With the 3DS, we can already see that many of the big franchises are being ported to the handheld... well not exactly ported, as the games are not mere ports but actually add on their HD counterparts or are brand new itterations.

The japanese market this gen has been very biased thowards the handhelds and the japanses devs have recently been saying that they have started to lag behind western devs as far as properly targeting the gaming audiance goes.

A shift to handhelds would seem appropriate for them as this would let them carter more to a market they know well (their own) and also lower both costs and the risks they have to take on new IPs in the console area.

What do you think? are we gonna see less console games from the japanses devs in favor of handhelds ones?

They've been doing this for some time now... We have threads about this like once every month or two.

Yeah I can see it happening more and more. Dragon Quest IX is about to become the best selling dragon quest game ever and it was released on the DS. It could catch up to Final Fantasy XIII in sales or close to it but it must have had a much smaller production cost.

On the other hand you have Valkyria Chronicals 2 which flopped hard....  That might have more to do with it being on the PSP specifically though which seems to have hardcore piracy problems.

wow it took you time!

And Dragon Quest IX didn't make this obvious to you?

DQ is an RPG, the DQs and FFs have all been redone for handhelds, how was IX surprising to be on the DS?

I'm talking about franchises like Street fighter, Resident Evil, Ridge Racer... you know, the ones that usually are consoles and not handheld...

actually the PSP did have plenty of console IPs shift to it.. many as ports though.  (VC2 was a PS2 game no?)

i'm the one for september ;op

I think it's because while spin-offs and remakes are common on the DS this time they had the confidence to do it as the primary  format for a main title.

Nah, just PSP unfortunately =(

(really wanted it on PS3 like its predecessor)