If DS was a fluke where's the "inevitable" handheld decline?

[mrstickball]

superchunk said:

vivster said:
Well Nintendo is so desperate and is combining their handheld with a home console to increase sales while Sony has dropped out completely. Sounds like a decline to me.

Will you accept the decline of handhelds if the Switch sells less hardware than the 3DS?

Nintendo is merging due to home decline and competition. With exception of Wii, only their portables have remained extremely profitable and popular, especially in Japan.

Sony is dropping (maybe) because they've tried twice and both times were decimated by Nintendo and they lost money while in home they are very strong.

NS will sell similar to 3DS or more. I'm betting more but will be confident on the prediction come April.

Hi Superchunk!

I think the NS will still see diminishing sales, given that the in-between nature of the iteration may prove to be a hard sale to console gamers, although not so much for handheld gamers. That isn't to say it won't be successful (I imagine it will, relative to the WiiU), but I think expectations need to be tempered. 

Having said that, their portable sales segment, especially software, has traditionally done gangbusters, so its logical for them to move that direction. I think one major factor is that since they're merging essentially console hardware with a portable frame, it may cause some issues with development costs, since handheld games should traditionally be seen as being cheaper/easier to develop for.

I do think, though, that while we're arguing the NS vs. DS vs. other consoles, it'll be fun to see how fast the Nintendo Classic sells.. I think that system, and future iterations, may overtake Nintendo's traditional console segment, if they can flesh the design out more and make it the new sub-$100 console of choice (and its fully possible - I worked on an idea about 3 years ago that was basically a Nintendo Classic... The design can be fleshed out and built into its own virtual console library if Nintendo decided to go that route (and they should - banking on their prior success can work if they do it on the cheap).