Is the dedicated handheld market really dying or simply returning to normal?

[zorg1000]

Soundwave said:

zorg1000 said:

 

Based on? I mean didn't mobile gaming grow quite a bit from FY 2012 to FY 2013 to FY 2014? Despite that, sales remained pretty consistent for 3DS in those 3 years. FY 2015 is the first year for 3DS to show a sharp decline, is it solely do to mobile gaming or could it possibly be something else........idk like the system is simply showing a natural sales curve and is beginning to decline due to being past the halfway point in its life?

Nintendo has 6, 1st party games on 3DS that have or will soon pass 10 million, 11 over 3 million, 23 over 1 million with more certainly to come. The only way for Nintendo's handhelds to have a drastic drop from 3DS numbers is if these series all have massive declines which isn't likely.

Actually what I feel happened in those years is mobile cut the legs off 3DS' growth. 

A normal healthy platform should have higher sales in years 2 and 3, and 3DS should have too, Nintendo was throwing everything at it ... all their big IPs, model revisions each year, but they were stuck spinning their wheels at the same level before starting to sink by the 4th year. 

If mobile didn't exist I think the 3DS' trajectory would've been more like this 

13 mill - Year 1

16 mill - Year 2

20+ mill - Year 3

18 mill - Year 4

But mobile is like an anchor on the 3DS, that's now dragging it down to its grave. Nintendo has to sweat like crazy just to maintain a baseline of 13 million in their peak years that would've been considered mediocre to them a few years earlier. 

For one, as I just pointed out, the 2nd full fiscal year was larger than the 1st full fiscal year (13.53 vs 13.95) and it's also very likely that the $80 price cut caused a lot of people to purchase one earlier than they normally would. It's also not uncommon for a device to peak in its 2nd full year, I believe PS2 did that so was that an unhealthy platform?

Ur also acting like releasing their big IP's and doing nearly annual revisions is some sort of desperate answer to mobile