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JWeinCom on 21 August 2013
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disolitude said:
JWeinCom said:


Not really.  IPTV is mainly a different means of delivering the same content.  Youtube is a cheaper way to distribute video content which typically focuses on smaller developers, shorter videos, and lower budget offerings.  Seems the more apt analogy.

Downfall of cable to IPTV has nothing to do with content but advertising revenue. IPTV isn't killing TV because of people content but because advertising model isn't able to cover the losses on the cable side.

IPTV has to play by internet advertising rules which are vastly different than the ones cable TV industry set in stone few decades ago.


Like I said it's a different means of delivering the same content.  Whereas 3DS vs Android is different content entirely.

Point taken, but the content is only different while there is an audince willing to watch it and pay for it... The audience and money spent on exclusivbe gaming content on dedicated handhelds is on the decline.

I really doubt we will see a non Android based PS Vita 2. Nintendo may keep its handheld business alive for another decade but even they are getting a lot of pressure to support the other mobile platforms.

Is the money spent on gaming declining?  I honestly don't know.  Obviously the Vita is a sharp decline from the PSP but I don't know where the 3DS stands in terms of hardware or software.  We only saw a two quarter thing on that chart, but I'm not sure how that's broken down.  I assume its calander year not fiscal.  If so, Q1 tends to be stronger for handhelds console wise.  Big holiday titles are still selling, and the hardware itself has an aftereffect from holiday money and gift cards being spend.  Q3 should be bigger than Q2 was, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if dedicated handhelds are ahead of Google Play.

There is also the question of revenue vs profits.  Money is being spent but how much of it is profit and how much is just revenue?  Natrally if the profit margin is lower on the Google Play store, then these numbers are a bit misleading.  There is also an issue of how the money distributed and how much profit each individual game makes.  We've heard from several indie publishers that they've made more money on the 3DS, or XBLA, or sometimes even the Vita, then they have off of mobile development because it's easier to get noticed on those markets.  If there are 500 games making 500 dollars, than that is way different from 50 games making ten dollars.

Overall, the data that people are using to make these judgments are vastly incomplete.  We talk about marketshare, which isn't always a useful thing.  Whenever you have an influx of new consumers, that's going to rapidly change marketshare.  In the Nintendo DS generation, Nintendo went from having a practically 100% market share to something like 66% in terms of hardware sales because of the PSP.  So, that would indicate a big loss for Nintendo, which wasn't exactly the case with the DS.  

To sum it up, I need more convincing figures.  The joke that is the media has taken one quarter of decline and made it out to be the death of portable gaming, but that is an incredibly incomplete view of the market.  I'd have to see a lot more data to declare the death of handhelds.  It wasn't too long ago that Facebook games were the future of gaming.  Ask Zynga how that went.