The Vita’s Challenge: A History of Portable Competition

To succeed, Sony’s new handheld must escape the long shadow cast by two decades of Nintendo’s domination.

By: Jeremy Parish
February 21, 2012

Today marks the official U.S. launch of PlayStation Vita. It’s a great system, but it has its work cut out for it. Nintendo’s 3DS is making serious inroads after a soft launch, and Sony runs the very real risk of seeing history repeat itself. To date, Nintendo has triumphed against every handheld competitor to challenge it since the Game Boy launched 23 years ago. We can’t predict how the Vita/3DS battle will turn out just yet, but we can certainly look to history to see how Nintendo has consistently triumphed over its impressive competitors.

The Game Boy Era