Nintendo May Retire Game Boy Name

GameDaily is reporting on commentary from Nintendo of America's George Harrison, who essentially says the company will no longer be using the Game Boy brand. While at one point the DS was the 'third pillar' along with the Game Boy and the GameCube/Wii, the handheld has in recent years more than proven its worth. "This year in our marketing you really won't see much push against Game Boy itself, so it will kind of seek its own level. It's hard to say in the future if we will ever bring back the Game Boy trademark. It was a big risk for us to actually pass on it and call the new product the Nintendo DS, but it was part of Mr. Iwata's philosophy that if we're going to make a radical difference and try to reach a new audience, then we have to change the name ... We had to make a break even though we had one of the greatest trademarks in the history of the industry."

Its does not matter anymore

[grapeape]

Two years ago the Gameboy had a name recognition that the DS could only dream about. Fast Forward to now and the DS is projected to sell over 100 million in 2007 alone. It took 3 years for Nintendo to get to 75 million with the GBA&GBASP. Everyone who could possibly be interested in a handheld gaming system knows what a DS is.

It will still be sad for those of us who have been gameboy fans from the greyscale years to the GBA. I am curious about Iwata's comments when the DS launched that the DS was not a replacement for the Gameboy and that a new gameboy would come eventually, has that tech been scrapped or just rolled into the next version of the DS. Concidering the DS has backwards compatability his comments never made sense to me anyway, but he went out of his way at the time to say that the GBA was a separate product line. Perhaps it was simply so the GBASP would continue to sell?

Re:Weird...

[Shados]

Yup, when the DS came out, Nintendo was very specific that they did not intend to replace the Gameboy with it, and that they would be in parallel, with the DS being designed for more "original" games, and possibly target an older audience, while keeping the gameboy the traditional handheld.

However, quickly (especially after the DS light, but even at launch or almost), normal games that would normally have found themselves on gameboy ended up on the DS, and the DS ate up all the gameboy's market, on top of its own incredible one. Thus Nintendo changed their mind about keeping the gameboy around (they talked about it quite a while ago actually). In other words, the first company to "defeat" the GB, has been Nintendo. Kind of amusing.