Or more simply in picture form, this happened:
The dedicated game handheld is just another casualty of the smartphone boom, much like point and shoot cameras.
The proposition of what a game handheld is is pretty silly to be honest in this day and age -- Sony/Nintendo want you to pay them $170-$200 for a large brick that primarily just plays games, at $30-$40 a pop. What older person even has the free time to play all the home console games and then needs to play like another 3-4 hours a day on the road?
The main audience left for gaming handhelds are kids who are too young to have a smartphone. But Nintendo dominates the kids handheld market, so Sony has no "in" there. Even that section of the market is shrinking as a lot of kids are opting just to play on their mom/dad's iPad. Nintendo is feeling the hurt too.
