GameStop Is Going To Make A Tablet

Well... the title pretty much says it all. In a recent interview with Gamasutra, company president Tony Bartell said that GameStop is planning to either license or build a gaming-centric tablet. Furthermore, a pilot program in five stores is letting people trade in their tablets, which leads me to assume that the store plans to start selling used tablets as they do with any other game hardware (though how that works out with the various internet data plans you have to buy with the tablets I do not know). Combined with Sony's "PlayStation Phone," handheld gaming is starting to get simultaneously interesting and boring.

You can find discussion everywhere about the merits of iPhone gaming vs. dedicated handheld gaming, mostly boiling down to convenience and affordability vs. higher quality. I think gaming-specific multimedia devices could really be a tipping point - a few buttons and joysticks could make all the difference between buying a 3DS or finally jumping on the smartphone bandwagon. Perhaps that's why you see the oddly pricey for Nintendo $250 3DS and the surely even more expensive next generation PSP; they HAVE to provide a super high-quality device with features that won't be found on smartphones, because unless their software really impresses then it just isn't worth it over a few apps. Business history teaches us that staying in the middle pleases nobody.

So, looks like this handheld generation we're going to be seeing smartphone/tablet gaming with more dedicated devices on one end, and super cool dedicated portables on the other. What I want to know is, after this generation, will gaming devices that aren't phones exist anymore? Will the 3DS be the last handheld from Nintendo you won't be able to call somebody from? Will we just have various kinds of phones? From a simple personal perspective... I hope not. I like consoles. I like their stories and the game libraries that give them flavor. Phones and other electronics, no matter how sexy, have never engaged me like a specific platform created to host a variety of unique content.

Of course, it's incredibly likely the phone/tablet eclipsing of traditional handhelds won't happen, or will happen in a way completely different from predictions. Predictions in the game industry, as with anywhere else, are worthless. Remember the "multimedia revolution" that was going to finally make games into high-quality "interactive movie" experiences? Or how the PlayStation 2 was going to become the hub of your entire entertainment system? Yeah, let's just see what happens.