im pretty sure what rol is trying to say is that regardless of steam's or angry bird's success, there is no way iOS will cannibalize on Nintendo's handheld sales. the only one who can bring down nintendo is nintendo. they just have to keep making shitty games. sure, steam is growing, and angry birds got a hundred million downloads, but can you prove that retail is declining? and can you prove that steam or iOS is the cause of that decline? can you prove virtual console cannibalized on wii game sales? you can't. consumers do care about retail. maybe not just for resale purposes, but they definitely do.

Go look at NPD or VGC data for 2010 and 2009. Retail sales decreased. Go look at downloadable formats. They posted triple-digit growth in most markets last year.

So then there are two possibilites as to why it declined:

1) Video games are less popular

2) Other markets cannibalized retail sales.

The 2nd is the likely answer. Look at valuations for new companies like Zynga which are worth billions of dollars. They aren't at retail other than their points cards. Now, I don't believe that retail in general will go away, but the market is changing significantly as online penetration is allowing for new users to have new experiences. In the case of Zynga, they've made billions off of their low-barrier to entry products that have more people playing their games than there are Wii/DS owners worldwide. Its just part of the change like when we saw arcade games see a smaller role as home systems came into power.

also, iPhone is not a video game console, it is a portable computer. it was not made to play games, so the games made for it will generally be shallower compared to its dedicated handheld counterparts (and by shallower, i do not mean casual, i mean more limited in many ways). years ago, people like you predicted the doom of game consoles in favor of computers. that computers would take over the living room. iOS is just the latest embodiment of that prediction. computers never took over in 1985, and they won't take over today. and it doesn't have to be Nintendo that thwarts them. in fact, it is very possible that Nintendo will be ousted as a integrated hardware/software game company if they continue on its current path (3D obsession, changing the fundamentals of its flagship titles such as metroid, zelda, and mario, etc) any company that decides to make a dedicated handheld and excellent games for that handheld will effectively end the computer craze. the iPhone, as long as it is a portable computer, cannot have excellent games. it could have good games and great games (see angry birds) sold on the cheap, but that is all.

And oddly enough, its those same computer markets that are growing with online games on Facebook. You can say that iOS is the same thing as the PC-Console debate, but I must ask: did retail console sales ever decline in the face of PC gaming? I don't think it did. Whereas now, we're seeing high double and even triple-digit gains for smartphone gaming at a time when retail saw a near double-digit loss in 2010. Oh, and if your interested: Smartphone gaming is likely to post near triple digit growth again in 2011. 

I know what I say upsets you and other Nintendo fans, but thats just my opinion as to where the market is going to go. If it weren't for a few key pieces of technology, I wouldn't be so strong on what I say, but when every smartphone has 100% connectivity to a market place, and we're seeing stronger 3G/4G/LTE penetration in major countries, we're seeing a device and ecosystem that is much different than the traditional handheld ecosystem, which makes it a very attractive market to get customers. You see, the core difference between the PC-Console debate is that you wrongly assume the smartphone isn't a gaming device first and foremost, or at least relatively comprable. In the case of the PC, non-gaming software has always sold the vast majority of software in the industry. Comparatively, 30-40% of all software sold on smartphones are video games. That is the key difference. If 30-40% of all software sold are games, then I think you are very wrong as to the power of gaming on smartphones, and who are buying the games.

Again, I'm speaking about SM64 from the point of view of the actual market when the game came out, not revisionist history to fit in with Sunshine and SMG 1 &2 and the 2D revival. If you were around the Nintendo market in the mid 90s at and prior to when SM64 came out, you'd know that SM64 was pitched as the sequel, not a spinoff or anything else. If anything, I think its that Nintendo was forced to revise its model by offering NSMB, then the rest is history in terms of sales. That isn't to argue that NSMB isn't the true sequel to the 2D titles (it is), but at the time, it was pitched as the successor. It can be proven, given that Nintendo didn't offer the 2D versions for quite some time, as the 3D titles were seen as the actual IP.

My question to you is: What constitutes a "real" handheld experience? Is it just physical buttons or a controller? If so, why did Nintendo do away with a regular controller with the Wii? I would argue that the experience can conform to whatever the hardware has to offer. We shape our experiences around what is offered - controller, joystick, keyboard/mouse, Wiimote, Kinect sensor, Move, ect. So then, what is the experience? Title budget? I think we're going to see some significant AAA software in the next 1-2 years from smartphones, which will really show what is possible in the market place.

As for the demographics of the handheld and the smartphone, I believe that the smartphone market is too new and emerging to clearly define them as being totally separate. Smartphones are the blue ocean of consumer electronic devices. Last year, they made up about 20% of all mobile handset sales worldwide. This year, it may be 30-40%. Eventually, they will have the entire market place, and it will be split up between 3-4 major OS players. Given the sales data of iOS, when it happens, those markets will be larger than the 3DS market by notable margins. We can say what we want, but if Smartphones made $1 billion USD on just 20% of the market in 2010, then we know there is at least $5 billion worth of gaming software to be had for smartphones. If that is the case (and that is probably a low-end scenario, because the amount of phones sold to consumers is still increasing in emerging markets), then why wouldn't we see developers go after the $5 billion market with the major titles instead of the $3-4 billion handheld market?

Maybe Capcom won't put the next Street Fighter on smartphones exclusively, but you can be very well sure your going to be buying the same Street Fighter on your phone for $19.99 as you would on your 3DS at $39.99. At that point, consumers are going to see a major value in the phone, and buy them as gaming devices.

I pity tha fool who buys this!

One day those Apple people will learn that a phone can't be a console without the proper controls

:(

Amazon is shipping mine as we speak....

Lol, how expensive was the shipping?