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archbrix on 01 January 2012
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RolStoppable said:

Don't make things up. People didn't say the same about the Wii, otherwise Twilight Princess, Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption wouldn't have been nominees and winners of overall game of the year awards in 2006 and 2007. Mobile gaming has been said to put an end to dedicated gaming handhelds for at least a decade. Overall Kinect software sales are still low, so that looks like confirmation for barely playable games. So you rolled three different cases into one thing that doesn't match with what I said.

Angry Birds hasn't been sold 350m times. The reason why people will continue to buy handhelds over phones are better games that aren't available anywhere else.

Hardcore gamers were always the minority of the market, nothing new here. The only thing that changed recently is that Nintendo started to sell more systems which drove hardcore gamers mad. They didn't seem to have an issue with all those casuals buying PS2s. Even with Nintendo's surge, virtually no games were lost for hardcore gamers, because third parties shunned the Wii. So the issue wasn't casuals entering the market, it was Nintendo taking the lead in sales. Anyway...

The DS looked outdated as soon as it launched against the PSP in late 2004. Your point about yearly updates in horsepower is completely irrelevant.

Personal computers also sell at a much higher rate than consoles. Every month, quarter and year. So why didn't PCs kill home consoles? Probably because only a minority of these PCs are bought for gaming. The same holds true for smartphones.

Hyruken said:

Sales of smartphones proove there are people out there more interested in them then consoles. A lot of those people buy new phones for the same reason people buy new consoles i.e processor/memory etc

I have not fooled myself at all. I am a business analyst. Most analysts will tell you mobile gaming will take over traditional gaming eventually. Here is a good article that will educate you more about it http://geekaphone.com/blog/mobile-games-by-the-numbers/

Both Sony and Microsoft realise this hence why they have released gaming phones.....i.e Xperia play.

I think where your getting confused is on the definition of what is a handheld. Things such as a 3DS/PSP/Vita are handhelds in the old traditional sense. But smartphones are also handhelds but in the modern sense.

For example the Optimus 3D phone. Would you classify that just as a phone even though it has higher specs then a 3DS and can watch films and play games in the exact same 3D?

Or is a handheld simply something with buttons?

Point is that A LOT of people buy phones simply based on how well they play games. I got my old Desire because i could play old school Sega/Nintendo games on it. Very few people buy phones now simply because you can make a call on it. The additional things are more important now. For some people that is the ability to talk to their phone i.e Siri. For some it is the ability to take photos. For some it is because it has a built in MP3 player/music studio ala Dre Beats HTC phones. For some it is because it has Sat Nav in it. For some it is because the social network features it has i.e Facebook/Twitter and so on.

So i don't think it is me who has my head in the sand, far from it. Smartphones today are thought of for many in the same-way traditional handhelds were. You mention 3DS sales but yet fail to mention how it did when it released and the fact it had to cut its price in some areas by 50% within a few months of release. You fail to mention that even in Japan Vita sales nose dived in its 2nd week. Meaning chances are Sony will also have to go the same way and drop price.

Smartphones eventually will lose the "phones" part of the name because they do so much more then that.

Sales of smartphones only prove that people need phones.

As a business analyst you should be able to come up with at least some sort of substantial argument. If you agree with the notion that smartphones will cut into the sales of gaming handhelds, then you need to show numbers that prove exactly that. So far you haven't shown one bit. Growth charts of smartphone sales are as meaningful as presenting rising sales of iMacs and Macbooks.

Smartphones aren't modern handhelds, they are more like portable PCs and as you might know, actual PCs are never refered to as home consoles or some sort of home console. Horsepower doesn't define what is a handheld and what is not. Primary purpose does. And for phones that's obviously being a phone, so calling them handhelds is delusional.

What you fail to take into account when it comes to 3DS sales is that its starting price was $100 more than previous Nintendo handhelds. The only thing that the struggles of the 3DS early on prove is that people aren't willing to pay $250 or more for a handheld. The PSP failed at that, the 3DS did and the Vita will. So much is clear, but that doesn't spell doom for dedicated gaming handhelds. The proof is already there, with the 3DS price being corrected everything is running smooth again.

Which brings us full circle. I started this post by pointing out that mobile gaming was said to put an end to handhelds since at least a decade. The reality is that the GBA was very successful by moving 80 million units in six years. The following generation when mobile gaming became even stronger (you have the numbers in your link), the DS and PSP sold a combined 220 million units in seven years. So despite this rise in mobile gaming, the handheld hardware market almost grew by 200 % and software sales quadrupled, maybe even quintupled over the previous generation.

Explain these numbers, Mr. business analyst.

Agreed, Rol, 100%.  Very thorough response.

The problem with Hyruken's view is he sounds like, well, a business analyst.  Nothing personal, but as HappySqurriel mentioned, they are more often wrong than not.  The Angry Birds argument is one that is often used and while nobody is saying that the number of downloads isn't impressive, first, those aren't all sales, and second, Angry Birds is a one in a million case (or one in over a hundred thousand anyway).

I do agree that there are some of those 150m DS owners that are perfectly happy gaming on their phones and are gone from the dedicated handheld market.  But saying that A LOT of people buy smartphones or tablets just for gaming?  There are many uses for these devices that make them alluring; anyone buying them first and foremost for gaming are the ones who are the minority.

But these clowns at CNET are especially bad.  They speak like they've been living in a cave since the 3DS' price drop, completely oblivious to the resulting sales and new software, not to mention that they haven't a clue as to what MH4 will do for it in Japan or the fact that we haven't even seen a new 2D Mario, Pokemon, or redesign yet.  The fact that they are able to get their word out to so many people, like they actually do know what they're talking about, is what's unfortunate.

However, it's still not as bad as the following garbage article, though.  This has to be the single worst article from a "journalist" that I've ever read:

http://news.yahoo.com/nintendo-killing-itself-164557665.html