| lehamsy said: 3DS is prove enough that the handheld market is still strong. |
I'd say that the 3DS proves that the handheld market is still "there", but I wouldn't say it's strong. Not at all.
It's taken everything Nintendo has got - nigh-on every franchise with sales potential in their roster releasing one after the other (at the expense of pretty much ignoring the WiiU); emergency price-cut; two redesigns; aggressive marketing and some strong early-in-life third party support (including some of the PSP's audience) to get the 3DS to where it is. And where it is looks like about 50% of the sales DS managed, so around 75m or so LT.
Vita could, of course, do much better than it has been doing. With an emergency price cut like 3DS got; stronger showing of Sony games; another redesign and better (or any) marketing, it could probably have made ~ 35m LT sales (I'm working on the basis of slightly less than half because I'm assuming that the traditionally-Sony-stuff which migrated to Nintendo wouldn't have come back).
That's not a strong market; it's a formerly strong market (230m) which is rapidly, rapidly diminishing (110m which in actuality is going to be about 90m).
(And yes, I suppose the home console market is going to diminish too, but I imagine not to the extent that the handheld market has collapsed)
