Thursday, September 18, 2014

Information Society: Gameboy

For us in the 21st century, we all look back on the Gameboy with nostalgia, having grown up with playing every type of Gameboy as children. I expected to find articles about the Gameboy from the 90s, praising the advancements of this portable device. However, much to my surprise, an article that was published in 1997 in the New York Times was claiming that the success of the Gameboy was based on its simplicity. The article states that since there are so few details in the system that each ones becomes essential. "The technology is good enough to be distracting, poor enough to be annoying. It should be powerful enough to be invisible, but it isn’t.”

            However, as we see now, the old-school effect of the game boy systems could not prevail the advancements of the Apple products. Another article in the New York Times in 2005 compares the newest miniature Nintendo Gameboy to the iPods minis. The article explains how Nintendo made a mistake not trying to make a control center for movies, music, and photos. It even states that Nintendo “creates games for people who don’t call themselves gamers yet”. I think that this is an accurate view of how the Gameboy is currently viewed in society. Today, every gaming system is replaced by an iPhone that fits in everyone’s pocket. Based on this article in 2005, it was safe to assume the Gameboy would be almost obsolete by the current day. 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I agree with what you say, it is rare to find someone who still owns a gameboy. I think this was also due to the fact that since the beginning the Nintendo corp. has only dedicated their services to games and not other things like clouds for storage like Apple and Sony have.