Low bandgap nitrides, such as GaInAsN, grown on GaAs substrates have received a large amount of attention for several years as an alternative material system to the mature GaInAsP/InP semiconductor system, especially for 1.3 m emission. However, to obtain high-quality GaInAsN material suitable for laser applications, it is required to overcome several specific growth issues, which are reviewed in this paper for the metal organic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE) technique as compared to MBE. We have particularly established that the incorporation of nitrogen in Ga(In)As grown by MOVPE requires specific growth conditions, which can result in strong improvement of both photoluminescence and lasing characteristics. The performance of GaAs-based long-wavelength lasers, as well as those from the recent literature, are compared to the state-of-the-art InP-based lasers.