PPU
23232-596: The original Game Boy. It can also give the sprites and backgrounds separate colors, for a total of more than four colors. The Neo Geo Pocket Color (or NGPC) was released in 1999 in Japan, and later that year in the United States and Europe. It is a 16-bit color handheld game console designed by SNK , the maker of the Neo Geo home console and arcade machine. It came after SNK's original Neo Geo Pocket monochrome handheld, which debuted in 1998 in Japan. In 2000 following SNK's purchase by Japanese Pachinko manufacturer Aruze,
23408-444: The other, for an early 3D effect . In 1983, Takara Tomy 's Tomytronic 3D simulates 3D by having two LCD panels that were lit by external light through a window on top of the device, making it the first dedicated home video 3D hardware. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the beginnings of the modern-day handheld game console industry, after the demise of the Microvision. As backlit LCD game consoles with color graphics consume
23584-402: The platform in the same way. The PSP ended up being a mixed result for the company. It was seen as a success in that it was the only handheld video game platform that had ever significantly competed with Nintendo for market share, with almost 80 million units sold in its lifespan, roughly the same amount as Nintendo's Game Boy Advance had during the sixth generation of video game consoles . This
23760-421: The platform's later years, Sony promoted the PlayStation Vita's ability to work in conjunction with its other gaming products, such as Remote Play of PlayStation 4 games, similar to the Wii U 's function of Off-TV Play . The platform stalled in 2017 upon the release of the Nintendo Switch , and was completely discontinued in 2019. The system is regarded as a commercial failure in the video game industry , and
23936-440: The previous Game Boy Advance models, the Game Boy Micro is unable to support Game Boy and Game Boy Color titles. The Game Boy Micro did not make much of an impact in the video game market, as it was overshadowed by the Nintendo DS , which also played Game Boy Advance games through the GBA cartridge slot. Upon its North American release, IGN praised the Game Boy Advance's graphical capabilities and battery life, but criticized
24112-560: The previous generations. This includes the Super Mario Advance series, and the system's backward compatibility with all earlier Game Boy titles. Though most GBA games primarily employ 2D graphics, developers have ambitiously designed some 3D GBA games that push the limits of the hardware, including first-person shooters like a port of Doom , racing games like V-Rally 3 , and even platformers , like Asterix & Obelix XXL . Some cartridges are colored to resemble
24288-530: The redesign did remove the OLED screen in favor of a cheaper LCD screen. Towards the end of 2013, around the launch of Sony's next video game device, the home video game console the PlayStation 4 , Sony began making comments in regard to the change in focus with the Vita. Yoshida stated that Sony would be releasing fewer first party games for the platform. Sony Computer Entertainment's Product Planning & Platform Software Innovation Director Don Mesa stated that
24464-470: The same time, Sony entered the handheld market as well. In 2004, it released the PlayStation Portable (PSP) to compete with the Nintendo DS as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles . After a slow start in the worldwide market, it was invigorated in Japan with multiple releases in the Monster Hunter series. With the series being less popular in western regions, it failed to revive
24640-581: The same year—down to 12 and then 10 million units sold. With higher-profile games not pushing the system sales enough in 2012, big third-party companies like Ubisoft and Activision started reducing or eliminating support for the system, especially in the West. Additionally, while the Monster Hunter series had significantly boosted the sales of the PSP, its absence instead hurt the Vita. Its developer, Capcom , had decided to release Monster Hunter Tri and future Monster Hunter games exclusively on
24816-410: The strong respective sales of them. In mid-2017, Glixel estimated that approximately 15 million units of the system had been sold, while by September 2018, USGamer estimated it had grown to about 16 million units. In a 2021 retrospective by The Verge , Sony employees attributed several factors to the Vita's poor sales in contrast to the PSP, which had an estimated 80 million sales in its lifetime;
24992-583: The suggested price of $ 99.99 and the 15 launch games . Nintendo estimated that around 60 new games would be released by the end of 2001. The Game Boy Advance uses a custom system on a chip (SoC), integrating the CPU and other major components into a single package, named the CPU ;AGB by Nintendo and manufactured by the Sharp Corporation . The CPU AGB contains two completely different CPUs:
25168-605: The system every year until 2004's Winter Games . The TurboExpress is a portable version of the TurboGrafx, released in 1990 for $ 249.99. Its Japanese equivalent is the PC Engine GT . It is the most advanced handheld of its time and can play all the TurboGrafx-16 's games (which are on a small, credit-card sized media called HuCards ). It has a 66 mm (2.6 in.) screen, the same as the original Game Boy, but in
25344-486: The system still only managed to sell 4 million units worldwide in its first 10 months on the market, and estimated by analysts to only be at 6 million units sold after two years of availability. After 2012, Sony ceased releasing direct sales figures of the Vita, instead opting to release combined sales figures with it and the PSP. Still, the system under-performed; while Sony projected selling 16 million units of combined Vita and PSP systems, it had to slash its forecast twice in
25520-425: The system with a 7.0 out of 10, praising its graphical performance and backward compatibility, but being considerably critical of the system's lack of a backlit screen, noting that it makes it "nearly impossible" to play in normal lighting conditions. Gladstone ultimately recommended the sleeker and backlit Game Boy Advance SP instead, despite noting that the cheaper price of the original model may "appeal to gamers on
25696-407: The system's future revised models. Internally, the device features a custom system on chip with a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor and a quad-core GPU SGX543MP4+ . Sony has stated that the Vita generally runs well under its full clock speed due to overheating and battery consumption issues that would ensue, instead placing its processing power "around halfway between the current PSP and
25872-560: The system's release overall. The Vita launched in the west with 25 titles, including original titles such as Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Wipeout 2048 , and ports of games such as FIFA 12 and Rayman Origins . The sales of the Vita started strong at launch but then stalled and greatly underperformed. The Vita had a strong launch in Japan, selling over 300,000 units in its first week of availability, though figures shortly afterwards shrunk down 78% to under 73,000 sold in its second week, and then settled into about 12,000 sold per week in
26048-474: The system's shoulder button placement and noted the system's high price tag which "may be a tad bit too high to swallow", ultimately scoring the system with an "8.0" out of 10. They also pointed out the system's lack of a backlight which occasionally got in the way of playing games. ABC News praised the Game Boy Advance's graphics, grip, and larger screen, stating that "You've never had as much fun playing old games." Reviewing for CNET , Darren Gladstone scored
26224-607: The system. Software for the PlayStation Vita is distributed on a proprietary flash memory card called "PlayStation Vita game card" rather than on Universal Media Discs (UMDs) as used by the PlayStation Portable. The shape and size of the card itself is very similar to an SD card . 5–10% of the game card's space is reserved for game save data and patches. The PS Vita is incompatible with standard memory cards , such as SD cards , and instead stores data on proprietary PS Vita memory cards, which are available in sizes of 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB. Initially,
26400-497: The system. The two cameras feature the abilities of face detection, head detection, and head tracking. The platform also launched with a model with 3G mobile data support, which required a separate data plan through a data provider. The 3G service has been partnered with NTT DoCoMo in Japan, AT&T in the US, Rogers in Canada and Vodafone in Europe and Australia. The 3G model was discontinued in 2013 and not made available in
26576-446: The two games were so successful that according to Katz, "these simple electronic handheld games turned into a '$ 400 million category.'" Mattel would later win the honor of being recognized by the industry for innovation in handheld game device displays. Soon, other manufacturers including Coleco , Parker Brothers , Milton Bradley , Entex , and Bandai began following up with their own tabletop and handheld electronic games. In 1979
26752-416: The use of commodity micro SD storage media in conjunction with a modified console appeared on the market. All games developed for the PlayStation 4, with the exception of games requiring the use of special peripherals such as PlayStation Camera , are playable on the Vita through Remote Play . With the use of a Vita, PS4, and PS4 game, this allows a PS4 game to be run on the PS4, but its output transmitted to
26928-447: The user. While the system did enjoy a modest degree of success, it never impacted the sales of Nintendo or Sega. The Supervision was redesigned a final time as "The Magnum". Released in limited quantities it was roughly equivalent to the Game Boy Pocket . It was available in three colors: yellow, green and grey. Watara designed many of the games themselves, but did receive some third party support, most notably from Sachen . A TV adapter
27104-607: The video game industry since. When Yokoi began designing Nintendo's first handheld game console, he came up with a device that married the elements of his Game & Watch devices and the Famicom console, including both items' D-pad controller. The result was the Nintendo Game Boy. In 1982, the Bandai LCD Solarpower was the first solar-powered gaming device. Some of its games, such as the horror -themed game Terror House , features two LCD panels , one stacked on
27280-431: The year after launch in North America. Overall, Sony fell far short of the worldwide sales targets of 10 million Vitas sold by the end of March 2013. The device sold 1.2 million units as of the end of February 2012, 4 million by the end of 2012, and were only estimated by analysts to have reached 6 million by the end of 2013, figures that have not been confirmed due to Sony's ceasing to release Vita sales figures after hitting
27456-419: The zooming and scaling of sprites. The Lynx can also be turned upside down to accommodate left-handed players. However, all these features came at a very high price point, which drove consumers to seek cheaper alternatives. The Lynx is also very unwieldy, consumes batteries very quickly, and lacked the third-party support enjoyed by its competitors. Due to its high price, short battery life, production shortages,
27632-497: Was also the final game published by Nintendo on the system. In North America, the last game for the system was Samurai Deeper Kyo , released on February 12, 2008. In Europe, the last game for the system is The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night , released on November 2, 2007. The Japan-only Rhythm Tengoku , the first game in what would eventually become known outside Japan as the Rhythm Heaven / Rhythm Paradise series,
27808-549: Was available in both PAL and NTSC formats that could transfer the Supervision's black-and-white palette to 4 colors, similar in some regards to the Super Game Boy from Nintendo. The Hartung Game Master is an obscure handheld released at an unknown point in the early 1990s. Its graphics fidelity was much lower than most of its contemporaries, displaying just 64x64 pixels. It was available in black, white, and purple, and
27984-462: Was followed in 2003 by the Game Boy Advance SP , a redesigned model with a frontlit screen and clamshell form factor. A newer revision of the SP with a backlit screen was released in 2005. A miniaturized redesign, the Game Boy Micro , was released in September 2005. As of June 2010 , 81.51 million units of the Game Boy Advance series have been sold worldwide. Its successor, the Nintendo DS ,
28160-568: Was frequently rebranded by its distributors, such as Delplay, Videojet and Systema. The exact number of games released is not known, but is likely around 20. The system most frequently turns up in Europe and Australia. By this time, the lack of significant development in Nintendo 's product line began allowing more advanced systems such as the Neo Geo Pocket Color and the WonderSwan Color to be developed. The Nomad
28336-514: Was happy and surprised with, sometimes even falling out of stock. Similar response was found in the UK as well. The platform has been considered to have sold well in Japan, where it outsold the PS4 in 2015, and reached 5 million units sold in 2016 according to sales tracker Media Create . It also obtained million-selling software in the same year, with the Japanese Vita release of Minecraft . By
28512-551: Was horizontal in orientation and like the Game Boy, required 4 AA batteries. Unlike many later Game Boy clones, its internal components were professionally assembled (no "glop-top" chips). Unfortunately the system's fatal flaw is its screen. Even by the standards of the day, its screen is rather difficult to use, suffering from similar ghosting problems that were common complaints with the first generation Game Boys. Likely because of this fact sales were quite poor, and Bitcorp closed by 1992. However, new games continued to be published for
28688-432: Was intended to address some common complaints about the original Game Boy Advance, which had been criticized for being somewhat uncomfortable to use, especially due to a dark screen. On September 19, 2005, Nintendo released a new version of the SP, model AGS-101, that features a brighter backlit display. The switch that controls the backlight now toggles between two brightness levels. In September 2005, Nintendo released
28864-479: Was later narrowed down to a December 17, 2011, release in Japan, and a February 22, 2012, release date for America and Europe, although a limited edition was released a week earlier in North America on February 15, 2012, which included the 3G/Wi-Fi model of the device, the game Little Deviants , a limited-edition carry case, and a 4 GB memory card. The Vita launched with 26 titles in Japan, with Sony announcing that there were over 100 titles in development prior to
29040-484: Was not a new software platform and played the same software as the original Game Boy model. The Game.com (pronounced in TV commercials as "game com", not "game dot com", and not capitalized in marketing material) is a handheld game console released by Tiger Electronics in September 1997. It featured many new ideas for handheld consoles and was aimed at an older target audience, sporting PDA-style features and functions such as
29216-656: Was not satisfied with the outcome and shelved further development by 1997. However, Nintendo was under pressure from other companies who were introducing next-generation handhelds, including the Neo Geo Pocket and WonderSwan . To maintain consumer interest in the Game Boy, the company decided to pair the color screen they had been testing for Project Atlantis with a faster version of the existing Game Boy's 8-bit processor. The Game Boy Color launched in 1998. Still under pressure from its competitors more technically advanced handhelds, Nintendo quickly started developing
29392-466: Was not worth the effort to develop for over the upcoming PlayStation 4, leaving the Vita without a strong software library. Koller believed that if the Vita had launched earlier into the PlayStation 3 's lifecycle, they would have been able to capture more interest from developers during that time and build out a more compelling library for the Vita. The Vita was considered a commercial failure for Sony. In 2018, Sony announced there would be no successor to
29568-493: Was released in Japan in November 2013, in North America in October 2014, and in Europe on November 14, 2014. The device did not fare well and had a short retail shelf life in North America and Europe, where it was discontinued at the end of 2015. Physical software for the Vita is distributed on a proprietary flash memory card called "PlayStation Vita game card". All Vita games are also made available to be downloaded digitally on
29744-460: Was released in Japan on October 10, 2013, in Europe on February 7, 2014 and in North America on May 6, 2014. The revised model, officially called the PCH-2000 series and commonly referred to as the PS Vita Slim, is 20% thinner and 15% lighter compared to the original model. While it largely maintains the original's overall structure and layout, the original's OLED screen has been replaced with
29920-660: Was released in November 2004 and is backward compatible with Game Boy Advance software. When the original Game Boy was first introduced in 1989, many people questioned why Nintendo had chosen to develop a monochrome handheld, considering competitors like the Lynx and Game Gear boasted color screens. However, Nintendo's gamble paid off. The rivals' color displays, while visually impressive, were criticized for their poor battery life and bulky size. The Game Boy, in contrast, offered superior portability and longevity, propelling it to immense popularity. Publicly, Nintendo pledged to develop
30096-510: Was released in October 1995 in North America only. The release was six years into the market span of the Genesis, with an existing library of more than 500 Genesis games. According to former Sega of America research and development head Joe Miller, the Nomad was not intended to be the Game Gear's replacement; he believed that there was little planning from Sega of Japan for the new handheld. Sega
30272-479: Was released on November 15, 2023. XGP Handheld game console A handheld game console , or simply handheld console , is a small, portable self-contained video game console with a built-in screen, game controls and speakers. Handheld game consoles are smaller than home video game consoles and contain the console, screen, speakers, and controls in one unit, allowing players to carry them and play them at any time or place. In 1976, Mattel introduced
30448-527: Was significantly outsold by the Nintendo 3DS. No direct successor was released by Sony, though in 2023, a similar remote play accessory, the PlayStation Portal , was released for the PlayStation 5 . After the success of Nintendo 's Game Boy family of handheld game consoles throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, with little market competition, and Sony 's massive success with its PlayStation and PlayStation 2 home video game consoles around
30624-435: Was successful for the platform, with it selling over 1.2 million physical copies in Japan alone as of September 2017. The device is considered to have sold fairly well in Japan, and still a crucial part of Sony's overall strategy in the region, while Sony has acknowledged that the device still has a very vocal and passionate user-base in the West as well, with the company still encouraging third party companies to create games for
30800-601: Was supporting five different consoles: Saturn , Genesis, Game Gear , Pico , and the Master System , as well as the Sega CD and 32X add-ons. In Japan, the Mega Drive had never been successful and the Saturn was more successful than Sony's PlayStation , so Sega Enterprises CEO Hayao Nakayama decided to focus on the Saturn. By 1999, the Nomad was being sold at less than a third of its original price. The Game Boy Pocket
30976-469: Was then featured at Space World 2000 from August 24 to 26 alongside several peripherals for the system, including the GBA Link cable , the GameCube – Game Boy Advance link cable , a rechargeable battery pack for the system, and an infrared communications adaptor which would allow systems to exchange data. In March 2001, Nintendo revealed details about the system's North American launch, including
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