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A Tiger Electronics employee demonstrates the company's new pocket video game called Pocket Pro at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Atlanta on Friday, May 29, 1998. The Pocket Pro is designed to compete with Ninetendo's popular Game Boy Pocket. AP Photo/John Bazemore

Small is suddenly big in video games

Web posted May 30, 1998

Associated Press

ATLANTA -- A warning to kids' parents: Your car's back seat is about to get even noisier. But expect fewer yawns on long hauls.

Video-game companies this fall are rushing out a fresh wave of beeping go-anywhere gadgets that fit in shirt pockets, hoping to spark a big comeback in demand by kids who must have the latest cool stuff.

Nintendo, adding to its $50 Game Boy line, will charge $30 more for a color-screen version; an add-on lets you shoot photos. Tiger Electronics has shrunk its already small game-player into a $50 Pocket Pro. Sony plans an even tinier game gadget, yet to be named, barely bigger than a matchbook.

The new devices, on display at the Electronic Entertainment Expo this week in Atlanta, can do more than play video games on screens less than 1-inch square.

Several enable children to download game information from the living-room video console, such as game scores, for sharing with friends. Kids also can use some gadgets to view and retrieve text off the Internet by hooking them to a separate phone modem.

The trend is driven by technology improvements that free hardware makers to squeeze more functions into ever-tinier spaces. The toys cater to kids' desire to own trinkets that react to their touch and quench a thirst to compete with schoolyard rivals.

Industry analysts expect a surge of demand this holiday season for video-game gadgets after seeing sales slow a few years ago for Nintendo's Game Boy, which created the category in 1989. One reason is Nintendo's plans to introduce a popular Japanese game, Pokemon, into U.S. stores in time for the holiday shopping season.

``The ability to revive the interest of kids in that type of a product has clearly been demonstrated,'' said Michel Hanigan, an industry analyst with SBC Warburg Dillon Read in New York.

Driving the trend are more efficient microprocessors that drain less battery juice and make it possible to play niftier games on tiny screens.

Nintendo's Game Boy Color, set to hit U.S. stores Nov. 23, has the same resolution as black-and-white screens but actually beats their 10-hour battery life, said Jim Merrick, head of Nintendo's developer support.

Nintendo also is hoping the color screen will attract more developers to write software for Game Boy, since many games are dependent on color for playing.

For another $50, Nintendo is selling a camera that hooks to the back of Game Boy, enabling users to take black-and-white digital photos, store and view them, and even ``paste'' faces on a character in a Game Boy game. An extra $60 buys a photo printer.

Tiger Electronics Ltd. hopes to duplicate Nintendo's Game Boy success.

Bought by Hasbro in February, Tiger is replacing its game.com gadget, about the size of a paperback book, with the Pocket Pro game, one-third smaller. Pocket Pro uses two double-A batteries, down from four for its predecessor, but the juice lasts more than half as long, says Tiger game producer Allen Richardson.

In addition to enabling kids to access the Internet, Pocket Pro has a feature that lets them go to Tiger's Web site and post their game scores to compare with other game players.

Sony has a slightly different idea. It plans to launch a $30 handheld device in the United States a year from now that is smaller than a Game Boy but complements its $150 Sony PlayStation video console.

While the ``personal digital assistant'' can play games, Sony officials emphasized its ability to enable kids to share information about PlayStation games via an infrared device.

``We expect this to be a huge product,'' said Sony's Phil Harrison, vice president of software relations and research and development.

Nintendo, in particular, is banking on the downsizing trend.

Just a few years ago, sales of its Game Boy were slowing. While the Tokyo-based company sold about 65 million since introducing the date-book sized contraptions in 1989, lately it hadn't done much to jazz them up.

Then $15 Tamagotchi ``virtual pets,'' made by Bandai America Inc., took U.S. markets by storm a year ago, triggering a farm of cyber clones and renewing kids' interest in small video games.

Last year, Nintendo introduced new Game Boy software that helped to nearly double U.S. sales to 2.4 million. Sales are expected to leap to 4.5 million this year, helped in part by Nintendo's U.S. introduction of Japan's hottest new game craze -- Pokemon, or Pocket Monsters.

The game is based on an animated TV show in which a 10-year-old boy leads a group of weird but lovable critters against an evil menagerie trained by villains.

``A lot of success in Game Boy has been in Japan, driven by Pokemon,'' Hanigan said. ``It's starting to now come over to the U.S.''