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bonzobanana on 23 January 2017
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bdbdbd said:
bonzobanana said:

I certainly have, I feel the price, clamshell design and long battery life were 3 major attributes of the DS success as a portable. I don't believe its the be-all, end-all but I think it definitely is advantageious for a portable making it easy to protect and more compact to fit into a pocket easily. 

Certainly the Switch doesn't have any of those attributes at all and as a portable will suffer because of it. However that said the landscape has changed and people now have more versatile mobile phones and tablets anyway even children so its a harder sell to produce a dedicated portable gaming device even if you do get the format and pricing right. The clamshell format was especially good for children who treat devices roughly with little respect or care.

No doubt in future months we will most likely debate why the Switch has failed and we will frankly be spoilt for choice with regard reasons for its low sales; console itself, game line-up, prices, performance level, market having moved away from dedicated portable game consoles etc.

Out of the four DS's I (and my kids) had, the number of broken hinges is four. One hinge per console. 2DS is much more durable device, so was GBA and so was GB. The thing with the DS is, that it was targeted for more mature audience than GBA, PSP or 3DS. The clamshell is good design for portability, but bad for kids who treat devices roughly with little respect or care.

Problem with the handheld market is, that it's moved away from games people wanted to buy. 

Never had that problem with hinges but seems like a clear issue there. Did scratch up my GBA screen quite badly by not being careful. 2DS is clearly a device where portability took a bad seat with its larger format. Ok for bags and backpacks but not pockets. GB was brilliantly well made but not a touch screen so could be made stronger more easily.

Mobile gaming has never been bigger and more popular but Nintendo have been outpriced by IOS and Android and I'm not sure there is even a market for a device which provides more intense ambitious games in a portable format. For a £60 switch cartridge you can practically have a huge library of decent android paid for games plus a ton more of great free games. It's hard to compete with that.