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Augen on 10 June 2015
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Soundwave said:
Augen said:
From my experience it did have a major effect on parent's buying habits. When I was a kid parents weren't thrilled, but they'd buy their kid a $100 hand held and a $30-40 game. Now, many parents I see view this as an even greater waste of money, especially if they can just download some free mobile game on their phone and hand it off to their kid. To these parents the quality of games is irrelevant, it is just a way to keep kids occupied. Phones also have added benefit of other features kids want and parents can keep tabs on them via text or calling.

In essence Nintendo pushed the price point at the exact time outside factors were and are squeezing the value of games in many sectors.


The problem is though, why even bother with a dedicated handheld in the first place then?

Even if the 3DS was $100 right now ... why should I as a cheap parent even bother when my kid is just as happy with the hand-me-down tablet I've given him/her with free/$1 games versus $30 games and having to pay another $100 on top of that? 

A low cost, rinky-dink handheld in the modern market is just going to look like a cheap piece of sh*t too in the modern market next to even a cheapo tablet that has a nice big screen HD display. Even with kids you'll get called out for releasing a cheap product. 

The sad irony is the first portable HD Nintendo games are going to be on the iPhone and Android, not on a Nintendo handheld. 

The "lets release something with 10 year old hardware and an absolute turd of a screen" thing worked in the GBA era ... but Nintendo has no competetion back then and consumers had no frame of reference for anything better so they just accepted it. I mean the original GBA is such a piece of shit honestly I can't believe now Nintendo ever got away with it. You couldn't play the thing in anything other than direct sunlight and games like Castlevania were so dark that you could barely see the game (lol) because Nintendo cheaped out on the screen at the last minute (so the developer didn't have time to re-adjust the graphics). 

I wasn't blaming parents I see who do this, just remarking on said observations.  I know I am some out lier 1% that would actually care about game my (hypothetical) child plays because I am passionate about the medium.  The current state of the industry make it hard for me to see a way forward for dedicated hand helds.