Handhelds aren't dead. But they should be killed anyway.

Is Xbox Surface the dawn of a brave new era for handheld gaming - game-centric tablets?

Dedicated handhelds are dead. Vita was practically stillborn and 3DS is a pale imitation of its hotcakes predecessor. No-one wants them and the handheld as we know it will cease to exist within three years.

Or so the internet would have you believe. But then, if you believe everything you read on the internet, peanut butter gives you cancer, Robert Pattinson is gay and the Government’s reading your emails and it’s all a big conspiracy, maaan.

But while handhelds are doing okay, Sony and Nintendo need to realise 2012 is a different world and forge ahead with something truly innovative to stay relevant.

For Nintendo, a family-friendly tablet would clean up. I’ve heard of so many parents looking to buy their (spoiled brat) children tablets for Christmas, but who were uneasy at the thought of having a credit card registered on it and were concerned at what youngsters might be accessing.

But Barnes and Noble’s Nook HD tab has already demonstrated a workable solution. The device supports multiple accounts, with parental controls and even the ability to set time limits for how long it’s used and what (if any) apps can be bought on each account.

But what about the games? That’s easy. The old £40/$60 model has to go out the window. In its place, cheap, pick up and play fare with the option to buy extra levels.

I’m not suggesting New Super Mario Bros be sold for 99 cents. I’m suggesting one level be available for 99 cents, or two or three dollars tops, with the option to buy new ones for another 99 cents each, or an entire world for a fiver.

It would essentially mean one NSMB games’ worth of levels would be about double the price of a normal boxed release, with the flipside being you needn’t buy anything but the initial level for a pittance. Do the same for Mario Kart, Zelda, Layton, and others, and suddenly you have a host of cheap, pick-up-and-play titles providing a steady revenue stream at low development costs.

Use a custom UI Android OS, let it play videos and music and access the Android store, and suddenly you have a tablet able to compete with others on the market while appealing to a section of the market which has yet to be tapped – kids.

But it doesn’t just have to be for youngsters. The same exact kind of model can apply to games for older people. Brain Training/Age could be sold for $2/£1.20 for ten Sudoku grids, for example.

Market the thing as a tab for all the family, with multimedia functionality and the trusted Nintendo brands and the thing will sell itself. Heck, it’d probably be easier to market than the ‘THIS IS A 3DS, NOT A DS’ adverts would suggest.

Microsoft already has, according to rumours, started putting together a games tablet. The internet (see previous disclaimers) claims the PC bods are working on a top-secret 7 inch Xbox Surface tablet, with full Live capabilities, achievements, Xbox controller support and exclusive games.

You see, tablets are what people want. They’re in. Love or loathe the company, when Apple unveiled the iPad, everything changed.

Now 10 inch tablets sell in their millions, while the 7 inch market is a bloodbath of undercutting – Google and its Nexus 7 are going head to head with Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD and Apple’s iPad Mini. All three are different, yet excellent devices and are gaining huge momentum going into Christmas.

Some say games handhelds and tablets are different markets, but I’m not so sure. 

I'm not sure, with 3DS at £120-160, and Kindle/Nexus from £129-199 (the non-HD Kindle is £129), how many people really would choose 3DS instead. Sure it's got New Super Mario Bros, Mario Kart and Professor Layton, but I think many people will happily sacrifice dedicated games for the plethora of apps, big HD screens and multimedia.

Put it this way: I'm known as the techie of the office in work. A colleague asked me what she should buy her 8-year-old grandson for Christmas - a Kindle or a Nexus 7. 3DS didn't even come into it.

I realise I’m now the kind of blogger who would have said Nintendo and Sony need to make smartphones to survive a couple of years back, when that school of thought was all the rage. But look at it this way: if Sony had made PS Vita a phone – closer to the PlayStation Xperia phone, but with Vita specs/capabilities - sold it on contract and refreshed it once a year, I’m confident it would have outsold what the Vita has mustered by now.

It’s not that 3DS and Vita aren’t great – I love them both. It’s that the two companies are clinging to the past when they have everything at their disposal to carve out an inventive, innovative future with tablet devices. They won’t die if they don’t, but they’re missing out on the tablet bandwagon, and doubtless a lot of potential sales, too.

For some, tablet gaming is a bitter pill to swallow. For everyone else, there’s an app for that.

3DS XL: Hands-on review

Massive. That’s the only way to describe Nintendo’s latest monster of a machine – but not just in the size of the beast, but the scope of what it means for 3DS.

The handheld is a big deal, in more ways than one. 3DS sales, while decent, are not staggering. Nintendo has posted losses for two years running. The house of Mario is rather hopeful the XL will accelerate the company from its current standstill.

Impressions? It’s brilliant. I’ve gone hands on with a Red/Black 3DS XL for 24 hours now, ahead of its European release tomorrow, and I can honestly say any fears I had for the machine have been firmly quashed.

First off, those screens. No, they aren’t as crisp. But they really are huge. Almost too big. The effect – with the 3D at max, too – is to draw you totally into the game. You’re so engrossed by the two big displays that the system just envelops you in its gaming in a way its smaller brother can’t manage.

The jaggies? Not an issue. Some worried it would be a mess of pixellated disappointment, but in fact, once you get going you never notice. Sure, if you stop to look you might see the odd jaggie here or there and the overall crispness and sharpness of the picture has lost a little edge. But it’s nowhere near what I feared it would be and it’s well worth the trade-off for the screen size and overall experience.

Ergonomically, the new system wins too. On my old Aqua Blue 3DS I felt my hands cramp up after a while and my palms start to hurt from the squared off corners, the new model is smooth all over, rounded at the edges and is much easier to hold for longer game sessions.

But the analogue nub is one of the biggest revelations. The little stick (yes, there’s only one, deal with it), has been much improved. Whereas I used to feel myself lose control in the middle of a tight corner on Mario Kart 7, now it seems to respond and move more tightly and fluidly than before, allowing for better angles of control. I’m really surprised no hands-on previews have mentioned this so far, as it’s one of the very first things I noticed as it helped me 3* a tricky Mirror Race tournament I’d been struggling with on my very first play with the machine.

A long bout of Karting was quickly followed by a Super Mario 3D Land session. And it’s unbelievable.

 The larger screens actually help you notice things you’ve never seen before. Within moments of starting a world, I noticed a little crevice I’d never spied in myfirst 15 hours with the game, hiding a Star Coin.

 Not only that, the 3D effect is much more pronounced. Whereas the old 3DS had depth, the XL also ‘comes out’ a lot further. Coins, jumps and platforms seem to jump or jut out into the space in front of the screen much more than they used to – all thanks to the 90% increase in 3D screenage.

The sound is no improvement, though. The old one was too quiet and this one’s marginally quieter. Though the speakers are a tiny bit crisper, they aren’t as powerful as the original – probably to help stuff them either side of the bigger screen. It’s no louder than it used to be through headphones, either.

On the plus side, regular old DS games are far better on XL. Somehow, Nintendo has managed to push them much larger than the tiny, grey squares on the old 3DS, stretching the bottom image to fill the (bigger) touch screen and the top image to almost fill the top screen. As if by magic, despite how poor the old DS games’ resolution is, and how vast the new screens are, it looks better than on 3DS and is a brilliantly involving experience. Check out this image of Pokemon Black. I might not skip Black/White 2 after all.

The system transfer took a while, but now my old Aqua Blue doesn't know who it is any more (it says 'Select Language'), and my new 3DS has the soul of my old one. Except, for some reason, the 3DS Ambassador games. They don't transfer over, you have to go back into the e-Shop and re-download them all again. 

To add insult to injury, the save files don’t seem to have moved either. I fired up Yoshi’s Island with renewed determination to beat the damn level I was stuck in, only to be greeted with three blank files. The window? That’s where those ten hours have just gone out. There might be a fix for this if I play around with files on my PC, but for now, it's annoying.

Other gripes: The blue light still flashes dimmer and brighter. Not a problem for most people, but I can’t sleep with lights on at the best of times, least of all when a light is glowing interchangeably like a bloody irradiated lighthouse. Just like the old one, bedtime becomes 3DS-in-the-drawer time.

The camera’s still rubbish, the battery still pretty bad (but lasts 30 minutes longer than it did) and the volume slider is still on the side – meaning when I play aggressively, I often end up jacking the slider to the max or pulling it to zero – very annoying if I’ve got the sound off in a public place and suddenly scare the bejeezus out of the small child/old biddy sat nearby.

All in all, the 3DS XL is a great improvement over the old model. The larger screens make for a much more engrossing, involving experience. The colour schemes are actually pretty slick (the Red one matches the exact shade of Beats By Dre headphones – geek chic much?), and the slight loss of crispness is more than made up for in SCALE.

The best part is, the new system isn’t even that much bigger than the old one. I just about jammed the thing in my pocket when I walked into work this morning, and it has a satisfying weight about it that makes it feel expensive.

Combined with its improved ergonomics and smooth shell, it’s a console that looks, feels and plays superior to the regular model. 

If you were wary of plonking down the cash for a 3DS – now’s the time. With New Super Mario Bros 2 round the corner and the likes of Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance, Mario Kart 7 and e-Shop gem Pullblox/Pushmo already available, the (not so) little handheld has finally found form.

This latest version may have some flaws, but it’s flawed perfection. With XL, 3DS is set to go big in more ways than one.

Why Wii U will be brilliant - and ultimately fail

Gamers. We’re a fickle bunch. One minute, we want to waggle a white stick and pretend it’s a tennis racquet, the next we’re jumping in front of a camera pretending we can dance before tossing birds at pigs on the bog.

Five years ago, Nintendo hit the big time with the Wii, a console which offered everyone from toddler to grandma the chance to pick up and play something – cheap, cheerful, simplicity. It made hot cake sales look positively glacial. You don’t need me to reiterate how it became the best-selling Nintendo home console of all time.

Here we are in 2012, and Nintendo is readying the follow-up – a beefy, hi-def box with a massive, complicated-looking tablet instead of a Wii Remote – and no daft sports mini-games in sight.

Wii U looks brilliant. It’s got amazing 1080p graphics (you know, the kind PS3 and Xbox had five years ago) and a tablet with all the modern gaming buttons, two sticks and a massive screen in the middle.

Yes, it’s odd, but it looks like it will truly add something to gaming. 

At E3 we saw how we can blow up explosives on the touch screen in Batman. In Call of Duty, no doubt we’ll be able to view maps and manage weapons on the fly. In FIFA, we’ll see a pitch overview during the game to track players, and be able to quickly make subs and manage the squad without letting your opponent see what you’re doing.

It’s got motion sensors, so in Mario Kart U, we’ll already have the wheel right in our hands.

The best part? It’s WAG-friendly. We’ve all been there: half-way through an epic boss fight, or a MW3 deathmatch that we’re actually winning, and suddenly up pops the wife and/or girlfriend to moan that ‘Eastenders is about to start. Are you gonna switch your game off?’. For Wii U, it’s not a problem. Switch the action to the controller screen, pop in some headphones and just keep playing.

All of this is superb stuff, and Nintendo’s really been hard at work to innovate again. The problem, though, is that nobody really wants it.

Wii went supernova because it instantly struck a chord with people. You see the remote, and you’re curious. You see Wii Sports Tennis – or if you’re a female aged 20-40, Wii Fit, and instantly see the appeal. You pick up, play, and enjoy. It’s so simple.

Not so for Wii U. The console comes as standard with the big lug of a tablet controller as well as a Wii Remote and nunchuk. Then, there’s the Pro controller you can buy (effectively a PS3/Xbox controller clone), the balance board, the zapper, the Mario Kart wheel, Motion Plus (if your controller is from pre-2010), all confirmed to work with Wii U. It’s a veritable sea of white plastic, and granny will drown, fast.

No longer is it pick up and play. Most games will use the tablet, but for multiplayer will insist on others using Wii Remotes. Some games – likely Zelda – will use the Wii Remote instead. Pikmin 3 lets you use both at once. Just imagine some poor kid trying to juggle the massive tablet while flailing a Wii Remote and nunchuk at the screen, and you start to see the issue.

It’s not the end of the world. People aren’t stupid. Those interested in games and technology will easily be able to fire up the right controller in the right game at the right time, and will enjoy the benefits each one brings. People like myself – and if you’re reading this, probably you – will buy it, will love it and will desperately try to shove the tablet into the hands of our brothers/mothers/grans and random strangers at parties. 

But then you’ll have to sit and explain how it all works and which remote to use and when – and that instantly kills the console as an experience for the non-techno savvy. 

What Nintendo ­­should ­have done is make a Wii 2 with cameras, just like Xbox Kinect. Make Wii Sports 2, put online play in it, and make it all controlled via the camera alone. People would go nuts for it because it combines the brand they love (Wii) with a fresh experience they are yet to be tired of (unlike Wii in 2012). Then do the same with Mario, with Zelda, with Donkey Kong – whatever it takes to keep the non-gaming crowd interested. Now Xbox Kinect is taking the Just Dance and Wii Sports crowd - and will do even more so if packed in with a cheap, friendly Xbox next generation - while Angry Birds eats 3DS sales, one smartphone at a time.

Wii U will be a great machine, and when games like New Super Mario Bros. U, Zelda HD and even HD minigame collection NintendoLand arrive – people will buy it.

But people bought games for the Wii because they wanted to play Wii. People will buy Wii U because they need it to play the games  - just like 3DS sales, which only reached respectable levels when Mario Kart 7 came out. 

It’s going to be a tough generation for Nintendo, by comparison. The hardcore gaming minority will enjoy Wii U – for everyone else, Mario, Zelda and Pokemon will get them through – but that’s all. Wii U is no Wii 2.