Modojo claims that Nintendo has quietly killed off the Game Boy line in favor of supporting the stellar and hot-selling DS. From the article: “While some might say that Nintendo supported their three pillar strategy – I believe otherwise. When it was announced that the Nintendo DS was going to be a portable gaming device that not only played Nintendo DS games, but GBA games as well, it pretty much defeated the purpose of owning a GBA in the first place.” Here’s what we know so far this year:
- May 11, 2006: In an interview with Reuters, Nintendo President Iwata said “Nintendo may not launch a new version of its wildly popular Game Boy Advance portable game player so it can focus on the latest hit hand-held machine, the DS.”
- May 22, 2006: In a follow up interview with GameDaily, Iwata clarified that he was only saying Nintendo won’t launch a new Game Boy anytime soon opting to focus its marketing efforts on the DS and Wii before planning a GBA successor.
Since then, the GBA has enjoyed continued strong sales despite being a 5-year old system. It even outsold Sony’s PSP last month. I personally think Nintendo will still leverage the Game Boy brand in the handheld market without cannibalizing DS sales. How about a portable virtual console where you can download every previous Game Boy game? I’d buy that.