Both the 3ds and Vita are being obliterated by every smartphone and tablet on the market.

King = Apple/Android

Whatever is left of the ravaged handheld market, 3ds has the majority of that. Nothing special, nothing that will make news or change the current trajectory. That's reality. Handheld market will never again be the primary driver. Whether 3ds or Vita succeed at this point is fairly irrelevant lol.

Both are a dying breed.

Sorry, but you are missing out something REALLY important: the "mobile gaming" bubble is about to burst. Of course, at least once a month one GREAT GAME is released for iOS, and at least once in a trimester we have something HUGE for Android, but the TON of shovelware is IMPRESSIVE. People are DESPERATE to become the next Rovio, and they are trying too hard, but the mobile market will never be as profitable as the portable/console market.

You can see this each and every wednesday, with the release of new titles for the AppStore. Great games are becoming really hard to find, and the myriad of freemium games that try to earn some money, or seeing great games from the past (like PunchQuest), that needed to switch from freemium to paid app because of the incredibly LOW financial return.

Really, mobile gaming may be great, but will NEVER kill portable gaming. And the 35 million units of the current portable gen can show you that this won't be a real problem.

The Vita will be just fine! However the 3ds library is really good right now.

Yeah. It will likely win. That is, unless you count the iPad/iPad Mini.

Wow, a surprising amount of bitterness in this thread...

And for the people saying the Vita has a better library: Are you sure? The Vita has one game above 90 on Metacritic, whilst the 3DS has five. I know Metacritic isn't a barometer mostly, but the games I have enjoyed on the Vita are Persona 4 and Gravity Rush. I liked Little Kings Story, but the Wii version was better.

However, those games do not stand up against the likes of Zelda, Mario, Fire Emblem, Luigis Mansion, Resident Evil and others. Comparing the future lineup as well, the 3DS wins. Soul Sacrifice is the only real game I can see being worthwhile in the near future, and this is not a huge system seller sadly. But the 3DS has the recently released games mentioned above, as well as Pokemon, Mario and Luigi, Monster Hunter 4, Animal Crossing and others which I've forgotten about, launching within 6 months. These are all games which will likely sell a million units before the year is up.

You can argue quality in different ways, I get that, and the 3DS may be for you. But on almost every way you look at it, the 3DS wins out. The only way it doesn't is if you really don't like Nintendo games, and if such, why get a 3DS in the first place? Both systems are great systems and I love them both. But the Vita deserves better support, and this is what is giving the 3DS its lead. Even last year when game releases were few, the Vita couldn't capitalise. If it couldn't then, then it has no realistic chance now.

I don't mean to come off as offensive, but that's my view. However, the Vita is the better product from a build perspective.

The Vita does have alot of good games out though. Persona 4 Golden, Gravity Rush, Atelier Totori Plus, Assassins Creed Liberation, Ragnarok Odyssey, Uncharted Golden Abyss, and Earth Defense Force Just off the top of my head. I think that if we can get some games like Phantasy Star Online 2, Mind=0 and Trails in the Flash, combined with a price drop to about 200$, then we could see the system start to really do good. Alot of people want a Vita, however the price point is abit too high. Also if Sony would start also bundling the Vita with a Memory stick, then that would help alot too. The Vita is not dead, it will eventually, like I said before, pick up steam just like the PSP kind of.

The mobile market has already surpassed the dedicated handheld market lol. Both in sales and profit.

Software purchases on dedicated handheld hardware tend to be more seasonal, as opposed to mobile purchases which tend to be more evenly distributed.

35 million units of the "current portable gen" vs the hundreds of millions of smartphone and tablets eclipsing the portable market...

You're living in the past. This is why vita and 3ds are irrelevant and no threat to any smartphone manufacturer. Small market, not relevant to the future.

What's the point of calling it King when there's no competition.