Nintendo's next handheld will be a tablet, and that is a good thing

[Mummelmann]

Fusioncode said:

Mummelmann said:
I dunno if that would be a great idea, not a tablet specifically. I just read a report that in Norway, tablet sales were down a whooping 35% last year while the sales of laptops were up by a similar percentage.
The tablet was always a product on kinda shaky grounds, sitting near the territory of being utterly useless between a good laptop and a smartphone and I believe I always said as much.

No, I hope this isn't Nintendo's plan, I think that this could seriously hurt them in their newfound ambition and re-structure.

Over 200m tablets were sold last year. Around 12m handhelds were sold between 3DS and Vita. The tablet market may down a bit in recent years but it's still huge and much larger than anything happening with dedicated game handhelds.

Well, no doubt about that, but if they want to get to the juicy middle they should rather go for a more phone-like device. I think both would be a mistake though, one of the major reasons being that they very likely wouldn't be able to pull it off. If they think competing with MS and Sony is hard, they'll be shocked if and when they ever go up against Apple and Samsung.