Nintendo · 1989 · Game Boy
"Now you're playing with power — portable power"
Nintendo's Game Boy launch positioned the handheld not against the technically superior Sega Game Gear or Atari Lynx but around Tetris as a bundled killer application and battery life as the practical advantage that mattered.
The Game Boy launched in Japan in April 1989 and North America in July 1989. Nintendo's marketing made a deliberate choice that determined the platform's success: rather than competing on hardware specifications — the Game Gear had a colour screen and superior processing — the campaign emphasised Tetris as a perfect bundled game and four AA batteries lasting roughly 35 hours as against the Game Gear's four to six. Print and television advertising kept the message simple: portable gaming that actually works anywhere, with the game everyone wants. The Tetris deal — negotiated directly with Soviet authorities and secured from competing offers by Sega and Atari — was as much a marketing coup as a software acquisition. Game Boy sold 40,000 units in the first day in the United States; 1 million units in the first three weeks.