So I found an interesting new youtube channel and they discussed the sega nomad, claiming it got the whole switch concept down back in 1995, and acted like they were right all along. Uh...no. Im old enough to remember the nomad. Never got one, because guess what, it was too expensive, and that's the huge reason it failed, but yeah, this guy's acting like the concept was good, they just got the year wrong. I guess I cant complain somewhat, but there are some caveats to that.
Sega's handheld philosophy
In retrospect, sega was always a hot mess. They had a good product with the genesis and arguably the dreamcast, but they also had a lot of experimental stuff that failed. Add ons like the Sega CD and 32x, the saturn, and....the nomad.
Their original handheld was the game gear. I own one. it doesnt work any more because of the same capacitor issue that's killed all of these off sooner or later, but let's face it, I always discuss them in complaining about the current handheld market. it cost $150 at the time, which is like $400 today, it had limited battery life, and while it was very technologically advanced, the cost limited its ubiquity and its battery life was atrocious. If you did use 6 AAs for like 2-4 hours of game play (the same issue the nomad had mentioned in the video) you'd be eating through the things like crazy. You'd end up having to just use it plugged in a lot of the time. My parents did invest in a rechargeable battery pack, but yeah those lasted only a few years and died. All battery powered devices eventually become tethered to a wall, but some take longer than others. And the game gear didnt have much to work with.
The nomad, as discussed in the video had the same issues. The cost was insanely high, the battery pack was also expensive, and when I wanted one...I never got it. Because my parents took one look at the cost, said F that, and got me something cheaper instead. I loved the idea, but it was never a practical reality back in the 1990s. It cost too much and had way too many drawbacks.
How this has relevance today
The handheld market has gone in a similar direction as the game gear today, and I'm not gonna lie, I low key hate it. The 3DS had the size but it did cut the battery life a bit to get the graphical advancements. Still, I can see, given the rampant piracy of the thing which this channel pointed out why nintendo were desperate to replace it. And yeah, keep in mind, even the 3DS suffered from low sales because $250 was too expensive for a handheld in 2011. You get close to that $400 mark today and a lot of people...dont wanna buy. So they had to cut it to $170 to make it work. But eventually the tech was cracked on that too, as this channel pointed out, and that's why they gave us the switch.
The switch was a bit different than previous handhelds admittedly. It wasn't intended just as a 3DS replacement, but also a Wii U replacement, uniting the entire nintendo ecosystem under one system. Which sold for $300. High for a handheld, but given it also replaced the Wii U...not terrible. A bit high for me, but that's mainly because I'd rather fund my PC gaming hobby instead, and don't have the additional money to invest in an entirely different ecosystem.
Still, the switch had compromises. 3-5 hour battery life, barely enough for a handheld to be portable. High cost, but again, it was also basically the main console as well. It was decent, but as you can tell by my own opinions on it over the years, I never really cared for it.
The switch 2 just took it a step further, $450 and soon $500 for a console. I dont blame ALL of that $500 price tag on them given the state of the industry in general, but still do blame them for the original $450 price tag, and believe it sets a bad precedent for the rest of the market, which is coming true. They decided to compete directly with the steam deck, itself a niche "game gear" like device I've been deeply critical of. Sorry, I don't wanna spend $400 $550 $780 to play "dave the diver" on the go. I'd rather invest in an android tablet/handheld instead for like $200 and use that. Maybe I wont get to play all the new and fancy games on that, but it's not like I cant game on the thing. And it's not like it's my primary gaming device. Handhelds have always been less powerful secondary devices that cant play the same games as the core consoles or PCs at the time. Quite frankly, trying to play current gen games in that form factor isnt feasible without the same compromises you get with the game gear/nomad/steam deck/switch 2. You get a high entry level cost, poor battery life, and eventually the thing loses its appeal as a portable console and becomes a wall unit. I've seen enough of these things over the years I'm just like "yeah no, I'm good." And quite frankly, I wish new handheld console makers would stop making such premium devices. Cheap handhelds won for a reason. And they're BETTER.
How things have changed
Now, the video's argument is that the only thing wrong with the nomad was the year. I argue it's the business model. But to be fair, times have changed and maybe it is the year.
Back in the day, the appeal of consoles came from the fact that PCs were too expensive. If you bought a PC, you'd be spending $600+ for the crappiest office PC in best buy with decent gaming ones costing THOUSANDS of dollars, only to be obsolete in 2 years. A console....it cost around $200 for a home console, or if you bought a game boy, like $60-80, and youd have a dedicated gaming machine with tons of games for it. In a way, console gaming was BETTER than PC gaming in the 1990s.
However, as consoles became more expensive, reaching $400-600 for the 360/PS3, and PCs became cheaper, with budget ones being as low as $600 and good ones around $1000 in the late 2000s and early 2010s, I very quickly found consoles less and less attractive and went to PCs.
In the 2010s, smartphones and tablets became a thing. And I was attracted to those over consoles because they could do more stuff. I could go on the internet on a tablet. i could game on a tablet, and yeah most mobile games are crappy shovelware, but hey, it's not like the DS didnt have its fair share of those as well. If anything that's kinda what killed the handheld console market. When the DS came out, I liked it because I wanted it to be a portable N64. But then very few games used its full power, we got tons of shovelware, and I quickly lost interest in it over time.
But yeah...when I talk to people today about what I want in a handheld, I'm told "but smartphones do that, what separates a handheld a phone at this point?" In a way, consoles are adapting to becoming game gear like to differentiate themselves from phones and tablets, which everyone owns, and are capable of playing basic 3D games. If anything, smartphones are getting incredibly powerful these days, with budget ones being as powerful as like an early 2010s office PC with an i5 2500k, 4-8 GB RAM, and period relevant integrated graphics. More powerful ones are on par with cheaper laptops, today, which pack as much power as early 2010s gaming PCs. Everyone has basically an Xbox 360 or PS3 in their pocket power wise. And we see some decent games that many kids play on them. Roblox, minecraft, etc. You can play sonic games. You got engines out there that will run doom, quake, wolfenstein, etc. THey dont port many games to mobile because people are cheap and wont buy them, so its mostly casual gaming on them. But yeah. Consoles are trying to be different.
But I just see them as an additional cost that we dont really need. I mean, $500 for a handheld is A LOT. And then the battery life aint great. And the games are $60+ and rarely go on sale (thanks nintendo), and yeah, you get a premium experience, but somewhere you just end up getting caught between my gaming PC and my android devices. I'd rather take an android device on the go because I get way better battery life, can even charge on the go with battery packs, and I can still game quite a bit if I want. And at home, my gaming PC plays everything I throw at it. Sure, it's tethered to a wall, but with portability like you get from these things, those things always end up being tethered to a wall after a few years anyway.
Idk, I just think that these handhelds these days are niche, for wealthy enthusiasts, and kind of lack a well defined role in my life. If I want the good powerful gaming machine, I go for the PC. If I want a portable experience, I go for an android tablet like my razer edge. I like the idea of mobile PC gaming, but I dont like the reality of it, ESPECIALLY in 2026 where the steam deck now costs nearly twice its original price. And I havent really had a clear role for nintendo for a while now, since they keep sticking to this antiquated console model that doesnt work in the modern era.
I mean, back in the 90s, you got one console and stuck with it. I was a sega guy, but i did switch to nintendo when sega crapped the bed for gen 5. Got into game boys, N64, etc. Nowadays, these consoles are trying to fit in somewhere between my PC and my android devices, and they just don't fit. Still, what would help them fit is cheaper prices. These handhelds used to cost the equivalent of $200-250 today. Not $400+. Games for them used to be $30-40, and I got a lot more of them than the $50-60 titles on the big consoles. I get that those game prices seem tame as the inflation contrarians will go WELL ACKSHULLY YOU SHOULD BE PAYING $140 FOR GAMES TODAY...yeah STFU, not gonna happen. Game prices remained low because consumers dont wanna pay that much. And the lower cost over time has been good for consumers. Maybe not so much for devs and the companies, but eh...they seem to be getting by okay. I know some will say we absolutely NEED these massive 100+ teams to put out games, but we don't. Youre wasting your money. And ours. Again, does gaming really need to be so premium these days? Its like the answer to the ubiquity of cheap hardware (until recently) has driven devs to push gaming in an unnecessarily PREMIUM direction, and I hate it.
Then again, that's consumerism for you. And something I realize about consumerism is that these companies dont want you happy. Happy consumers dont buy anything. Unhappy ones are constantly upgrading, constantly paying for games. You dont get a reliable stream of cash from people like me who literally wanna be smart consumers and minimize how much we spend. You wanna go after the whales who will keep throwing money at you for the new thing even if the old thing is just fine. For a while, computing was such where year, the interests of consumers and producers aligned. New hardware could produce a markedly better experience for the end user. Nowadays, everyone has that baseline where again, your typical smartphone has more power than a fricking Xbox 360/PS3 these days and is quickly closing in on the PS4/Xbox One. ANd because most consumers arent looking at spending big money on stuff, they're just making things more niche and expensive to induce demand. Suddenly the bar does move to "yeah we need little console to do the same thing big console does". And in order to maintain relevance, they're going in that direction.
But it's also making the big machines EVEN MORE premium because what differentiates little console from big console? More power. And just because little console can do what big console does. Little console doesnt do it well. It's a basic 720p/30 FPS experience (if that, with FSR more a 360p/480p with upscaling experience), so in order for big console to hit 1080p/60 FPS or more, it needs to be even MORE expensive. And that's how we're getting to the point of $700+ consoles next gen. Gaming is basically becoming gentrified and pushing out the little guy because we're not as profitable. And yeah.
With that said, I guess the market really has changed. Cheap ubiquitous technology should lead to a gaming golden age, but because consumerism is literally designed around inciting new wants and needs in the population, gaming is going in a premium direction. Back in the day, middle class people bought consoles because they were cheap and could play lots of games relative to computers. But with computing now being so ubiquituous, consoles are now becoming more premium experiences, and trying to redefine themselves in ways where models that didnt used to be viable now are.
Still, despite that, I will disagree with the video. Call me old school, but I still think that game gear and nomad died for good reason, and dislike the new direction that gaming is going in today. In a day and age where everyone has a rather powerful handheld in their pocket that they take everywhere they go, console gaming is redefining itself as a more premium experience. And I just find the business model fundamentally unattractive.
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