Two screens and a stylus reshape the handheld

What happened

Nintendo presented the machine cautiously, describing it as a third pillar alongside the Game Boy Advance and the GameCube rather than a successor to either. The hedging reflected genuine uncertainty. Two screens, one of them operated with a plastic stylus, was an odd proposition, and the launch hardware was bulky and plainly built to a price. Early software did not help much, offering demonstrations of the touch screen more than reasons to own one.

What turned it around was software aimed at people who did not consider themselves players. Brain training exercises, cooking guides, pet simulations and puzzle collections sold in numbers that surprised everyone, including Nintendo, and they sold to commuters, retirees and parents. A slimmer redesign arrived, then further revisions with cameras and larger screens. Meanwhile the traditional audience got a deep catalogue of role-playing games, strategy titles and a Pokemon generation built for wireless trading.

The touch screen also let designers rethink interfaces that had been cramped for years. Menus, maps and inventories moved to the lower panel, freeing the upper one for the game itself. Wireless play worked without cables between nearby machines, and a single cartridge could sometimes serve several players at once. Total sales ran into the range where only a handful of systems in the medium's history keep it company, and the format outlived several attempts to replace it.

The world at the time

Nintendo was coming off a disappointing generation in the living room and faced a serious challenge to its handheld business for the first time in fifteen years, with Sony preparing a portable built around graphics and media playback. Touch screens existed mainly on handheld organizers and were not associated with entertainment.

What it changed

The commercial case for accessible, non-traditional software convinced Nintendo to build the Wii on the same reasoning. Touch input became something a mainstream audience was comfortable with, which helped when phones arrived using the same gesture. Sony's competing handheld sold well but never displaced it, and the two-screen idea returned in Nintendo's later 3D system.