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R.I.P. Game Boy
Written by Dan Biersdorf on Monday, October 23, 2006
Nintendo's "third pillar" has crumbled thanks to multiple Nintendo stumbles, and the unstoppable might of the DS. We take a closer look at the death of the "Game Boy" brand...
...Continued From Page 2 So what went wrong? Nintendo made a series of mistakes to lead to the demise of the Game Boy Micro, and Game Boy name as a whole, here's just some of the key events that have happened over the course of a year.
A Not So Spectacular Beginning
Typically when a company launches a new product they make sure people know about it - commercials, magazine ads, in-store displays, all the obvious forms of mass advertising. This wasn't the case for the Micro. Being a handheld nut I had to own one on day one, and I can recall that I called my local Best Buy the day it was released (September 17th) with no luck and hardly any information concerning when it would arrive. It wasn't until the 28th that Best Buy had finally gotten their shipment in. When I went to pick one up I was jaw dropped at the sight of not one piece of promotional advertising for it. Not only that but all of the units were kept in the back, away from potential buyers.
Now how in the hell is a consumer supposed to even know that the thing exists when there's no information about it? Nintendo fumbled the launch with a sliding launch date and not so much as a demo unit in stores to show off its beauty. Later Nintendo explained this by saying "toward the end of 2005, Nintendo had to focus almost all of our energies on the marketing of DS." But wait! What about the three pillars!?
Too Much For Too Little
When it was first revealed, buzz around the Micro was actually very high, with no info on pricing and launch details, there was plenty of potential for the Micro to rejuvenate the Game Boy brand if Nintendo struck the market correctly. Instead Nintendo launched at an MSRB of $99.95, the exact same price the old non-backlit Game Boy Advance had launched at back in June of 2001. Because of this it caused an enormous back lash amongst Nintendo supporters who simply did not see the point in paying such a high price for hardware that was over four years old.
While the $100 price tag had been speculated early on, at some point or another a giant rumor had surfaced that Nintendo would try and sell the Game Boy Micro with the Play-Yan bundled inside. The Play-Yan was a multimedia add-on already available for the Game Boy Advance SP in Japan that simply allowed gamers to listen to music and watch videos on their GBA. Had this been the case the price would have been seen much more acceptable, but because of Nintendo's stance that "game devices are meant to be made to play games" the rumor never became a reality, and instead Nintendo released the Play-Yan Micro alongside the release of the system as a separate accessory.
posted November 7, 2006