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The 5 Best-Selling Handhelds of All Time



5th Place:



Sega Game Gear (1990) 11,000,000

Yes, the tenth worst is also the 5th best... Sega's portable MasterSystem-compatible console. Actually 16th out of the 26 systems I've looked at, to give you some perspective. While it bombed in Japan, despite it's far superior hardware, it suffered from a lack of 3rd party software developers because of Nintendo's domination in that area, though SEGA got plenty of titles out the door for it. Despite being the third colour handheld to market, after Atari's Lynx and NEC's Geo Pocket Colour, only having a third of the battery life and costing more than the GameBoy stunted the success of what your reviewer things was the best of that trio.

Verdict: Minor hit.

4th Place:



Sony PlayStation Portable (2004) 55,900,000

While is effectively "the most successful non-Nintendo handheld game system ever sold", it never got close to defeating Nintendo in the arena it considers it's own. Despite being the birth place, and final resting place, of the Universal Media Disc (UMD), it's many updated versions have kept it selling reasonably well.

Verdict: Moderate success.

3rd Place:



Nintendo GameBoy Advance (2001) 81,470,000

2nd Place:



Nintendo's successor to the super-selling GameBoy and GameBoy Color. Nintendo's successor to the super-selling GameBoy and GameBoy Color. This time it had much more powerful 32-bit hardware, 2.9 inch colour TFT LCD screen and someone once again extended the battery life to 15 hours this time, but now only with two AA batteries. It sold excellently too.

Verdict: Big success.


Nintendo GameBoy and GameBoy Color (1989 and 1998) 118,690,000

Nintendo's attempted at portable gaming, after their Game & Watch series, and since it's release 21 years ago - 12 years for the GameBoy Color - it's been a tremendous success. Despite it's monochromatic dot matrix screen, quite limited 8-bit hardware and lack of power. Or because of it, as battery life was comparably great, and the price was half that of the far superior Atari Lynx... Considering it was the worst handheld in many ways, it yet again proves Nintendo's understanding of consumer markets. Right product. Right time. Kerching.

Verdict: Huge. Started the tradition of the handheld video game market belonging to Nintendo.

1st Place



Nintendo DS (2004) 125,130,000 

125.13 million units sold, and absolutely smashing the competition on the way. A phenomenal success, that stills outsells even the strongest state-of-the-art 'next-generation' games machines, like the Xbox360 and Playstation 3 - even to this day.

Verdict: Smash hit, runaway success. Who's your handheld gaming Daddy? Nintendo are.

game gear, 10th worse, and 5th best



to a 12 year old (me) it wasn't bad



have DS my self now, been a while since played it, but every so often go through phases and play it for a few weeks none stop

There's not been that many handheld consoles lol.

And these are rated by sales - not how good they were. Game Gear was a nifty little piece of kit at the time. It's downfall, was the fact SEGA made it far better than the GameBoy - and it showed on price and battery life. And as Atari found with the Lynx, you need to sell lots of systems to get developers involved. That and approach ones that Nintendo haven't got on contract lol.

For the record...

6th place on best selling was Nokia N-Gage (2003) - 3 million sold. Then...
SNK Neo Geo Pocket and Neo Geo Pocket Color (1998 and 1999) 2 million sold.
NEC TurboExpress (1990) 1.5 million sold.
Sega Nomad (1995) 1 million sold.