Why are handhelds often seen as inferior or not as important as home consoles?

[zorg1000]

thismeintiel said:

IkePoR said:

There is viability to that trend, no doubt.  Still, I'm not truly convinced, as when the GBA released, there was no Sony or smartphone to compete with.  Also, the best selling 3DS model is the XL , the 200$ model.   If the numbers were say 40-50M, I'd concede but again, 60M with still one holiday left(a Pokemon holiday at that) it's hard for me to see this "huge chunk" you speak of.  If we consider all the obstacles the 3DS has faced, being down 20M isn't really bad, in my opinion.

The GBA had plenty of competition...from its succussor, the DS.  And the DS had plenty of competition from the PSP, which outsold the GBA and will outsell the 3DS, when all the sales are in.  The iPhone had also been on the market for almost 4 years before the 3DS launched, and Android for about 3 years, so DS also had some smartphone competition near the end of its life. 

Of course, the biggest thing against the 3DS is time.  You say 20M less isn't bad, yet the GBA truly only had 3 years by itself before it's successor was launched, so it acheived much of its numbers in a much smaller amount of time.  By Oct of 2003, 2 1/2 years after it launched, the GBA had already sold 51.2M consoles.  By comparison, the 3DS had shipped about 32.5M consoles 2 1/2 years after its launch.  It took the 3DS a little over 4 years to get to 51M consoles shipped.  Had Nintendo waited a full 4-5 years to launch the DS, the GBA would have easily shot past 100M.

Sorry, anyway you slice it, the mobile gaming market has taken a good chunk of the market away from handhelds.

Your numbers are a bit off

GBA shipped 49.42 million as of Dec 31, 2003 (launched March 2001)

3DS shipped 42.74 million as of Dec 31, 2013 (launched Feb 2011)