How powerful will Nintendo's next handheld be?

[zorg1000]

Scisca said:

zorg1000 said:

look at those games u listed, they are all massive sellers on consoles but have never been huge on handhelds. AC/COD/FIFA have never sold over 2 million on a handheld and outside of Crisis Core, Final Fantasy is the same way.

im talking about the real big hitting handheld series like Pokemon/Mario Kart/2D Mario/3D Mario/Animal Crossing which typically sell over 10 million.

PS+ is a great service but thats not really what im talking about. PS+ gives a few games per month and a bunch of discounts, im talking about $50/year gives u unlimited access to the entire virtual console, hundreds of games for a low yearly fee.

Vita didnt officially drop to $199 until 1.5 years after launch and without big hitting handheld titles its fate was already sealed by that time in the west.

ill give u indies tho, Sony has done a great job at getting strong indie support for Vita. i want Nintendo to have even better indie support than that for its next handheld.

You are really moving the goalposts with the games argument. Still, what I said stands true - what you described is exactly what Vita is. It just doesn't have Nintendo franchises (and was mistreated during its first year). Official price drop doesn't matter, the real price does and it was lowered much earlier. Either way, gaming on Vita was and is much cheaper than gaming on a 3DS.

If you believe Nintendo will give you all VC games for one fee, you are delusional. Forget about it. Out of the 3 companies on the market, Nintendo would be the last one to ever do that. Look at the high prices they still charge for their old games. That's not happening. Mark my words - you won't get a similarly awesome service as PS+ is from Nintendo is the next 5-6 years at least. Even MS still hasn't managed to catch up to PS+! And Nintendo is still generations behind in terms of online service. How can you think about a subscription service, when they don't even have an account system!? Nintendo is in stone age, it will take long, long years and cost them a lot of cash (which they don't really have at this point) for them to catch up to where Sony is now.

how is that changing goalposts? obviously i was talking about games that sell huge on handhelds since this thread and our discussion ia about handhelds, how well those games sell on home consoles is completely irrelevent. FIFA/COD/AC are 10+ million sellers on consoles, on handhelds they are 1-2 million sellers.

official price does matter, temporary or select retailer discounts arent nearly as noticable to the average consumer. thats kinda irrelevent anyway because i said a handheld needs both a $199 or under price AND the big hitting mulitmillion selling franchises.

ya ur probably right, Nintendo will not offer that type of service i described, all im saying is if they did it could be a big deal and make Nintendo alot of money since i doubt the average 3DS owner spends over $50/year on the virtual console.

in a way i guess ur right, if u combined all the strengths of Vita/3DS and got rid of all their weaknesses then thats pretty much the device im describing.

low entry price at launch+big hitting multimilion selling franchises+excellent indie support+tons of $19.99 retail games+high value subscription service=dedicated handhelds continuing to have a viable market despite onsloaught of phones/tablets

the handheld market may continue to shrink but i strongly believe if Nintendo doesnt completely fuck up, their next handheld device will still sell 50+ million.