Are Handhelds = Consoles?

[bigtakilla]

spemanig said:

Intrinsic said:
I went with "its more complicated than that"

Handhelds are consoles by definition. However home consoles and handheld consoles (aka portables) should not be grouped together. The only thing they have in common is that they both play games.

A handheld has more in common with a smartphone than it does with a home console.

Lol, what? No they don't smart phones are multimedia devices who's primary feature is making phone calls. A handheld is a gaming console who's primary feature is, you guessed it, playing games. Handhelds aren't designed to steam video, browse the internet, communitate across multiple platforms, or play music the way smartphones are. Smart phones aren't designed to play games the way consoles are, lacking nearly all of the nessecary inputs for most games to function optimally.

The only similarity is that they both are portable and they both play games. Handhelds have far more in common with home consoles. They are merely generations behind consoles. When you have a 3DS playing XBC, a home console originating game, with all the nessecary inputs still intact, with arguably more in the form of the added bottom screen, it becomes absurd to not consider these playforms nearly identical. Saying that a 3DS is more similar to smartphones than home consoles is effectively relegating the Wii, GCN, PS2, and OG Xbox to the same comparison, since they are all within the same power gap. Only the N3DS has more inputs in the form of the bottom screen.

Silly.

Holy shit.... I completely agree with you.

What it comes down to is the primary functions of what these devices do. Both a home console and handheld console were build to play video games, therefore they are both game consoles. A cell phone's primary purpose is to communicate with others (talking/texting/ect).

It's obvious in there design that these two things were built for completely different purposes, dispite sharing some similar features (ie buttons with touch screen vs nothing but touch screen).

How in hell could someone say a portable console has more in common with a cell phone than a home console? Lol.