dharh said:
There is a huge range of gamers. Some who game because they like to game, at the exclusion of other activity. There are some who game only when there is downtime, IE when on the bus or waiting for something. And then there is the huge spectrum in between. For a great many people their only access to gaming, and the only one they want, is through the one device we all pretty much MUST carry with it, that being the phone.
For every one person who is will to spend the money it takes to buy a dedicated handheld and the expensive (relatively) game purchases that go along with it. I can show you at least two people who would rather just use the phone they already own and buy a cheapo $1.99 game to screw around with for a few hours before they never touch the game ever again.
As these phones get more and more powerful it will become even more true. More and more people will prefer to only have the one device (phone) to do their gaming, especially when these handhelds are not nearly so much more powerful than their phones.
Take gaming out of the equation these people are going to have an iPhone or some other powerful phone. Add gaming back into the equation and the question becomes, since I already have this powerful device why would I go out and buy a 3DS or PSVita.
That's just talking about the casual style gamers. When targeting actual gamers who game just to game, both SONY and Nintendos answer to this can be seen in the design of those respective systems. They've had to further differentiate their devices to make their games exclusive. Dual Screen, 3D, back touch sensitivity, duel analog sticks. Without that differentiation there would be NO reason whatsoever to buy those systems because the iPhone would always be better.
Me I think this is quite possibly the last gen for traditional hand held gaming. At the very least the next playstation portable will be nothing more than software that can get loaded onto suitable powerful phones of which sony happens to sell some. Nintendo has some soul searching to do.
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