Nintendo may exit handhelds in 10 years due to disruption

[Raze]

Squilliam said:

It wasn't an analogy. I was drawing a parallel between the camera market and the game market. Nintendo is on the lower side of the market, the point and shoot equivalent. Because their games tend to be simpler and because they draw from the wider market, their portion of the market would be the first to be effected by a rise of smart phones for games. If smart phones negatively effect GPS units when they implement similar features, if smart phones negatively effect cameras when they implement decent cameras then smart phones would effect handheld games devices as well when some good software starts to come out to take advantage of it. The whole smart phone market is growing at a rapid rate and the capabilities on average to play games is increasing again at a rapid rate so as a whole their numbers and effectiveness as games machines are increasing precipitously every year.

As far as deals with online makers go, Nintendo doesn't like to lose control. I don't think theres an online network out there which will simply let you 'buy in' without the device maker losing that control. If they did that then some other service provider would control their networking. So whilst they could spend the money they are a relatively small company so at minimum they would be forced to increase their headcount substantially. In any case regardless of all that they would also have to have the drive to create a good online network, it just doesn't seem to fit the culture of Japan at this point to really care about such things. So when they do create their online network if they do, it may be too late to make headway.  

The only thing you have to take into consideration is that cellphone/smartphone games of any quality are a huge battery drain. If you can get 1 hour of straight gaming time in on a phone, its very impressive, where most handhelds have more expensive batteries designed to hold longer charges, offering 4x or better that of what a smartphone would offer. Smartphone makers won't go out and make such batteries because they raise the price AND the weight/dimensions of the phone.