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I've noticed a dramatic rolloff in homebrew scene activity since the rise of smartphones and the like, at least in portables. Part of this is due to the (more)

I've noticed a dramatic rolloff in homebrew scene activity since the rise of smartphones and the like, at least in portables. Part of this is due to the (more) open nature and ubiquity of smartphones, but also due to proprietary consoles getting more and more boring. The Nintendo DS homebrew community was very active, with a well-supported toolchain. The NDS was a neat piece of hardware - the graphics system was inherited from the GBA, which bears many similarities back to the original Gameboy and the NES. It's probably the last console produced with the concept of tilemaps and sprites. You also got a fast CPU, two screens, and a touchscreen, three years before the iPhone. Now, today, portable game consoles are basically underpowered smartphones. Perhaps the 3DS is a bit unique due to its screen, but better consumer hardware exists even for that. It's even worse for desktop consoles, which are an AMD APU with no particular merits whatsoever.

joshuapants 11y ago
> Now, today, portable game consoles are basically underpowered smartphones. With the notable addition of good physical controls
- beefhash 11y ago
  One might argue that good physical controls just don't matter that much for the audience that casually plays a game on the train.
  - joshuapants 11y ago
    But one might also argue that those weren't the people who were interested in home-brew on a portable game console
- madez 11y ago
  Having good physical controls is not so hard to get on smartphones [1]. If smartphone manufactures wanted to make their device better for gaming, they'd just need clips for common controllers and make the wired and wireless connection work. http://buy.thegameklip.com/products/gameklip-casemount http://buy.thegameklip.com/products/gameklip-casemount
  - joshuapants 11y ago
    That does kill the portability aspect though.
    - madez 11y ago
      Yes, you are right, that specific linked gadget kills portability to a large degree. However, there speaks nothing against making a gamepad more specific to this use-case so you have better portability. Of course this approach will not be as good as dedicated controllers on the device itself, but I think it would be enough.

joshuapants 11y ago

> Now, today, portable game consoles are basically underpowered smartphones. With the notable addition of good physical controls

beefhash 11y ago
One might argue that good physical controls just don't matter that much for the audience that casually plays a game on the train.
- joshuapants 11y ago
  But one might also argue that those weren't the people who were interested in home-brew on a portable game console
madez 11y ago
Having good physical controls is not so hard to get on smartphones [1]. If smartphone manufactures wanted to make their device better for gaming, they'd just need clips for common controllers and make the wired and wireless connection work. http://buy.thegameklip.com/products/gameklip-casemount http://buy.thegameklip.com/products/gameklip-casemount
- joshuapants 11y ago
  That does kill the portability aspect though.
  - madez 11y ago
    Yes, you are right, that specific linked gadget kills portability to a large degree. However, there speaks nothing against making a gamepad more specific to this use-case so you have better portability. Of course this approach will not be as good as dedicated controllers on the device itself, but I think it would be enough.