Portable gaming has come a long way from the white-and-green screen of the original Game Boy.
Today, you can power your portable gaming device by plugging it into the wall. But back then, you had to pop off the cover and slug in four more AA batteries. There was a rechargeable battery pack, but it was bulky - not to mention external - and the pack alone was the size of most modern portables.
But even then, the basic concept of portable gaming was much the same as it is today. If you want a new game, you have to go to a store and buy one. The real beauty of modern home consoles is that there are games available - good ones, even - for download over the Internet. This concept is starting to trickle into the portable world. The revision of the Nintendo DS, the DSi, brings an online game store to the most popular portable on Earth. But, for once, Nintendo is playing catch-up, and with a competitor they probably never saw coming.
Apple already has a game store in place. The only problem with it is that it's a bit difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. If the rumor mill is working at its normally prescient capacity, then Apple is getting ready to roll out a section of the App Store dedicated to
games - and more important, dedicated to games from the big game-publishing houses.
The iPhone - and its sibling, the iPod Touch - have nearly equivalent graphics power to Sony's PSP. The problem is that none of the small developers have the know-how to exploit it properly, and the big developers don't bother, because with the current App Store, none of their games will get enough exposure to make a large-budget project profitable.
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If this new game store actually is brought off properly, it could mark a sea of change in how portable gaming is done. In five years, brick-and-mortar stores may no longer carry portable games. What's the point in going through all the expense of putting a game on a cartridge - or a UMD - when all of the portable consoles will be perfectly capable of downloading the games right off the Internet?
There are some obstacles. For instance, Sony has, for some reason, made the terrible decision of requiring PSP owners to connect to a PC with a USB cable to access their online store. Worse, the potential customer has to browse the games on the PC, not on the console they're actually intended for. Hopefully, Sony's economic problems will lead to the person responsible for decisions like this getting laid off. Maybe then they'll start having some good ideas.
Network speed is another issue. When people buy a game, they want to play it now, not half an hour from now. Some serious upgrades of the to-the-home Internet infrastructure need to happen before doing away with brick-and-mortar sales is viable.
In the end, it should make for a situation where a portable gaming system is portable. No cartridges to drag around. No gas wasted going to Gamestop, or Target. Just a gamer and his machine.
And the only limit on his choice of games is how much cash he has on his card.
