Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of cartridges, but $60-80 dollar games (not too sure of the number) with unimpressive-looking graphics (despite better hardware) and almost no cinematics were a HUGE turn-off for developers.

Keep in mind that cinematics were the New Big Thing that you absolutely Had to Have -- much like online multiplayer is today. People slap it on in today's games even if it makes no sense and Metroid Prime 3 gets badmouthed for resisting the urge. Square-Enix left Nintendo according to many reports because of lack of storage, i.e. because of cartridges. And we all know how addicted Square is to teh cinematics.

Ironically I wouldn't be too surprised to see cartridges ready to make a comeback due to burgeoning flash card capacity. Probably not though.

Yes there are; however, not as many as one might think. The Game Gear had an extreme technological advantage over the Game Boy: for one thing, it had COLOR. On the other hand, it had an abominable battery life, which was very expensive (and extremely annoying) unless you sprang for the (also expensive?) rechargable battery pack. And both systems, despite their differences, had the same fundamental control scheme.

(The battery life issue in particular is what killed off many of the Game Boy's technologically superior foes without it ever really even noticing the competition. The PSP is doing much better largely because it doesn't have to plow through AA batteries like a chain smoker.)

The PSP's technology is better than the DS's, but not THAT much better; the PSP's screen is better than the DS's, but not THAT much better (and the DS has two); the DS's battery life is better than the PSP's, but not THAT much better. But they are two fundamentally different machines, even ignoring cartridge vs. UMD.

The DS plays games -- that's its first and foremost function, and everything else is a DISTANT second. The PSP, on the other hand, is also firstly a game machine, but its other functions are much more robust, numerous, and, well, important to the PSP's userbase. There's mod/homebrew, much more popular on the PSP (AFAIK). And I don't think anyone needs to be told about the radically different control/screen interface.

Well, the technology comparison is... somewhat interesting. Just judging by how the games look/play like I say the DS is at about N64 type power. The PSP seems like a PS2 with one analog instead of two. I admit that I think the jump between four shades of grey to any colour (like GB to GG or even just to GBC) makes comparisons hard.

The battery limitation issue is also not the same but closer than I think you are giving it credit. One of the more arguable complaints about the PSP is the battery life (5-7 hours). The DS gets about twice that. Now that handhelds have rechargeable batteries it's not the same as having to buy economy size packs of AA batteries but it is still an area that could use improving.

The games are another comparison that begs to be made. The Game Gear had great games but it didn't have a lot of games. The Game Boy had great games and tons of games. The Game Gear had great software aimed at the same demographic as the Sega Genesis. The Game Boy had software that was all over the map (remember the Berlitz city guides? the French translator?) as well as having all the titles that appealed to the NES audience. Anyways, the Game Gear didn't have as much third party support so it didn't have as many titles. The Game Boy did. To me it sounds a little similar.

As far as mod/homebrew goes, the Game Boy and Game Gear didn't have the huge scene and it would be very hard to compare it to today. Both the PSP and DS have large and very active mod/homebrew communities. FWIW the PSP scene largely revolves around hacking the firmware first and foremost. Once you get past the need to hack the PSP's firmware to run homebrew and play PS1 games both handheld scenes have a very comparable level of activity.

Thanks for the provocative thoughts Final-Fan.

I've heard other sources that would say you're spot-on in your judgement of DS hardware power, and maybe you're overestimating the PSP but it's pretty close to that I think. The big difference from N64 to DS is that the cartridge storage size is much less restrictive (I think) on the DS.

The fact that Game Gear had color is just the most obvious target to illustrate its superiority to the Game Boy. It's been a very long time since I fired mine up, but I remember a Shinobi game well and if I recall correctly its graphics were WAY beyond anything the Game Boy could put out, regardless of color/grayscale (or rather color/greenscreen).

The Game Gear sucked down 6 AA batteries in even less time than the PSP IIRC. Obviously the PSP's battery life could be better but it's not nearly the barrier it was due to the ability to recharge at any time, and lack of replacement cost.

The difference in number of games is absolutely true, but it must be remembered that the Game Boy had a big lead on the Game Gear to begin with and it only got bigger over time. 11 million GGs versus -- total guess -- 80 million GBs by the GG's death in 1997. That's much greater than the PS and PS2 leads over their competitors and we all saw how much 3rd parties gravitated towards them.

I'm not trying at all to say that comparisons can't be drawn between the GB/GG and DS/PSP; there are many similarities, but I think that there are even more differences. I just don't think it's a very close match, but there are still valuable analogies that can be made.

(I only pointed out the homebrew as one of several things that are major secondary functions on the PSP and are marginal or (in other cases) nonexistant on the DS.)

It was my pleasure to contribute my thoughts.

[edit:  Oh yeah, and the Game Gear had a TV tuner attachment.  Clearly this makes it 999x better than Game Boy! ]

A TV tuner?! That is pretty cool. If I had known that I might have bought a GG instead of buying batteries so I could play my friends. The GBA got a TV tuner (I have one) but TV on a Game Boy would be an exercise in futility. Clearly TV Tuner + GG > GB.

Yeah, I bought it (or more accurately my parents did) so we could have a little TV in the car while we went on vacation.

Final-Fan, thanks for some insightful comments. Let me respond in turn.

I knew that someone would make the comparison between 360/Genesis and PS3/SNES. However, this really does not stand up to closer scrutiny. The 360 and the PS3 are competing for exactly the same market: young males in the 15-25 age bracket (generally speaking). There is little to no differentiation between the two systems; both are designed to be as powerful as possible and make use of cutting-edge HD/online tools to service the core gaming crowd. The design philosophy is the same - the 360 just happens to be doing a lot better right now in the American market. You could take one of Sega's commercials from the early 90s and insert it into the marketing strategy for either the 360 or PS3 without batting an eye. (Imagine someone screaming "Halo!" or "Sony!" at the end of a TV ad. Not too hard to picture, is it? )

The SNES (and Wii, by extending the comparison) both aimed at a different market. Instead of deliberately seeking out the rebellious youth, these consoles sought to sell to everyone, through what has sometimes derogatively been called "family friendly" entertainment. The "Wii would like to play" ads are pretty much the same thing that Nintendo was doing over a decade ago, although definitely a little slicker than the "Mario Mania" campaign from back then! The Wii/SNES comparison thus works from both a sales perspective and a marketing one. In making a SNES/PS3 analogy, you can perhaps make a sales analogy (although only weakly, and only by assuming that the PS3 will eventually pass the 360 in American sales - which I *VERY* much doubt will ever happen!) but you must ignore the philosophy behind the manufacturers completely. I think that's a mistake!

There also seemed to be some confusion about my analogy, with several posters saying that the Wii had already passed the 360 in worldwide sales. Well, yes - but this post is directed at the AMERICAN market, where the Wii is only gaining ground on the 360 very slowly. I think it will take most of the generation for the Wii to pass the 360 in the American market (probably in 2009), which is why the sales situation is comparable to SNES and Genesis. Pretty much exactly the same thing happened back then, with the SNES not passing the Genesis in America until 1993 (the Genesis launched in 1990!)

Finally, I very much dispute than online multiplayer is this generation's "have to have" feature. Maybe to the core gamer, but hardly so for the typical consumer. The Wii has bare-bones multiplayer, yet it's outsold the 360 and PS3 combined in something like 80% of the weeks this year. That claim doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

The argument that Super NES was aimed at families rather than teens/kids is interesting. I think you may be right, but it's interesting in particular because the big turnaround for Super NES in North America came after the company kind of kicked Mario to the side in favour of Donkey Kong, added Killer Instinct to the lineup, and started marketing with the Play It Loud ads. The Play it Loud campaign actually received an award for its success.

In the end, Nintendo abandoned the family friendly image and overtook Sega by beating it at its own game...why? I think perhaps the reason is that Super NES was already getting away from the simplistic controls that made NES so approachable. Anecdotally speaking, my dad gave up on videogames because Super NES had too many buttons, and games like Super Mario World were getting too complex.

I'd also argue that that generation was unique in that Nintendo was largely seen as a toy for kids. There were definitely adults playing, but kids were the driving force. I think Sega made a clever move by marketing Genesis towards an aging Nintendo fanbase that was "outgrowing" Mario.

Today, Wii is arguably marketed towards those same kids - we're older and many of us have families and we don't necessarilly have the time for 80 hour RPGs anymore. If we're going to play video games, it may be with the whole family, and Wii is well-designed for that.

couchmonkey's examples illustrate perfectly to me that the SNES had a relatively similar audience to that of the Genesis. True, the Genesis target market was a LITTLE older (or maybe just more age-conscious), but it was probably something like "SNES: 10-15 year old boys versus Genesis: 12-17 year old boys", not even close to the Wii versus 360/PS3.

(I have done no research into this, so if you can come up with demographics proving your point, that's a different story.)