Chapter 1406 1324 Brainstorm Session — “Handheld”

Zaboru leaned back in his chair and stared at the ZGBA resting beside his keyboard. The earlier thoughts about his family, strange bloodlines, and supernatural abilities still lingered somewhere in the back of his mind, but little by little his attention returned to the machine in front of him. A handheld. More specifically, what came after this handheld.

Zaboru slowly picked up the ZGBA again and turned it in his hands. The machine had already surpassed what he originally imagined when the concept was first proposed, but thinking about its successor naturally made his mind wander toward the handheld history of his previous life. And whenever he thought about portable gaming, one company immediately dominated his memories.

Nintendo really was the king of handhelds.

Even before the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo had already proven something that many competitors repeatedly failed to understand: the strongest machine did not automatically become the most successful portable machine. The original Game Boy itself was almost the perfect example. By the time it launched, technically superior color handhelds existed or appeared not long afterward, yet Nintendo's gray brick somehow crushed practically all of them. It was cheap, durable, battery-efficient, simple to understand, and had Tetris. Later, Pokémon transformed it into something even larger. Nintendo had somehow created a handheld that survived generation after generation of supposedly superior challengers.

Zaboru chuckled. That old thing looked like a damn calculator compared to some of its competition, and it still refused to die.

That philosophy carried forward. Nintendo's handheld business was never just about hardware specifications. It was about whether somebody could throw the machine into a bag, play it for hours, hand it to a child without immediately fearing its destruction, and then find enough games to keep using it for years. The Game Boy family eventually sold an absurd number of units, and the Game Boy Advance continued that dominance. In Zaboru's previous world, the GBA itself went on to sell more than eighty million systems, which was ridiculous considering Nintendo would replace it surprisingly quickly with the DS.

The GBA was where Zaboru personally remembered Nintendo feeling almost untouchable in portable gaming. It was not necessarily the strongest portable machine imaginable, but it had almost everything that mattered: affordability, strong battery life, recognizable controls, massive developer support, backward compatibility with older Game Boy software, and an ecosystem filled with games people genuinely wanted. Pokémon alone could practically carry a handheld generation, but Nintendo also had Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Advance Wars, Fire Emblem, Kirby, WarioWare and countless third-party titles. More importantly, developers understood the machine. That mattered far more than people sometimes realized.

A system that was easy to develop for often aged better than a technically impressive machine developers constantly fought against.

Then Sony entered.

Zaboru grinned slightly as the PSP appeared in his memories. "Man… PSP was really something back then."

The first PSP genuinely felt outrageous when he had originally seen one. Sony had looked at Nintendo's dominance and essentially decided that instead of making another small toy-like handheld, it would bring the PlayStation philosophy into portable gaming. Large widescreen display. Powerful 3D graphics. Movies. Music. Memory Stick storage. Wireless networking. Internet functions. Games that visually approached home-console quality. Even its physical design looked expensive, sleek, and unusually mature.

It did not feel like a Game Boy competitor.

It felt like somebody had shrunk a PlayStation 2's ambitions into a portable entertainment machine.

And that was not entirely an exaggeration. The PSP launched first in Japan in December 2004, used a 4.3-inch widescreen LCD, supported wireless LAN, and even introduced the unusual UMD format, whose tiny optical discs could hold around 1.8 GB—enough for substantial games and even feature films. Sony pushed the PSP not merely as a game machine but as a portable media platform, and eventually the system sold more than eighty million units worldwide.

Zaboru smiled. People sometimes talk about PSP like it got destroyed by DS, but eighty million systems is not a failure. Not even remotely.

That was one of the more interesting things about the PSP generation. Nintendo won overwhelmingly, yes, but Sony had still managed something incredibly difficult: it entered a market Nintendo had dominated for years and immediately built one of the most successful handhelds ever made.

The PSP also had genuinely forward-looking ideas. Wireless multiplayer through ad-hoc mode meant people could sit near one another and play without cables. Infrastructure mode allowed proper online connectivity. Later, direct access to PlayStation Store made downloadable games possible right from the handheld. There was even a web browser, media playback, and eventually services such as Skype. For a device conceived before smartphones completely transformed everyday life, PSP had been surprisingly close to being a pocket multimedia computer.

But that ambition came with compromises.

Battery consumption was heavier. The machine was larger than Nintendo's handhelds. UMD loading could become annoying. Optical discs were mechanically elegant in one sense and completely ridiculous for a portable device in another. Moving parts meant noise, loading times, and additional power use. And while the PSP library had many excellent games, Sony's philosophy pushed developers toward experiences that sometimes felt like smaller home-console games rather than games designed specifically around portable play.

That distinction interested Zaboru.

The PSP asked, How much console can we put in your pocket?

Nintendo eventually asked, What can a handheld do that a console cannot?

Those were completely different philosophies.

Zaboru rested his chin against one hand and thought about the home-console side of Nintendo's history as well. Sony absolutely butchered the GameCube commercially with the PS2, even though GameCube itself was a really damn good machine.

Nintendo had tried to compete more conventionally during that generation. The GameCube was powerful, compact, had excellent first-party software, and in several technical areas could produce better visuals than people gave it credit for. Yet PlayStation 2 became an absolute monster. DVD playback helped enormously. Third-party support became overwhelming. The PlayStation brand had exploded internationally. By that point, trying to defeat Sony by simply building another traditional console and hoping Mario, Zelda, and hardware strength would carry everything was becoming increasingly dangerous.

Nintendo eventually seemed to understand that.

Then came Satoru Iwata.

Zaboru smiled.

Iwata's Nintendo began leaning much harder into a philosophy Zaboru always found fascinating. Rather than constantly asking, How do we build the strongest hardware? Nintendo increasingly asked, How do we make people interact with games differently?

That mentality produced what Zaboru personally considered one of Nintendo's greatest eras.

The Nintendo DS.

At first glance, even the DS concept sounded almost stupid. Two screens? Why? One of them being a touchscreen? A microphone? A folding clamshell design? Compared directly against PSP graphics, the machine was obviously weaker. Sony's handheld looked futuristic and premium. The early DS looked like some strange plastic sandwich.

And yet the idea worked.

Not merely worked.

It became one of the most successful game systems ever made, eventually selling more than 154 million units worldwide.

Zaboru shook his head with a grin. That thing almost outsold the PS2. Completely absurd.

Nintendo's trick was that the second screen was not merely decorative. Developers could place maps, menus, inventory, status information, tactical data, or completely separate gameplay interfaces on it. Touch input allowed drawing, dragging, tapping, handwriting, rhythm mechanics, direct unit control, puzzle interaction, and interfaces that would have been awkward on traditional buttons. The microphone, which sounded like an even sillier gimmick, occasionally became part of gameplay too.

Some games barely used those functions.

Others could not have existed in quite the same way without them.

That was the difference between a feature and an identity.

The DS also helped Nintendo reach audiences that traditional gaming companies often ignored. Brain-training software, cooking applications, language tools, pet simulators, casual puzzle games, and touch-driven experiences brought in people who would never have cared about frame rates or polygon counts. Nintendo had effectively expanded the definition of who might buy a game machine.

Zaboru slowly tapped the ZGBA against his palm. "Gimmick…"

He chuckled. The word often sounded insulting in gaming discussions, but gimmicks were not inherently bad. A bad gimmick was something added merely to look different. A good gimmick created software that could not exist otherwise.

That distinction mattered.

Then came the Nintendo 3DS. Nintendo preserved the DS concept but improved almost everything surrounding it: stronger hardware, analog control through the Circle Pad, better connectivity, more sophisticated software, and stereoscopic 3D without glasses. Zaboru had never personally cared much about the 3D itself, and even Nintendo would eventually treat it as less essential than the name suggested, but the broader handheld remained excellent.

And then Sony tried again.

"Ah… Vita."

Zaboru's expression immediately became conflicted.

The PlayStation Vita was, technologically, one of the handhelds he had admired most. Beautiful screen. Twin analog sticks. Touchscreen. Rear touchpad. Cameras. Strong graphics. Digital storefront. Remote-play ideas. It was almost as if Sony had looked at every criticism of PSP controls and said, Fine. We'll fix all of it.

And then somehow Sony still fumbled it.

Zaboru sighed. "Such a damn waste."

The Vita's problem was not that it was bad hardware. Quite the opposite. It was almost too ambitious for its own ecosystem. Expensive proprietary memory cards annoyed users. Smartphone gaming was exploding. Nintendo had Pokémon, Mario, Monster Hunter momentum, and an enormous established handheld audience. Sony's own first-party commitment gradually weakened, and once the platform began looking uncertain, major publishers naturally became more cautious too.

That cycle was brutal.

Hardware needed games.

Games needed users.

Users waited for games.

Developers waited for users.

Once confidence weakened, reversing the momentum became incredibly difficult.

Zaboru frowned thoughtfully. That might be one of the biggest lessons of handheld history. Never launch hardware assuming software will somehow take care of itself.

Then, finally, came what Zaboru considered Nintendo's ultimate answer.

Nintendo Switch.

His grin immediately returned.

"The GOAT."

To Zaboru, Switch was where Nintendo finally resolved a question it had been circling for decades. Instead of asking whether a machine should be a handheld or a home console, Nintendo simply answered: why not both?

Play on television. Pull the machine from the dock. Continue playing in bed. Bring it outside. Attach controllers. Remove them. Play alone. Hand one Joy-Con to somebody beside you. Dock it again later.

Simple.

Flexible.

Powerful enough.

More importantly, anybody watching the original concept could understand it almost immediately.

That was brilliant product design.

The Switch did not require a long technical explanation. The hardware demonstration itself explained the idea.

Zaboru looked back toward the ZGBA in his hands and became quiet. Nintendo's path from Game Boy to DS, 3DS, and Switch taught one philosophy. Sony's path from PSP to Vita taught another. Neither was worthless. In fact, Zaboru liked pieces of both.

Nintendo understood practicality, distinctive interaction, battery life, software identity, and how to create hardware around experiences.

Sony understood premium presentation, multimedia functionality, graphical ambition, networking, and the appeal of bringing console-scale experiences into portable form.

Zaboru tilted his head.

"So what should ZAGE's next handheld focus on?"

He smiled slightly.

"Graphics… or gimmick?"

Then his smile widened.

"Well… why the hell am I treating those like opposites?"

He placed the ZGBA beside the notebook and wrote two large words.

POWER

INTERACTION

Zaboru stared at them for several seconds. If ZAGE could build something around PSP-level graphical capability—or perhaps better, depending on what Zanichi and the engineers could realistically achieve—while also including an interaction feature that genuinely changed how certain games worked, then perhaps they could combine the strongest lessons from both companies.

But combining everything indiscriminately would be stupid.

"If we create something PSP-like and then slap dual screens on it just because DS had two screens…" Zaboru immediately grimaced. "Yeah. That sounds annoying."

He laughed.

Truthfully, he had enjoyed DS and 3DS enormously, but he had never loved every part of dual-screen design. Two screens increased manufacturing cost, power consumption, physical size, and complexity. Developers also needed to support the format even when their game barely benefited from it. Sometimes the second screen became brilliant. Other times it became an expensive map display.

"Still…" Zaboru rubbed his chin. "There are games where it was ridiculously useful."

Monster Hunter immediately came to mind. A secondary display could carry maps, inventory information, party status, crafting shortcuts, or monster data without obscuring the main action. Strategy games benefited from information separation. RPGs could place menus below. Pokémon could put commands or party data somewhere apart from the battle scene.

Useful, yes.

But Zaboru did not want ZAGE's next handheld to become a disguised Nintendo DS.

It needed its own identity.

"Maybe one screen…" he murmured. "But much more interactive?"

Touch naturally came to mind. By this world's 2001 standards, a good touchscreen game machine would already appear outrageously futuristic. The technology itself was possible. The real challenge was making it accurate, durable, inexpensive, and actually useful.

He wrote another word beneath the others.

TOUCH

Then another.

WIRELESS

That one excited him much more.

Nintendo had eventually understood local wireless extremely well. Sony had pushed PSP wireless networking and online functions surprisingly far too. Zaboru could already imagine local multiplayer without cables, trading, messaging, shared content, downloadable demos, perhaps even communication with ZEPS 4.

His eyes narrowed.

"What if the handheld can communicate directly with ZEPS 4?"

Not merely as a controller.

That would be too limited.

What if profiles transferred? What if certain saves or character information could move between systems? What if a console game could unlock a portable side activity? What if the handheld acted as a companion screen in specific titles? What if players could download smaller experiences from ZEPS 4 before leaving the house?

Zaboru immediately stopped himself.

"Careful."

He chuckled and raised one finger at his own notes as though disciplining them.

"That's exactly how feature creep starts."

One idea became five. Five became twenty. Suddenly the handheld required two screens, wireless networking, a touchscreen, analog controls, a camera, multimedia functions, console connectivity, massive storage, and some poor engineer was being told to make the battery last ten hours.

"No."

Zaboru wrote another sentence beneath everything.

MUST STILL BE A GOOD HANDHELD.

That was the lesson Nintendo had repeatedly demonstrated and Sony occasionally forgot.

Whatever unusual functions ZAGE eventually introduced, the machine still needed to be comfortable, durable, reasonably affordable, energy-efficient, and supported by games people genuinely wanted. A portable console capable of twenty incredible tricks but dying after two hours away from a charger would quickly stop feeling magical.

Zaboru stared at the page for another moment before smiling.

"Graphics and gimmicks aren't enemies."

That was perhaps the beginning of the answer.

They did not need to choose Nintendo or Sony.

They needed to understand why both had succeeded—and why both had failed.

Zaboru picked up his pen again.

"Yeah… this is going to be interesting."

But while staring at the growing document, another thought slowly appeared.

A much less amusing one.

Zaboru's fingers stopped moving.

"I wonder…"

His expression became quieter.

"How long is my future knowledge actually going to stay overpowered?"

He leaned back and thought deeply. .

To be continue

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