See Gamers initial Reaction to the DS announcement in 2004(They HATED it!! lol)

[Soundwave]

MDMAlliance said:

Soundwave said:

Once I saw Nintendogs at the E3 before the DS launch (2004) and Brain Training (which no one was talking about before launch) I knew exactly what Nintendo was going for and thought they could have some success.

Unfortunately for Nintendo that audience got sucked up by smartphones.

I think the DS appealed to both audiences and that's why it sold over 150m.  The casual audience by itself did not make up the entire thing.  Even without the casuals, the DS would have been a success.  Look at the game library and you'll see that.

It appealled to both, but they had the rock solid Game Boy audience too, the GBA was well on its way to selling 120+ million.

I think Sony simply failed to make the PSP a long term device for older players that they were going for. Older adults/teens simply don't like carrying around a game handheld and once the 360/PS3 came out, the PSP lost all the attention it was getting.

Handheld market just skews more naturally towards Nintendo's strengths -- kid-friendly brands, no need for super high end graphics, and in general people tend not to want to play violent games on the go for whatever reason. Even adults with their smartphones tend to gravitate towards games like Angry Birds.

I guess when you are on the go and only have 10 minutes to play you want something clear and clean, and darker/violent games tend to have a lot of "cutscene/story" filler that gets in the way.