| mai said: @Ail Smartphones will kill handleds... eventually. This mantra has been repeated for ten years already since GBA era. Just like famousringo said - PC to consoles is exactly what mobile phones to handhelds - survival of handhelds is dependant on differentiation from smartphones. Nobody in this biz is able to do it better than Nintendo at the moment, if they will fail - handhelds will fail. On side note, pocket issue is irrelevant, very few people carry handhelds with them constantly, still software sales indicate that people do play on their handhelds. |
Smartphones with apps is a recent phenomenon. Prior to the iPhone, there wasn't much of a market for games. The growth in the past 2 years has been incredible.
Most of the market growth in portable gaming will probably occur in the smartphones, whereas the dedicated units growth will slow or perhaps even shrink. They might not kill the market for dedicated units, but a stagnant/declining market is not something to look forward to.
Nintendo does have an ace up its sleeve with smartphones. They can always port their library to other systems. At any time they could release the GBA library and sell a ton of games. Nintendo also have the best handheld game designers in the world, so they could release new games on other systems if it was in their best interest.
Anyone can guess. It takes no effort to throw out lots of predictions and have some of them be correct. You are not and wiser or better for having your guesses be right. Even a blind man can hit the bullseye.
