Should Nintendo Target Adults More With Their Next Handheld?

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Wyrdness said:

Scizor_99 said:

I think the PSP sold because it was the "cool handheld". It was more powerful than the DS and had more mature games. The PS3 and the X360 had to deal with the shaky transition to HD and the Wii was tageted toward casuals. When pushed hard enough, the games weren't all that far off from the PS2/GC/Xbox.

You know what I think happened to the PSP base? They went upmarket. The Wii kept the market afloat while the other consoles adapted to HD, which then followed suit by delivering games similar in style but far superior to the PSP. Consoles were more powerful, had better features, and bigger, brighter displays. and now they were affordable. Perfect for the former PSP base who had grown older anyway.

The PC market surged as well. The games were cheaper AND more visually impressive than even consoles, which was a deal some more tech-oriented individuals couldn't pass up. The added bonus of being able to customize your experience with mods, settings, etc.  and even using a TV monitor like a console is something that's very culturally appealing to westerners, and in part, inspired hacks of handheld systems and games (i.e. Pokemon).

Non-browser-based Indie games came along and gave people small experiences at high quality. Mobile devices came along and eroded the handheld market in general by giving consumers the option of gaming on a multipurpose device and giving developers the option of developing games with less money, less potential risk involved, and much greater chance of profitability. 

In Japan, they really don't care about graphics unless they enhance the quality of the game along traditional lines, improving what's already there and adding  additional things without changing the fundamental experience. Efficiency is valued over pure quality. So when people in Japa saw a two-screened, 3D capable handheld with Nintendo games, it sounded like a pretty good deal. Developers were not that eager to brace the HD development cost spike with the Vita if they could avoid it. 

Imo what sold the PSP wasn't it being cool as that notion died as fast as it did with Vita it was the homebrew scene, remember this was a handheld that with in 1 year you could play pirated games and emulators. You could buy a PSP and follow the homebrew instructions then go on ebay and buy a large memory stick loaded with a tonne of games PSP, emulators and all for cheap if you didn't know where to get them, the was at one point people were doing bundles by buying PSPs to do all the homebrew then sell them to the public with memory sticks loaded with games which is why PSP had a horrid attach rate for games, FFVII was running on the PSP long before SE and PSN had it running officially for reference.

This is why very small numbers of PSP buyers have bought Vita imo because the latter shuts down homebrew hard, a large % of the PSP market would have never bought PSP otherwise, with the DS homebrew was harder to do for the average person. The homebrew scene how ever didn't take off in Japan but I'm not sure whether the Japanese really have an interest in it, what saved PSP in Japan was Monster Hunter as the game is a perfect portable game for the type of culture they have there with Lan style gatherings, long days at school and work as well as numourous events that people go to with groups of friends and not just MH specific events. Because of homebrew not taking off in Japan it had a good attach rate over there and ended up getting good support when MH revived it.

This is why Portables in Japan have such a strong presence as the type of culture over there really compliments having one.

well, it was a lot cooler than the vita because it was realy something new, and the homebrew stuff was possible because the internet was getting much more like the web we know now in that time periode.