I’m old enough that I still have my original Game Boy that I got as a kid in elementary school, so I have been playing on handhelds for decades.
The Switch was the first “Flagship” handheld meant to compete with home consoles. It proved that there was a market for such a device, then the Steam Deck capitalized hard and the rest is history.
Sure, you can split hairs & say that the Nomad was technically a handheld Genesis, or get even more technical and say that the Game Gear was a handheld Master System, but neither one took over the market like the Switch. Hell, I’ve never seen a Nomad outside of a retro game store, it’s basically a rounding error in market share percentage just below the Atari Lynx.
I’m old enough that I still have my original Game Boy that I got as a kid in elementary school, so I have been playing on handhelds for decades.
The Switch was the first “Flagship” handheld meant to compete with home consoles. It proved that there was a market for such a device, then the Steam Deck capitalized hard and the rest is history.
Sure, you can split hairs & say that the Nomad was technically a handheld Genesis, or get even more technical and say that the Game Gear was a handheld Master System, but neither one took over the market like the Switch. Hell, I’ve never seen a Nomad outside of a retro game store, it’s basically a rounding error in market share percentage just below the Atari Lynx.