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

[bonzobanana]

Conina said:

bonzobanana said:

Soundwave said:

I'm 99% certain if you polled kids, they prefer an iPad over a 3DS like every ... single ... time. 

Small screens are not the rage any more, as portable computing horsepower gets better and better, no one wants a dinky small display, they want a nice sized bigger display with a nice resolution. 

Why would kids prefer an ipad for gaming, it doesn't have the controls for decent gaming and its not really portable in the same way. I think mobiles are more appealing as a replacement for handhelds than tablets.

It totally depends on the game. Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, Nintendogs, Pokemon, Fire Emblem, Ace Attorney, Professor Layton, Ghost Trick, most handheld-Zeldas, Brain Age, Tomodachi, Mario & Luigi, Art Academy, MineCraft, Puzzle & Dragons, Hotel Dusk, Last Window, Scribblenauts and most Lego games would work fine on a tablet with touch controls, Mario Kart and other fun racers would work fine with motion controls.

Your definiton of work fine is not the same as mine. Most games can be played with touch screen controls but with much inferior feel that massively reduces playability. Anything where reaction time is critical is best played with proper controls. Also for Nintendo to abandon decent controls and accept touch screen controls only with tilt control etc would make their life even more difficult to compete. I don't think I'm being old school believing dedicated controls are still critical for gaming. However I totally accept the casual gaming scene has already moved to such controls without problem for most mobile devices/tablets etc but is that really where Nintendo want to compete. I still believe portable dedicated gaming hardware has its place but it has to be clearly better experiences than typical mobile/tablet games.