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couchmonkey on 15 November 2017
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VAMatt said:
couchmonkey said:
                       

For my two cents, everyone keeps on blaming mobile for poor sales of handhelds, but if mobile is the wave of the future, could it be even worse for home consoles?  Will the tablet-loving kid of today buy a TV set at all?

Personally, I think weak economics and big miss-steps also play a factor in 3DS sales, at least.  The 3DS launch year was awful, I sold my launch system that Christmas to try to get some of my money back, with nothing but Street Fighter IV to show for like 7 months of ownership.  I don't think 3DS ever fully recovered, which is reflected in mediocre third party support.  Meanwhile, the past decade has not been an easy time economically - DS and PSP faced that starting in 2008, but they also had a couple of years worry-free on the market first.

As for Vita, I'd be happy to hear someone more informed explain what went right or wrong for that system.  If Switch's success is predicated on "powerful handheld", then why didn't Vita do better?

You may well be right.  I think we all just reflexively point to mobile as the killer or handhelds.  We could be wrong, at least to some extent. 

I think its a certainty that mobile gaming has had a negative impact on handheld sales.  But, I don't guess it is possible to know exactly how much impact.  It is certainly possible that a stronger 3DS launch would have resulted in much higher LT sales.  And, yeah, I have no idea about Vita.  

As to your other point about mobile's impact on home consoles......  That's a great point, and something that will be interesting to see over the next decade or two. The thing is though, there does not seem to be any end in sight to the power gap between portable and stationary hardware.  So, as long as there are gamers that care about "power", there will be demand for home consoles and/or PCs for gaming.   It will be interesting to see if the percentage of people that value portability over power shifts significantly though.  

For the record, I don't see any of the possible shifts as necessarily bad for gaming.  Changes happen, and the world still turns.  

I agree mobile has had an impact for sure, for example it's easy to see that Nintendo might not want to invest much in Brain Training or Nintendogs because there are dozens of cheap imitators on mobile now.

As far as the power gap between portable and stationary hardware, I agree that will serve home consoles for quite a while, though I think a dedicated, stubborn competitor with quality first partry software could erode that value pretty quickly.  I think Nintendo has the software but I'm not it has the dedication.  We'll see if it keeps its foot on the gas pedal in 2018.