Gallery: Failure in My Pocket: Gaming's Tortured History of Handheld Convergence
01gamecom
It's a gaming system! It's a handheld productivity device! It's a huge flop. Everybody likes playing videogames on a handheld device, and everybody likes being able to access the Internet from their pocket. So doesn't it make total sense to put them all together into one superdevice? As it turns out, no. The videogame industry is actually littered with the corpses of failed handheld convergence devices. Many of them had some good ideas, most of them have just ended up being the punchline to a joke. Nintendo's Game Boy and Nintendo DS have almost entirely steamrolled the competition, by putting the focus squarely on gaming and leaving all the peripheral stuff to other companies. That doesn't stop would-be competitors from trying again and again, though. This week, it was Panasonic announcing Jungle, a handheld computer built for running massively multiplayer online games. Since it seems we're about to do the same old song-and-dance again, let's walk back through the history of handheld convergence devices. game.com (1997) --------------- The [game.com](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game.com) was the first full game system released by Tiger, maker of the dedicated LCD handheld games sold in toy stores. Released in 1997, game.com was full of good ideas -- in theory. Most notably, it had a touch screen and stylus pen, which Nintendo DS would use to great effect nearly a decade later. It could connect to the Internet for text-based web browsing and email, although it required bulky extra hardware and a monthly fee to do it. Pretty advanced for 1997, so of course it really didn't work that well. Tiger really didn't seem to know what its audience was. The grown-up functionality and games like Resident Evil seemed to be aimed at adults, but like all of Tiger's products game.com was only sold in the toy sections of department stores. It fizzled out fast. *Photo: [liftarn](http://www.flickr.com/photos/liftarn/5058656468/)/Flickr*
02gamepark
GP32 (2001) ----------- The [GP32](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GP32) was an open-source handheld created by a Korean company called GamePark. It used the widely available SmartMedia cards for game storage and was designed to allow users to program and distribute their own software. The GP32 (and its many antecedents) couldn't rightly be called a "failure," since it wasn't as if GamePark was attempting to trounce the contemporaneous Game Boy Advance. But the emphasis on user-generated content meant that GP32 was resigned to niche popularity among do-it-yourself gamers and fans of emulation. Also, the company filed for bankruptcy in 2007 and nary a peep has been heard from it since. Update: Since the publication of this story, readers have pointed out that former employees of GamePark started a new company called [GamePark Holdings](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamepark_Holdings), which continues to release similar hardware. *Photo: [Xabi Vasquez](http://www.flickr.com/photos/xabi/2298125523/)/Flickr*
03ngage-660
N-Gage (2003) ------------- The first attempt at a gaming phone, [N-Gage](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-gage) was supposed to be cellular maker Nokia's big push into the videogame space. Instead, it was a massive embarrassment. Everything was wrong with the first version of the phone. You had to remove the entire battery to swap games. Nokia's attempt to blend the gaming control buttons in with the phone keypad made for an uncomfortable experience. And you had to hold the phone on its side to talk, which [Nokia dubbed "sidetalking"](http://www.sidetalkin.com/) and everyone else called "catastrophically dumb." An updated version released a couple of years later fixed some of the more egregious issues, but it still didn't play any worthwhile games. Nokia had scrapped the system by 2006, keeping the N-Gage name for a more general gaming standard for its smartphones. *Photo courtesy Christian Nutt*
04minolta-digital-camera
Tapwave Zodiac (2003) --------------------- A combination of a gaming system and a Palm device, [Zodiac](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapwave_Zodiac) was the sole product created by Tapwave, a Silicon Valley startup formed in 2001 by a group of ex-Palm executives. It could read e-books, manage your schedule, and play high-end games. Tapwave did all it could to make a go of it, scoring versions of Madden football and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. The company's slick PR campaign had tech journalists in its thrall, with Zodiac [scoring a 9/10 review in Wired magazine](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wired/archive/gadgetlab/20040706.html) among other accolades from the press. But gamers didn't want to play games on a Palm device, much less so when the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP came out swinging a year after Zodiac launched. Tapwave closed its doors in 2005. *Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tapwave_Zodiac2_640.jpg)*
05gizmondo
Gizmondo (2005) --------------- Man, what *didn't* go wrong with Gizmondo? The sole product of Tiger Telematics (not to be confused with the maker of game.com), this all-in-one handheld is the quintessential failed videogame system. Tiger blew exorbitant amounts of money to launch Gizmondo, which featured a GPS system and mobile data service. A massive flagship store in London, star-studded launch parties and otherwise huge marketing budgets couldn't obscure the fact that [Gizmondo was crap at productivity apps and worse at games](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/news/2005/10/69324). Add to that the personal foibles of Gizmondo's executive staff -- ending in a massive car crash [chronicled in the pages of Wired magazine](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wired/archive/14.10/gizmondo.html) -- and it's no surprise Gizmondo was dead within a year. If it was ever born. *Photo courtesy Gizmondo*
06iphone
iPhone (2007) ------------- And next on this list of miserable failures is... wait, what? Somehow, Apple has managed to create the only handheld gaming-and-more device to succeed. It's quite likely that iPhone managed to make the crossover because gaming wasn't Apple's concern. iPhone was just an excellent phone. Or rather, it was an excellent text-messaging, GPS mapping Twitter device. Because who actually calls each other anymore? Regardless, iPhone was exactly what people were looking for in a pocket-thing, which gave Apple a massive installed base *before* it unleashed the App Store and a flood of gaming software. Lesson: A convergence device doesn't need to be built for, or marketed to, gamers. *Photo courtesy Sega*
07pandora
Pandora (2010) -------------- After GamePark stopped making the GP32 line, the handheld's dedicated community had no hardware to call their own. So in the true spirit of open source, they got together to build a new box. Released this summer, Pandora is a handheld system that runs open-source software and emulates classic games, plus has a full keyboard with PDA and Linux functionality. Like the GP32, it would be difficult to ever call the Pandora a "failure," but like its inspiration it will be confined forever to its niche fan base. *Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PandoraFront.JPG)*
08jungle
Jungle (2011?) -------------- And then there was the Jungle. Announced by Panasonic on Tuesday, it's sort of a miniature netbook aimed at online gamers. So far, it looks like Jungle has all the features that have doomed previous convergence devices -- namely, it doesn't look like it's very good for gaming nor productivity. Just like the systems released around 2005, it's facing stiff competition in the form of the 3DS and Sony's still-unannounced successor to PSP, which is strongly rumored to pack an Android phone inside. Although Panasonic could end up winning over a more hardcore class of MMO gamer, Jungle could just be bound for the convergence graveyard. *Image courtesy Panasonic*
