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ZhugeEX on 07 February 2016
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hunter_alien said:
ZhugeEX said:

If you think handhelds are alive then I honestly don't know what to think. 

The fact that they generated $3 billion in software revenues this year versus $30 billion for Mobile game software is very telling. Especially when handheld games cost $40 and Mobile games are free to play (mostly).

The Handheld games market doesn't even represent 4% of the total video games market at this point. 

You do know that 3 billion is roughly the GDP of Burundi? And that is just from software sales, from a mostly aging handheld system. When will people learn that to be successfull you do not neceseraly have to be the biggest. Case in point the rivalry between Sony and MS. MS is in a far better position financially yet it strugles in comparison with Sony in the console market.

Mobiles have done as much damage as they could in the dedicated handheld sphere, yet they are still here to stay. Get over it.

What does the GDP of Burundi have to do with anything? 

You use the term 'aging handheld' system yet you forget that the DS was selling over 150m units of software per year at this point where as the 3DS can't even sell 50m. Handheld sales have dropped considerably with the 3DS unable to increase sales in 2015 despite launching a new 3DS. Only 7.5m 3DS's were sold in the past year compared to almost 30 million DS's in the same time frame. Lets not even mention PS Vita vs PSP, that's a dire situation. 

It's very clear that sales of dedicated handheld hardware and software have been canibalised by Mobile game sales and that is not going to stop anytime soon. There is no more than a small niche audience that has an interest in dedicated handheld gaming and there is a reason why Sony publicly came out and said they have no plans for a new handheld console. Sure Nintendo may come out with one but to expect it to perform on the same level as the DS or 3DS at this point is not realistic. 

Just for the record, I don't have a single smartphone game installed on my phone and don't like smartphone games. But It's clear that if you want to release a big budget handheld game today it's going to smartphone first. 

 

Also what does Microsoft having multiple divisions have to do with handheld gaming? That's like saying Apple is in a much better position than Dell in the PC market because they sell iPhones.....?