Iwata: No More Separate Gaming Platforms From Nintendo

[JEMC]

Shadow1980 said:

JEMC said:

We'll see, but unlike the home console market (for which we still don't know what will happen), it's clear that the handheld market has shrunk in the last years. The 3DS won't sell anything close to the DS and also a lot less than the Advance, and that's whit the little competition that Vita offers.

Has the handheld market shrunk, or were there simply bad decisions made that provided disincentives to buy the systems? The 3DS and Vita were both by far the most expensive handhelds ever at launch at $250, which probably didn't endear either system to consumers. Also, the Vita didn't have much in the way of games. I believe that a system's success is due primarily to things like price, games, and marketing.

That doesn't explain everything.

The price was an issue when the 3DS was launched, but after the price cuts it was no longer an issue. Specially now with the 2DS for 120 USD, and yet if we compare the yearly sales of the DS and the 3DS, this last one never gets close to the former.

http://www.vgchartz.com/tools/hw_date.php?reg=Global&ending=Yearly (disable the rest of consoles to only see them)

The fall is noticeable, specially in Europe.

I agree that the bad decisions, that both companies have made, have hurt the sales of both consoles, but it's also true that the market have shrunk. What we don't know yet it how much.