Economics: Handheld Gaming

Today, I'm going to talk about the economics surrounding something that's fairly close to my favorite thing ever - gaming!

I've been a gamer for, more or less, my whole life. I began with the original Sonic series on the Sega Genesis - as well as the horrid Dark Castle port for the same console. I even beat Ecco the Dolphin - years after I played it for the first time, but still, it counts!

More recently, I've played both the originally SimCity and the original SimAnt. I was among the first to get into DotA and WoW and, in the case of WoW, one of the first to get off it. I have played every iteration of the XCom series, the Civilization series, and, perhaps most importantly, the Black and White series.

(Black and White is very nearly my favorite video game of all time. I'll never get over watching a giant ape thrown someone against a mountain because there's no one around to help, only to be overjoyed that he can now heal the man whose back he only just broke and set him back to work.)

However, none of these games are part of the area I'm going to talk about today: handheld gaming. For me, handheld gaming reminds me of Link, Mario, Fire Emblem, and Advance Wars. Many excellent games have been published in this area, many of which remain entirely in the realm of handheld gaming.

For me, this makes it very alarming to learn that the handheld gaming industry is undergoing what can only be described as a protracted death spiral.

Why, you might ask?

Well, the question is a complicated one. Handheld gaming console sales continue to remain fairly strong. However, sales of games for these consoles continue to drop off, critics review handheld games at a consistently lower rating than other console games, and surveys demonstrate that handheld games - along with the Wii - are the least used among all consoles.

The reason people aren't playing their handheld consoles very much is pretty clear just from this - they aren't buying games for them. As such, we're really hear to answer two questions - why are handheld game sales dropping off and why are critics continuing to review handheld games at a consistently lower rating than console games?

These two questions are inherently intertwined - people have a tendency to buy games that receive good reviews, while critics have a reputation to uphold and, thus, generally want to give good ratings to games that will be purchased and enjoyed by a large number of people.

As such, the answer to both questions is basically the same.

More importantly, what is that answer?

In my opinion, the death of handheld gaming is occurring because of how gaming companies advertise handheld games. Look at, for instance, all the advertisements for the PS Vita that describe it as having an actual console in your hands. Look at the fact that a large portion of games for any handheld console are direct or indirect ports of games for the consoles of that time.

Looking at all of this, it's fairly obvious what the game companies want - they want you, and critics, to think of handheld games as actual consoles, and compare them to those consoles.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a losing strategy, and, in my opinion, the main reason that the handheld gaming industry continues to decline in a very real way.

Think about it: a handheld console cannot compare to a real console. The hardware will always be behind. Content levels in handheld games will always be behind those in console games. Consoles have better screens, better control mechanisms and, in short, are better at pretty much everything.

Even if a handheld console could stand up to being compared to a real console, what would the purpose of purchasing one be? At this point, the hardware would be similar, the control would be similar and, perhaps most importantly, the games would be similar.

Successful console games and successful handheld games have to be fundamentally different, because the console game market and the handheld game market are two very different markets.

Think of it like this - console games have a lot of content, and they are designed to be played for a long period of time. One of the important things that reviewers always mention is how much time it takes to complete the game, with a longer time being better than a shorter one.

This doesn't work for handheld games. For a handheld game to appeal to its audience, it has to be playable in short, satisfying segments. If it isn't, then console gaming is superior in every way - better hardware, more content, more games. What handheld gaming has going for it is that you can play it anywhere in short segments, and the gaming experience can still be satisfying.

If a handheld game isn't playing to that strength, then it's really just a console game being released on the wrong platform.

So, what's filling this space since handheld games are currently trying really hard - and failing really hard - at being console games? Mobile games. The mobile game market continues to expand, as both the number of developers and the number of potential customers has done nothing but go up over the past few years, and shows no signs of stopping.

What's so bad about that, you might ask? Well, a normal mobile device is never going to match the focus and capabilities of a true handheld gaming console. This means the quality of mobile games is almost invariably lower than the quality of handheld console games - something that I'm not a fan of.

So, in short - and for those of you who didn't read the whole post - gaming companies and developers need to stop treating handheld gaming consoles, like the PS Vita, as though they were real consoles, a la the PS3. This does nothing but cause your markets to overlap and, as is usually the case, consumers in a single market tend to go for the best product - the PS3, in this instance.

Take a leaf from the books of those developing mobile games and you might survive - and come up with a few more amazing games, while you're at it! I know I'd certainly appreciate it.