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

[Faelco]

tak13 said:

Oh...
People here conclude that pyro says that there is no decline while what he means is that market is declining to normality, not declining to death...

He simply deems 7th gen as an anomaly and for obvious reasons ( compare 6th gen to 7th ) I concur with his aspect!

 

Did tablets kill pc eventually...? Hmmm, no the market declineδ a lot till to stabilize to a still viable size. ;)

Except that "normality" doesn't exist in tech markets and trends like consoles. A market like this will grow or decline but won't stay "normal", it's not sustainable. The usual way to read a graph like this is : "The market grew, attained its peak, and is now declining". And that's the moment when the actors of the industry have to think about something else, either launch something new to help the market grow again, or bet on another growing market. That's why Nintendo, Sony, Square Enix and a lot of other developers are now going to mobile gaming, and even Nintendo is mixing handheld and home consoles.

 

Handhelds are not "dying", but are becoming minor compared to the much bigger mobile market, so the industry switches its focus, and the handheld/mobile gap grows. Handhelds could become a niche market in one or two generations if nobody finds a great new product to bring the audience (and the whole industry) back. Not sure if the Switch will be that great new product.