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curl-6 on 15 May 2026
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Kyuu said:
curl-6 said:

A huge part of the handheld market, especially with say DS, was simple pick-up-and-play games; phones now provide this for very cheap or even free, which represents enormous competition for any portable machine trying to win people's limited time and money.

Look at the sales of pretty much any other handheld device released since Switch; they've all sold tiny numbers, cos the market for a dedicatd handheld has largely dried up. 

It's not that Switch faced little competition, it in fact face very intense competition from both mobile gaming on the portable front and PS4/5 on the console front, it was fighting a war on two fronts against very powerful and entrenched enemies.

It doesn't matter. If Switch had no portability, it wouldn't have been the giant success that it was. The Switch being a hybrid is an objective advantage that, unlike Sony, Nintendo could capitalize on due to their strong presence and software in the handheld space.

Vita failed because it didn't have compelling software, and Sony's main playerbase is on home consoles, contrasting Nintendo.

Sony and Nintendo play to their strengths. Now that it's possible to release a "reasonably priced" portable version of the PS6, Sony is going for it. Because there are no longer significant downsides to having more hardware options and tapping into the portable market, seeing as how scalable games are.

The claim that Switch faced no competition on the portable front isn't true at all though, as cheap/free portable gaming being available on a device everyone already owns is massive competition to any portable console trying to make it big in the post-smartphone era. 3DS sold less than half of the DS due to this, and mobile has only grown in strength since then.

Switch faced an uphill battle on both the console and portable fronts, squeezed on both sides by formidible and well entrenched alternatives.