The Trouble with Handhelds for Indies

I love handhelds. Especially the Nintendo DS and the GameBoy Advance, but the PSP has grown on me too despite its lack of interesting software. I've always been fond of handhelds, from the Mattel eletronic games to Game and Watch. I remember lusting over the NEC Turbo Express, the first 16-bit portable handheld which, ingeniously, played the same game carts as the underappreciated NEC Turbo-Grafx 16 console. Handheld tech "lags" behind consoles by a generation or two, for those people who are concerned about such things. For the rest of us, handhelds offer a welcome respite from the blind pursuit of visual fidelity. 

The genius and simplicity of games like WarioWare and Feel the Magic gives me hope for the future of small, simple games. The problem with handhelds, of course, is that they are closed platforms, the progeny of Nintendo's invention of the first party licensing system that both saved and cursed the industry. Despite the fact that the GBA and DS (and even the PSP) are relatively easy to program, and despite the fact that thriving hobbyist and homebrew communities exist for all these platforms, they are still difficult to tackle for indie developers -- and what I mean in particular are those interested in distributing and selling their games. 

With CES on this week, new announcements of potentially exciting handheld gaming devices. The latest candidates are the Gamepark GPX2 and the iRiver G10. And despite the slickness of these two new entries into handheld gaming, I fear that they will offer no real improvement in the state of indie handheld gaming.Every now and then new handheld devices appear, promising new opportunities for indie development. First it was PDAs. Palm and PocketPC were open platforms, relatively easy to program, and had wide install bases. Games did succeed on these devices to some extent, but they were largely limited to puzzle and card games. The owners of PDAs, not surprisingly, were mostly professionals with limited interest in games as a primary activity for their devices. 

Furthermore, the input methods for these devices were built for datebooks, not for gameplay (despite the later introduction of stylus play in the DS, that control mechanism still has a lot of improvement ahead of it). The Tapwave Zodiac tried to combine the openness of the Palm with the controls and expectations of a gaming devices, but it remained a fringe device. The company discontinued sales and support last year. Then it was mobile phones, and they remain real but very difficult options still. Carrier strongholds and consolidation in mobile publishing means that mobile developers essentially need to do their own marketing and distribution. 

The platforms are open, but each manufacturer (and sometimes each handset) has its own APIs and idiosynchracies, so writing games for a wide audience is actually very difficult.  Then there were devices like the Gizmondo, which seemed like a great idea. WindowsCE-based, so open platform, yet a closed device so no porting issues. SD-card media, so the potential for indie distribution. Even some unique features, like GPS. Unfortunately, the price-point (over $400) and apparent corporate idiocy of the company (SmartAds, buying Bentleys for all their executives, never managing a US release, etc.) have essentially doomed the device to obscurity.Which leads me back to the Gamepark and iRiver devices. These gadgets are undoubtedly cool. 

Gamepark runs Linux on a dual-ARM core, 64MB RAM, with a big 3.5x2.5 LCD that displays 170k colors. Naysayers have criticized its poor battery life and lack of network support, a Linux device definitely has promise for its open platform. Unfortunately, the GPX2 costs almost $200, a prohibitive sum for the average buyer (especially one who has already invested in a PSP or DS). The iRiver is even more impressive: an 800x480 260k color display, running Windows CE 5.0. CE is an open platform (albeit not as open as Linux), and the device also sports a wireless add-on. No price announced yet, but with that big, hi-res LCD, you can bet it's at least $200. So, what's wrong with these two? The history of alternative handheld gaming devices suggests that a successful one would need to have the following:

- low price-point
- high general install base
- open development environment
- supportive ad-hoc distribution model

The Zodiac couldn't manage either of the first two. The Gizmondo was never going to get past the first. Mobile phones lack the last one, which is a killer. I think the iRiver and Gamepark are going to fail on price and install base, since they offers little convincing general utility outside the geeky technofetishist (getting Linux to run on any device seems to have become a first-principle hack).One of the reasons PC/Mac is the best environment for indie games is that they ascribe to all these principles. Low price point, given the general utility of the devices (after all, you can get a Dell for the cost of a Gizmondo); very high install base; open development via a variety of toolkits and IDEs; easy ad-hoc distribution through the internet. A successful handheld platform for indie gaming would have to follow this model. 

The iPod is probably the closest thing to a successful one: high install base, built-in distrbution channel via iTunes, relatively low cost given the variety of models out there and the fact that many owners have essentially amortized the cost of their devices. It might be hard to design criminal case hack games for the buttons and wheel on the device, but it's an interesting constraint to consider. But of course iPod is missing a key ingredient: open development. Maybe one day that will change. Until then, we're stuck with phones and PDAs, for better or worse.There's an exception to this rule for specific user groups or environments. 

For example, groups building so-called Serious Games for businesses may find that every employee of a certain company comes equipped with a PocketPC. And it's possible that the Gamepark and iRiver devices could be successful in that environment too, but I think it's a fringe example..