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captain carot on 23 June 2016
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tak13 said:
captain carot said:

This is how handheld vs. mobile works. Nintendo vs. rest of world.

 

And yes, handheld gaming is passing away basically. No one should expect Nintendos next handheld to do better than 3DS.

Not that you need to like it. I don't.

 

Edit: Keep in mind, last gen was the best handheld gaming ever had with over 150 million DS and over 80 million PSP. This gen hasn't even reached a third of those sales. It's still behind the shortlived GBA.

No one should had its own opinion...Eh?

If 3ds successor sells better what will you say? If it sells less instead, I won't say anything, since my opinion  isn't combined with dogmatism, I aknowledged that it could sell less ! How much less could it sell by your opinion?

Who cares for last gen? What about home consoles? Their aggregate sales were 275m? How much for 8th gen? 165m? 110 less and 10m more than what PS2 sold alone? Oh dead, dead, dead!

All comparisons are welcomed but it doesn't mean that all of them are fair and indicative!

As for the gba and its lifetime... Keep in mind that ds lite was released in the end of 2006, if you know what I mean...

6th gen consoles: PS2 hat a 'casual' bonus with Eyetoy, Singstar and the likes. Not the reason it went over 100 million but the reason it went over 150 million

7th gen consoles: Wii, Wii and again Wii. Yes, that was the casual crowd and yes, that walked away without looking back. Depending on how long this generation goes on and how we will count NX we might see something like those 160 million, even less or more. But last gen also was pretty longlived. 25m OG Xbox vs. 85m 360's also is 4 years with no 'afterlife' when the successor released vs. 8 years main life plus two and a half years.

Let's take a look at Nintendo handhelds.

Gameboy 118 million sales, but from 1989 to 2001 plus a bit. 12 years!

Gameboy Avance: 81 milion. Basically from 2001-2005. Yes, it sold a bit in the years after but not much

DS: 155 million, most of that sold within the first six years. And with the strongest competitor a Nintendo handheld ever had.

3DS: Close to 60 million. But after more than five years. With heavily declining sales that's very far from the good old Gameboy. It's way behind GBA. And DS? We'd better not talk about that.

Should be clear that the 3DS didn't actually perform great for a Nintendo handheld.

Now, seeing a 'decline' in overall console sales and handheld gaming basically has the same reasons. Tablets and smartphones. So, mobile sales. That didn't really take sales from games like GTA, CoD and so on. But with the casual crowd leaving the console market it hurt Kinect and other motion control as much as casual games on consoles. And it means that all those casual console buyers wont buy again.

It's worse with handhelds though. With 'everyone' having smartphone and/or tablet, five years olds starting to play on mommys iPhone and mature gamers mainly playing kind of gapfiller games. For teens handhelds don't belong to the cool stuff.

 

Yes, there still is a market for dedicated handhelds. It's getting smaller and smaller though. And if a 3DS successor manages t sell more than 3DS, let alone 3DS and Vita, i'd really be surprised.