Nintendo and Sony have to bring out Handheld/Phone hybrids in 2017.

[KBG29]

vivster said:

Because making your own platform is totally easy and not at all expensive or maintenance heavy. Nintendo and Sony can't even care for their own console platforms properly. So will they update their phones regularly like everyone else? No one wants to use a smartphone that is older than 2 years. In come the whining console owners for having to upgrade their platform more often than once in 7 years.

If both of them would just produce software for android and iOS they have a lot less risk and cost on their hands, that's why it's the smart thing to do. You seem to forget that Google, Samsung and Apple are in a whole different league than Sony and Nintendo. They can't make the same investments nor wager that kind of risk.

It's easy to talk big when you're not the the one taking billions of dollars worth of risk while having no clue about economics whatsoever.

Sony already has the ground work for this set, they don't have to make a major investment. They have a partenership in place with AMD already, and they both know the PS4 architcture in and out. Building a phone that has a shrunk down PS4 APU, that would be mobile friendly while still devlivering PS4 software at 540P would be relatively easy and cheap at this point. Nintendo has a bit furthur to go due to being so late to the connected game, but it is not an impossible task.

As for updating platforms. Sony already puts out 2 major PS4 updates a year. They are also bringing the PS4 Pro out in a couple of weeks. The PlayStation business is shifting, and we will never see 5 - 7 year platforms again. Nintendo already updated the 3DS as well with the new 3DS, so both companies have made the shift to evloving within the platforms life cycle. People will be plently happy with using a phone for 2 or 3 years if it is still offering industry leading performance, and more importantly features not offered by any other phone.

On building games for iOS and Android, yes, of course it is the easy road, but it also does nothing to inspire, and the long term success and brand image problems it creates are not worth the short term gains. As for Sony and Nintendos size. Remember once upon a time, Apple was on its death bed, and Samsung and Google where start ups. Sony once had a dominate market position, but they lost it due to being stagnate, and not innovating or adopting to new tech fast enough. It is very possible for the mighty to fall, and Google, Apple, and Samsung have been standing still for a few years now.

It is also easy to talk big when you just preach to the choir. Unfourtunatly, if keep saying the same thing over and over again, then you will losse most of your following wondering, what went wrong. Sometimes you have to take risks, and try new things. That is how PlayStation started, that is how iPhone started, and that basically is how every major product started. Someone somewhere has to take a risk, or a precieved risk for innovation to happen, and creativity to thrive. 

At the end of the day, no decision could be more costly than the decision not to offer phone versions of the 3DS and Vita. Or, to an even greater extent, the decision by Sony, to dump billions of dollars into Xperia and a competing ecosystem and OS instead of investing that money in making their own mobile platform, on the most successful brand in their portfolio. Why did that happen thoug? Because the old gaurd preached to the choir until no one was listening, instead of looking at what was actually working.