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mai said:
@mrstickball

We're getting a bit off topic.

How exactly one dominant mobile OS whatever it might be will impact handheld gaming business more than rampant mobile gaming growth in past years already did?

Because there are better quality products on the iPhone right now than there ever were on all the other piecemeal phones and OSes?

The reason that mobile gaming hasn't impacted handhelds is that there really hasn't been a definitive way to compare handhelds against mobiles. Mobiles have been very different from handhelds in form factor, game quality, distribution channels, and title offerings. Its been a very disconjoined market, which means that although there is a lot of money in it, there isn't a way for most developers to put out AAA content onto a large number of phones.

I would compare it to retail store revenue vs. Wal-Mart and the other big-box retailers. There was always huge amounts of money in retail for many years. However, it was always distributed between hundreds of thousands of smaller retailers, which couldn't offer discounts or a large range of goods. Enter Wal-Mart, Target, Meijer and CostCo (and the rest). They de-balkanized the market. The money was still there and growing, but the earnings amalgamated into fewer stores....Which meant that those that sold products through said stores would earn more money, and raise gross revenue.

Likewise, mobiles are the same way. Right now, there is $3-5 billion USD in mobile gaming between 100's of OSes and handsets. What happens when that same $3-5b (and growing) is between 5 OSes and hundreds of handsets? Then it becomes more lucrative for major game companies to be in that market, providing better games that will compare to DS titles. Again, that is why we're seeing more DS and PSP quality games on the iPhone, which are selling very well. For example, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on iPhone has outsold the PSP version, and may outsell the DS version. Don't you consider that a threat to the DS's future lineup of games?



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.