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Nuvendil on 16 July 2017
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curl-6 said:
Nuvendil said:

Well take away the dock, the joy cons and all that and the price wouls also drop significantly.  I think that dedicated handhelds had life if Nintendo had wanted that.  3DS and Vita have crossed 80 mil and still going, could even crawl past 90 mil.  And that's with both having rough starts, one getting like 1 year of push from its maker, and the other having pretty bad marketing too compared to the DS, GBA, and GB/GBC.  Honestly, I think the actual market for handhelds is still around GBA levels.  The 7th gen was anomalous on all fronts but ESPECIALLY handhelds, driven by a neighboring market interested that has since found something that better suits their needs.  The people who want a premium on the go experience, the vast majority of them can't get what they want on phones.  Believe me, I tried.

And I don't think the build quality was ever cheap on the 3DS.  Components, sure, to an extent.  But it always felt plenty solid to me.  Plust the line is just old now.

I still think the Switch is a superior solution to on the go gaming in nearly every aspect that straight handhelds, the only disadvantage being size but even then it isn't that bad.

The thing about GBA though is that it was replaced after only 3 years on the market. 3DS/Vita got 6 years without replacement until Switch arrived.

Ultimately, the direction we're heading is clear; Nintendo have gone with the Switch hybrid concept instead of another dedicated portable, and Sony aren't making another one at all, so dedicated portables will die out with the 3DS. There isn't really any need for a dedicated portable in a market where Switch and smartphones exist.

I know the GBA was cut off early, I was accounting for that.  I would say had all things been left to their original paths, 110 mil or so would have been the GBA's final numbers.  Not dissimilar to the GB/GBC.  And I think if Sony and Nintendo had been on top of their game with the 3DS and Vita, similar numbers could have been seen.  But they weren't, of that there can be no doubt.

Oh I'm not saying that handhelds will persist now, but rather that their end wasn't for lack of demand.  Nintendo could have kept it going, but they went with a solution that would grab most of not all of the handheld market and also work its way into the console space.  There won't be another handheld because frankly the only company that knew how to work that market has moved on to a different approach.