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Soundwave on 26 March 2014
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curl-6 said:
Soundwave said:

Actually I think they are outside of Japan (where the handheld has effectively replaced the home console). We went through a period in the mid 2000s where this was changing with the DS/PSP, but smartphones/tablets have really killed that movement and worse they are now starting to chip away at the kids market too. 

I've never seen a grown adult with a 3DS or Vita in public ever outside of a comic expo, and I constantly fly all over the place. 

It's evident in Nintendo's marketing too, at least in the US, ... all/most 3DS ads are aimed very specifically at kids, it's because their demographic feedback is telling them that that's the main market still buying handhelds. 

Vita is basically the game handheld built specifically for the "older" gamer who wants to play a portable machine ... and it's evident by its sales that the market for that is extremely niche. 

I see adult 3DS owners all the time. Vita's not flopping because it's aimed at adults, it's flopping because (outside Japan) it doesn't have popular IPs like Mario, Pokemon or Zelda to keep the smartphones at bay.


The PSP did well it didn't have Mario or Pokemon, especially in its early days, it was the kinda hot new portable product for a while there. 

I really don't think there are very many grown adults who are willing to carry a completely seperately (and compartively) bulky device with them because they can't go without playing Mario for the 8 hours of the day they are away from the house. 

It's just a very small audience. The handheld market has always been kid-driven, it's just losing that to smartphones/tablets too, we'll have to see how bad the erosion is over the next few years to fully assess how much damage has been done, but right now it doesn't look good. For a while there Nintendo was making some head way with Brain Training and the PSP was popular with a portion of the "dudebros" crowd, but smartphones have effectively killed this. 

One of the problems I think here is that a kid who sees mommy/daddy using a smartphone/tablet all day ... well they want their own. Not neccessarily a 3DS, that's not what mommy/daddy uses, so its not the one they want. I hate to say it but I think you put a tablet and a 3DS in front of a kid, and the majority of today's kids would prefer the tablet.