What is all the fuss about a second analog on a handheld? Why is it so important?

[sensebringer]

RolStoppable said:

sensebringer said:

theprof00 said:

If you let your opponents take the niche gaming genres and gamestyles, you will eventually only be left with an increasingly competitive mainstream market.

That is how companies get disrupted. Nintendo knows all about that.

Please explain me the bold part. I have heard the term but I don't understand it very well. 

You are asking the wrong person, theprof00 himself doesn't know what he's talking about more often than not. This is one of these instances.

Disruption in simple terms is crappy products for crappy consumers. The marketleader of any field most likely won't care if another company makes simple products for what is deemed a consumer of low profitability. It's seen as a market that isn't worth fighting for and so the marketleader focuses on making its established products better and getting more money out of its existing market. A problem only arises when a product starts to overshoot the market's demands and thus becomes seen as too costly. This is when the door for disruption opens. The company who makes the crappy product can start to absorb the market of the previous marketleader after making some refinements to their own product. When it comes to a direct battle between the two companies, the disruptive one is usually very profitable while the established one has a hard time making money under these new conditions.

The Wii and PS3 would be good examples of this, but it ended up being an incomplete disruption because Nintendo stopped to continue eventually (which is why there are barely any Wii games nowadays). Where theprof00 is completely wrong is that the disruptive company doesn't aim for a niche, but the opposite: the massmarket. According to theprof00's theory, the Xbox 360 in Japan should have become a threat to the PS3, because it established itself for all sorts of niche genres. The reality is obviously something completely else, because the massmarket is where you need to get the foothold. Additionally, what he implies is that the PS Vita could disrupt the 3DS, but the PS Vita is in no way a crappy product for crappy consumers. It's more expensive and in no way really aiming for the massmarket. The 3DS isn't aiming for the massmarket either (it would if it focused on sequels to the games you previously mentioned and then some more), but with the way Vita is set up, there's not going to be any disruption occuring in this generation of handhelds.

Interesting point Rol, Thank you. Do you think that Nintendo can turn the current 3ds model to the mass market?