Nintendo Had Plans To Bring Email, Internet Searching, and Live Streams To the Game Boy Color (kotaku.com) 17
According to journalist Liam Robertson, Nintendo had plans to release a Game Boy accessory called the PageBoy that would've used radio transmission technology "to let Game Boy Color owners search for information and read international news, game magazines, weather reports, sports scores, and even, most ambitiously, watch live television," reports Kotaku. "This tech would also allow users to contact and message other PageBoy owners. This radio transmission technology at the time was heavily used by pagers, which is actually where the PageBoy name came from." From the report: In a video out [yesterday], Roberston revealed a whole bunch of details and images of the proposed device for the first time. [...] Roberston spoke to some folks who worked on the PageBoy project with Nintendo about the device and how it came to be and what ultimately killed it before it saw the light of day. According to those involved, after a meeting with Nintendo of America in 1999, the company was excited about the potential for the PageBoy, and for the next three years, Nintendo worked with Wizard -- a group created to help manage the device -- to see if this add-on could actually be created and if it would end up being profitable.
While Nintendo was impressed by many of PageBoy's features, including the ability to send images using the Game Boy camera and even the potential for Nintendo to send live videos to PageBoy owners via the radio transmission tech, it ran into a major roadblock. The device relied on radio networks that only existed in a select few parts of the world, like the United States, greatly limiting the device's customer base. According to Robertson, he was told that Nintendo believed the key to Game Boy's success was how universal the hardware was, allowing users around the world to play the same games with the same features. So, because of this, Nintendo reportedly canceled the project in July 2002. However, as pointed out by Roberston, many of the ideas proposed by Wizard for the PageBoy would end up becoming a reality in the years that followed.
While Nintendo was impressed by many of PageBoy's features, including the ability to send images using the Game Boy camera and even the potential for Nintendo to send live videos to PageBoy owners via the radio transmission tech, it ran into a major roadblock. The device relied on radio networks that only existed in a select few parts of the world, like the United States, greatly limiting the device's customer base. According to Robertson, he was told that Nintendo believed the key to Game Boy's success was how universal the hardware was, allowing users around the world to play the same games with the same features. So, because of this, Nintendo reportedly canceled the project in July 2002. However, as pointed out by Roberston, many of the ideas proposed by Wizard for the PageBoy would end up becoming a reality in the years that followed.
And someone has recently done it IRL (Score:4, Informative)
Pagers (Score:2)
Pagers were on their way out by 2002. At that point almost everyone in my dorm at college had a cell phone. I had one of those early Nokias. Which was easier to make a call on than today's bloatware.
Re: (Score:1)
Today's smartphone use is back to that of a pager, just with color screens and smooth scrolling effects. Many people don't like sync talk, just send written messages (or voice/pictures) through some social network app. This is not much more than what a pager would do for text, or a classical mobile phone equipped with MMS capabilities and a distribution list.
Re: (Score:2)
And the Game Boy Color's lifespan was over before 2002. The timelines sync up.
Re: (Score:2)
Practically all software and cartridge hardware accessories for Game Boy Color also worked on Game Boy Advance, whose lifespan continued into sometime in 2005.
Neat (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Except it says it was workable, but it would have only worked in rich countries, and they had fantasies of having it work everywhere, because they forgot poor countries don't buy things like Gameboy Color.
Basically, the project was cancelled by grandpa.
Merge with (Score:2)
Emacs, done!
Believe it. (Score:3)
I personally believe it. I have a few gameboy cameras I acquired new in the box after memories of them as a kid. They are quirky and the most strange nintendo product that feels like another universe made it.
Pageboy could totally have been another quirky gameboy camera like utility. If it did come out we'd be archiving it's contents and writing telnet emulators or something to keep it alive.
Sad it didn't happen.
They invented the iPad? (Score:2)
Or what?
Would not make sense before GBA (Score:2)
The Advance was the first game boy with enough processing power to do any of that stuff graciously. It's also the first game boy for which they offered a wireless interface, although it isn't wifi. The first wifi interface for a game boy was on its successor, the DS. With its stylus, halfway decent CPU and dual screens it's the first game boy where internet access was actually practical, and they actually offered that functionality. Statistically nobody bothered with it.
Why? (Score:2)
Product managers are always looking at dumb things to do with a product.
Nintendo is too closed for this (Score:4, Interesting)
Nintendo is too closed with their devices to ever allow something like this. The switch has no web browser. When the Nintendo DS homebrew community turned the DS into a smartphone, Nintendo sued the community into non-existence. There were web browsers, organizer apps, chat apps, video players, calculators, dictionaries, translators, music trackers, etc. And once Nintendo shut them down, they refused to create their own versions of those apps.
Basically, Nintendo and their user community invented the smart phone several times, but Nintendo canceled it each time. They repeatedly threw away a hundred billion dollar market.
Re: (Score:2)
The 3rd-party programs for the DS were the best thing about the platform. With an SD card cartridge you could load it up with tons of movies, music etc. The web browsing was pretty janky but you could get by with email in a pinch, especially as this was before smartphones were ubiquitous. The battery life was good enough for long bus/train journeys. and when you were finished you could fold it up into your backpack and it wouldn't get broken. If I had the choice, I'd take an updated DS over a modern smartph
Pageboy IIs were very popular (Score:3)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Pageboy_II [wikipedia.org]