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ZhugeEX on 23 June 2016
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Ryng_Tolu said:
ZhugeEX said:

My comments on handheld gaming concern the whole market.

When you look at the handheld market as a whole its clear that it's no longer relevant anymore. PS Vita isn't worth even mentioning and 3DS performance over the last couple of years has been very weak.

I see a lot of people looking purely at one device or comparing one device to another single device. As I mentioned above, you need to look at the whole market.

An install base of 240m handheld consoles last gen dropping to less than 80 million with an ever sharper decline in software sales is not healthy at all. Especially when you consider that the decline has been accelerating rapidly in the last few years.

People can look at hardware sales for a single device all they want, but there is so much more to consider, especially when it comes to overll hardware & software sales, attach rates, average spend per user, number of active gamers, number of active publishers & games etc...

 

Personally I'd take a handheld over a mobile device any day. I'm not a huge fan of mobile gaming. But that doesn't mean I'm blind to the current state of handhelds in the market. 

Looking at the whole Market... That's why people try to Say "This generation is doing good" ans they remove The Nintendo Wii from The comparation?

And even if we remove The Wii, PS3 and 360 have sold something between 170-180 Million. You predict >150 Million for This gen INCLUDING Wii U.

But since we should see the whole Market, we Are looking for a most likely ~45% drop. That's not huge?

Surely is not as bad as a ~65% drop, but You understand what's The Point here?

Not only we will See a massive decline from gen 7, but talking about gen 6, The only PS2 will most likely end with More than what PS4, XBO, and Wii U will Sell COMBINED.

Should not this be very worried?

 

But You many time don't talk about only The whole Market... You many Times Said 3DS is Death.

So well, now there Are not excuse, "PSVita is Death" is totally comprensible cause The 0 support from Sony, and The terrible Sales.

But saying 3DS is Death... It's a 6 years old console, and looks like is also up YOY this quarter in shipments ( confirmed by Nintendo >60m annunced ).

It's selling More than The Xbox one, a console which only has 3 years of Sales. You don't considering This condole Death. So why 3DS is?

You see, there is not much sense here. I can understand all.

 

I can understand if you considering 3DS sales disappoint... I understand if you are worry for the handhelds market... I understand it did less than expect... But saying is "DEATH"?

 

Even you know this is wrong.

 

P.S

And last thing. 3DS did not bad for some years? What means "not bad"?

3DS was selling almost 15 million the firsts years. This is PS4 2014 levels. I would say this is a bit better than a simple "not bad", you don't think so?

 

Come on buddy. This reads like a fanboy post. 

I've said many times that the handheld market as a whole is irrelevant and dead. I've said similar things about the home console market in Japan as well. 

And you know my concerns around the home console market worldwide when it comes to hardware sales, that's where my 150m number comes from. Me pointing out that the install base will be less than most people think, and I made those forecasts at a time when most analysts were putting out numbers like 200m+. 

But you and I both know that whilst the home console market has seen a contraction in the number of players and retail publishers, it's also seen a more core audience emerge who are spending more on games, digital content and services this generation. The numbers for both hardware, software and overall engagement/spend are not even comparable between the Home Console market and Dedicated Handheld market. 

Asking me to say that PS Vita must be dead too isn't really helping your case here. It sounds like you think I have an agenda against only the 3DS or something. As i mentioned above, I've talked many times about how handhelds overall are irrelevant and the PS Vita backs up my point. In fact I even wrote an article on how big of a failure the handheld was and why it failed. In fact it did so bad that Sony ended up writing off a lot of stock iirc. 

http://gearnuke.com/playstation-vita-fail/

 

The 3DS has done considerably better in comparison due to the way it was designed, marketed, priced and due to the fact that it had a lot of desirable software initially. But that inital success was short lived and in the last 2 or 3 years we've seen a really sharp decline in HW/SW sales and user engagement. There are a lot of people who may have bought a 3DS but recent data has shown that only a fraction of the install base still use it. Like I've been saying in this thread and before, the usage case for handheld gaming has now been replaced by mobile gaming and that's caused the majority of that audience to shift towards mobile gaming. There are other reasons as well which have caused many in the West to abandon dedicated handheld gaming in favor of Home Console or PC gaming. Add all these reasons up and the obvious conclusion to me is that handheld gaming is no longer relevant and ultimately dead. It may be a strong word to use but I'm only using it to stress the point.