The future of portable gaming
Is the Nintendo Switch the final nail in the coffin for dedicated portable gaming?
Portable gaming has been around for a long time, and has given us some fantastic moments in game history. Super Mario Land, Pokémon and the Tamagotchi all owe their existence to portable gaming devices, and there is no doubt they hold a place in many gamers’ hearts. However, as smartphones, tablets and laptops become more prevalent and the Nintendo Switch combines portability with home console advantages, it’s quite easy to wonder whether portable gaming has a future and if so, what that future holds.
The Nintendo Switch is an excellent console by all accounts, but its much-advertised portability is seeing very little use. As a result, it’s hard not to see it as Nintendo moving away from its portable line and focusing on home consoles, rather than the ‘third pillar’ that they claim the Switch represents. It’s also difficult to visualise where else the ‘third pillar’ would be leading, with the Switch so comprehensively covering both the home console and portable market. It seems more likely that Nintendo will give its future home consoles a degree of portability and phase out its dedicated portable line entirely. After all, the company makes a lot less money per DS sale than it does per Switch sale.
With the Wii U’s failure being fresh in Nintendo’s mind, putting more focus into its home consoles is a wise move, particularly considering how incredibly popular the Switch is turning out to be. Supporting it should be Nintendo’s number one priority, especially if it wants to encourage players to use the portability to its full extent. Having dedicated portable gaming consoles to market as well significantly hinders that effort, which was never going to be easy in the first place.
Of course, Nintendo isn’t the only hardware developer out there, but it’s certainly the only one that could feasibly turn a profit from portable gaming. The Playstation Vita came out 5 years ago to less than fantastic results, and Sony doesn’t seem too interested in developing a new system for that niche. Sales chief Jim Ryan explained that the Vita was not only less successful than the company had hoped, but difficult to keep relevant: “I don’t know if it was that it was more technology people had to carry around, or more things to charge, or whether their phone or tablet were taking care of that. But once the content slowed in that pipeline, it became hard to keep the Vita as a going concern.”
While Sony doesn’t seem to have ended support for the Vita just yet, it’s not going to be relevant or modern for much longer, and with no new projects in the pipeline, it looks like Sony is going to bow out of the portable gaming market, at least for the time being. Microsoft is yet to create a portable gaming device and is still recovering from the somewhat-subdued response to the Xbox One, so taking on a project like portable gaming doesn’t seem like a good move for the company right now. Although the future of dedicated portable gaming looks rather grim with the three major players out of the market, there are a multitude of other options for studios and developers to capitalise on.
As Ryan stated, the rise of smartphones and tablets has been a major contributor to the decline of dedicated portable gaming, coinciding with the Nintendo DS family’s slowly-decreasing sales. With apps, music and movies being increasingly portable, there’s no longer a need for dedicated gaming hardware; since most people have access to a laptop, tablet or smartphone, it’s redundant to also carry around a gaming system that doesn’t offer that same versatility.
Recent increases in battery life, connectivity and power have made it much easier for smartphones and tablets to compete with dedicated gaming devices, not to mention that smartphones have some important advantages over dedicated gaming devices anyway. Phones or tablets can wirelessly connect to other smartphones, have a consistent internet connection and stream to larger screens if the need arises, which already gives them a significant leg up on dedicated gaming before we even consider the other utilities a middle-range smartphone can offer. If portable gaming is to stick around in any capacity, mobile developers need to capitalise on this potential by releasing something a little more substantial than the match-3 games and tile puzzles that have swarmed the mobile gaming market.
Phone app sales are a huge medium, and companies have a lot to gain from moving into that market. Pokémon GO set sales records around the world, and Nintendo has already begun developing for mobile devices with Super Mario Run which was a financial success despite not being a critical one. If developers want to stay ahead of the portable gaming curve, it is vital that they move to the mobile phone and tablet market quickly, and put as much effort into mobile games as they have into their console or PC editions. Cheap tie-ins to established games aren’t good enough, and ports don’t work as the games aren’t designed for a mobile format. Games like Monument Valley, Pokémon GO and Vainglory have proven that mobile gaming can produce successful products both critically and commercially, but many major developers are yet to move into this market; Square Enix has been the first to do so, with the well-received — and profitable — Hitman GO and Lara Croft GO.
Mobile gaming also has a lot to offer in terms of innovation. While many games try to use the devices’ gyroscopic features in some capacity, we’re yet to see many utilise their GPS or voice-control functionalities. Capitalising on the possibilities presented by those features alone would go a long way towards improving mobile gaming’s poor reputation.
If major developers move into the mobile gaming market and put quality products out there, it could do a lot to redeem the view of mobile gaming as ‘inferior’ or ‘not real gaming’. With so many unoriginal and dodgy games out there, there is definitely a gap in the market for high-quality, unique games, but very few studios seem to be capitalising on it. We’ve already seen how immensely popular a triple-A release from a known developer can be, which is why it’s surprising that other studios aren’t trying to develop full games for mobiles.
While the Nintendo Switch may herald the end of dedicated portable gaming devices as we know them, it seems unlikely that portable gaming itself is in any danger. As developers move into mobile and tablet gaming, we can look forward to some incredible uses of the technology we have access to, and I’m excited to see what the future holds.
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