Mummelmann said:
benji232 said:
Mummelmann said:
To everyone surprised at the 3DS; this is all unfolding precisely like quite a few people predicted quite some time ago, it has nothing to do with PS4 and One or Wii U, especially not Vita, but everything to do with mobiles/tablets.
It was obvious all along that dedicated handhelds would start to decline and likely go away almost entirely in time, in the face of this revolution, no matter how comforting a lot of people seem to think that denying it is.
The Vita has been all but murdered since it focuses more heavily on non-gaming features and attempts to sell on touch functionality, the 3DS will sell a lot more and live longer but it will never attain the same numbers as the DS, not even close (it wasn't too long ago that people were still chanting about the 3DS selling 130-140-150 million or even more).
As for the rest of the consoles; post-holiday adjustments will be cruel as usual, everyone should hold their horses a little bit longer. And the post-holiday drops will likely be terrifying.
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Like I said in another thread, I do believe that mobile/tablets are eating into the handheld market. But it will most definetly not kill completely that market. I believe there will always have some room for 1 good selling handheld (80-100M).
Not to mention, handhelds (Nintendo and Sony) will most likely adapt to the changing market.
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That's precisely my point though; dedicated handhelds are going away. Portable devices with the main focus on games and gaming.
I'm not so sure that there will be room for any handheld to sell as much as 80-100 million in the 9th gen and onwards, then again; it's terribly hard to predict things like that with the maket being in such a fluctuating state today and in the near future.
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I agree, it's very hard to predict this market. But to be quite honnest, the handheld market sold roughly 16M units in 2013 and I truly believe that if smartphones/tablets have done any damage (which they did), it's all been done already. I can't see handhelds being dramatically less popular in 5years then they are currently, let alone next year.
I think that smartphones and tablets have basically set the handheld market size back to when it originally debuted with GB. Meaning a potential market of around 100-120M. I can't see it going much lower then that tbh. But that's all just speculation on my part.
