Nintendo, long the monopoly holder in the handheld market, has enjoyed near-universal dominance in that sector since the introduction of its GameBoy system, which featured gaming on the go on a black and white screen, and with dreadful battery life. Still, for the first time, you could play games without being tethered to a TV or a wall socket, and that was ground-breaking.
Since then, the technology has advanced in leaps and bounds. Digital distribution, touch screen technology, accelerometers and huge advances in graphics are just some of the features that the modern mobile gaming platform has going for it. And whether your portable gaming device of choice is manufactured by Apple, Sony or Nintendo, there has never been a better time to be a handheld gamer.
However, in South Africa, gaming seems to be more bound to the living room or bedroom, where either the console of choice or the PC is situated. In my experience at least, hand-held gaming is not that big in South Africa.
Overseas (and maybe this is just too much American-orientated media being consumed), I get the impression that every second person is walking around with a Nintendo DSi in their back pocket, with an iPhone as their cellphone/gaming platform in the front pocket. In contrast, and from my personal experience, in South Africa when somebody is playing on a Nintendo DS, it is seen as a novelty and everybody crowds around to experience the new, shiny thing.
Perhaps the South African economy is not made to support hand-held gaming as readily as our first world cousins are. The problem lies in the high cost of a handheld gaming device, which makes it entirely a luxury purchase. However, because such luxury goods would only be available to the upper or middle class, most people who can afford one do not want one. Any moment that could be spent playing games would be spent at home with a console (or PC) playing games, and not out in the wild on a handheld.
Going hand-in-hand with the luxury goods nature of a handheld gaming device, the public transport system in South Africa is too poor to support a portable gaming culture. In contrast, Japan has an incredible high portable saturation, and their public transport system is such that almost nobody drives themselves to work. In South Africa, if you have enough money to afford a handheld, you have enough money to afford a car, and therefore you won’t need a device to occupy you when you’re sitting in a bus or train.
As it stands now, even with Sony’s PSP2 rumoured to be revealed later this year, and the Nintendo’s 3DS being revealed at this year’s E3 event, nothing is going to change in the South African portable entertainment industry. Before we can really get a portable gaming culture, we need to be a first world country. That’s my belief anyway.
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