It's a question I've never even really been able to answer myself. It can't entirely be the games, although that might have something to do with it. The Gameboy Advance and the first DS had fantastic libraries of games, and though I'd rank the PSP's library slightly behind those, it still had a very strong showing (much better than the first few months of the 3DS and all action to date for the PS Vita). What makes it even stranger is that I've always been a fan of the games as opposed to any of the technical aspects of gaming when it comes to consoles. Case in point: although it started out slow, by the end of last generation, the Wii was my go-to gaming console. I was just more interested in games like Xenoblade, Last Story and Epic Yarn even though I loved plenty of the offerings on the PS3 and 360. Even though the hardware of the Wii was unquestionably worse, I still enjoyed my experiences with that system to a greater degree because of the games. So why do different rules apply to handhelds?
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| Does size matter? |
This might sound silly, but I've been coming to think that it really is a question of size and realism. There is a critical point of graphical and audio integrity beyond which improvements are nice, but don't break "suspension of disbelief." The Wii-PS3-X360 generation was entirely past that point, so improvements of one system over another didn't affect me as much as the quality of the games themselves. Handhelds, however, had not reached that point, in my opinion. As a kid I was able to look past the flaws of the smaller screen and worse graphics because my imagination worked at a higher gear. It's not that I enjoyed imagining more or that I was capable of "better" imagination; suspension of disbelief was just more easily triggered. Now, most of my handheld gaming takes place at work or in shorter bursts of time between doing stuff at home. When these constraints are added to those of a small screen and fewer polygons, it just makes games harder to get into.
Enter the 3DS. One item of note, first: I have the XL version so I can't speak as to the merits of the base model. I've found this system is able to break me out of my handheld doldrums. The graphics, while not amazing, are crisp and the screen is big enough that it almost feels like a small console. The feature I was most surprised about though, is how well the 3D effect really works. I was expecting a gimmick but it really does draw me in. Even if I'm just sneaking a quick ten minutes in a break at work, I always find myself losing track of the world around me--even when playing games like Animal Crossing, a series for which I had very little love prior to the 3DS entry.
I plan on doing a blog later on my console gaming habits. As a brief summary, I find it almost a requirement to set an appropriate ambiance for me to really lose myself in the game world. This might require the lights being off, a specific block of time in which I know I will be uninterrupted or anything. The 3DS is the first handheld in 15 years that has given me a similar feeling. As the console generations begin to slow down in terms of the innovation and change we see between one group and the next, I can't help but wonder whether the next horizon for innovation in the gaming hardware sector might be in handhelds.
What are your gaming habits? Handhelds yea or nay? How do you feel about the patterns of innovation in gaming hardware moving forward?
