RolStoppable said:
The current forecast is that the handheld market will continually shrink and ultimately has no future. People look at the 3DS and PSV, and predict that it's going to get worse for their successors (if they will be made at all) because all current sales data points to that. My point is that such a trajectory is not set in stone in a business that works with resets of installed bases. Everytime a company launches a next generation system, they start at 0 all over again. Therefore the perception that current handheld systems have (devices that are on their way out because they will be replaced by smartphones) may or may not be the same in the future. Another example: The Xbox 360 did beat the PS3 in the USA by a significant margin, so many people expected that the Xbox One would beat the PS4. Their reasoning didn't go beyond "Xbox rules now, it's going to stay like that.", but the launch of these eighth generation systems was a reset, so the previous market conditions were rendered null and void. Not even a year has passed since the launch of these systems, but the way the market is viewed has changed dramatically already. The handheld market is shrinking this generation, there is no doubt about it. But that can be reversed in the next generation. |
is that really a good comparison? we know where the lost 360 owners went and are going. If we accept that handheld gamers are going to smartphones/tablets, then that is a market that is much bigger with much higher ceiling and they dont start from 0
