I don't believe there will be a single developer capable of creating the 'average' game you are talking about. There are already some fun games for phones (and PC Flash games) but they haven't shown the ability to:

- Get the selling price above $10-15
- Be the reason people buy the hardware
- Get enough recognition for people to follow their releases and buy games in a franchise
- Actually reduce sales of the next market tier up. Currently they are displacing Flash games and newspaper puzzles

Nintendo has another weapon as well, one that has existed for ages. Why did PC not kill consoles? It was ubiquitous and powerful enough to play console games. It's because developers could target specific hardware with a guaranteed control scheme (i.e. buttons) and specs. Phones are too diverse to overcome that, except the iPhone which is one reason it has done so well. But the interface (touch screen) is poorly suited to games more upmarket than its current ones.

I still don't think portable computers will hurt portable consoles anymore than stationary computers have hurt stationary consoles.

I disagree completely.  To begin with, I think you're too quick to discount the possibility that some developer out there is going to step up big; before Donkey Kong, Nintendo wasn't a particularly special developer, in spite of their being in the market for nearly a decade.  Pokemon is one of the best-selling developers ever, but before Pokemon it spent eight years toiling in mediocrity.  No one remembers Marathon, but everyone knows Halo.  I don't know who's going to be the one to break out, but I'm confident that somebody out there CAN.

Second, I believe you're overlooking the fact that, with cell phones, the great strength isn't that the games are what will get people to buy a specific phone, but rather that the games will be good enough that there won't be any point in buying a game-dedicated device, since there's already quality options on a device that you have with you at all times as it is.  Remember, the idea is to sell games, not hardware; the hardware is just a necessary means to deliver the games!

Next, it is true that they are currently they are primarily displacing flash games and sudoku.  However, you're falling into the same trap that many a disrupted company has fallen prey to.  Videogames are not a stand-alone industry.  They are instead a part of the overall entertainment industry.  The fact that, at the moment, cell phone games are doing more to defeat a separate branch of the entertainment industry should not, and probably does not, offer Nintendo any sense of relief, because videogames are little more than an upmarket segment of the entertainment industry.  As a real-world analogy, think back to railroads and canals:  the latter were made obsolete by the former because they were both in the transportation industry, even though there are many radical differences between them!

Finally, I submit to you that the PC market's downfall has more to do with the public's unwillingness to wrestle with diverse graphics cards and other bottlenecks, rather than because of a diverse control scheme.  There really isn't much diversity in the PC control scheme, nor has there been:  nearly every PC game employs the keyboard and mouse, and before then nearly every PC game used the keyboard.  These are things that every PC had, out of the box.  Admittedly, cell phones may end up having similar issues, since they do have some diversity in their computing power.  But that's the only real caveat I see, hardware-wise, and since getting a new phone is both easier and more common than getting a new PC, I doubt it will pose as large an obstacle.

OK. I agree.. in the ultra long term. Not so fast as to make the claim in the title.

There will be a convergence of devices because it makes sense - no one wants to carry two handheld devices. How that will come about I don't know, because it's hard to imagine Nintendo being bought out or else buying a handset company out.

So, I can see the present situation and the inevitable end, but no idea whatsoever how the route will happen. It's so hard and there are so many conflicting interests today that a few breakout games or one breakout company couldn't bring down the status quo by itself, as Nintendo was able to with the NES/Donkey Kong or Apple with the iPhone. So the process will take far longer than technology alone says it should be able to.

Honestly I don't see Nintendo loosing their handheld market in 10 years. Nintendo is a company that adapts and innovates to continue market dominance. Now will Nintendo be selling a stand alone gaming handheld in 10 years? Maybe not, however I have no doubt they will have a handheld device on the market.

Your seeing with Sony already the idea of creating a handheld game console phone. I could see Nintendo creating a phone like device in 10 years. A device with phone capabilities not a phone with gaming capabilities. Unlike the I-Phone or Sony's new phone Nintendo will probubly not release a stand alone phone.

My best vision for 10 years from now is a Nintendo multimedia handheld. A handheld that will have apps (Like DSiWare and WiiWare or Appstore apps like on I-Phone) it will also have phone capabilities so that is someone wants to use it as a phone they could go get a plan and Woolah. I also see it using video chat like Kinect and a free phone like service much like Skype. The device will still have games at its core with software being slightly cheaper (9.99$-39.99$).

In the end I think Nintendo will adapt to the market. Sure consumers like to purchase their 99cent-5.99$ games on their I-Phones and such but their will still be people willing to shell out 29.99$ for a good game.

Now Microsoft and Sony are in similiar boats. In ten years will their be a new X-Box or PlayStation? With cheaper games coming out for pick up and play and higher profitability of FaceBook or Apple games is it feasable to continue having a high end gaming platform?

I think Nintendo will remain in the handheld space probubly another 20-30 years in some way shape or form. Sure they will evolve to compete with multimedia handheld devices but I doubt they will dissapear altogether. Also considering handhelds have always been Nintendo's strong point I don't see that changing drastically even Apple can't kill Nintendo's handheld devices.

Now will their be a PSP3 in ten years? Maybe not but Nintendo is here to stay!

Wait so if Nintendo is being doomed since 2006, you mean it gets worse in 10 years?

This is not an accurate analogy.  Typewriters are not used anymore, thus companies like Royal and Underwood went under due to them not succesfully evolving into keyboards or merging with PCs, for example.  Nintendo's games aren't going anywhere.  Will their handhelds eventually become a bit different to adjust to the times?  Maybe.  But even more than EA or Activision, Nintendo's software will always be in high demand, barring some kind of complete meltdown in their creative department, which isn't likely. 

@noname2200 said it best:  PCs have not hurt consoles in the least, and that's even with the former having many huge advantages over the latter.  True that with handhelds it's more about the convenience of having everything on a single device, but a $0.99 game on iphone is still a far cry from the latest SMB, Mario Kart, or Zelda as far as quality.  It's not like the way the convenience of MP3s have hurt CDs, simply because that's the exact same content at a slightly lesser quality, as opposed to completlely different content altogether.

Apple has proven that there is certainly room for their business model in the market, even with Nintendo around, but the opposite is also true, especially where younger gamers are concerned.  And remember, Nintendo has billions and billions in the bank.  What's to stop them from establishing a full blown online business model for thier own games in ten years, or at the very least, even partnering with a phone company?

Just the one that I know of thus far, however it ought to be expected that as the Smartphone market is growing substantially that another 2 or 3 will follow over the next couple of years.

The game is Angry Birds by the way.

Sorry, my mind is fizzled as I got talked into smoking weed last night, I split three joints between the two of us of some very strong stuff and im not a regular weed smoker by any means.

At the beginning of every hardware cycle people make predictions on what the market will look like 2 generations out and I have yet to see someone who was particularly accurate ...

To a certain extent I see a consolidation happening and people may be heading toward a "single device to rule them all", which could (conceptually) be something like an iPad or netbook that has various forms of communication built into it. The problem with these multi-purpose devices is that they are necessarily generic which means that they tend to have significant user interface limitations; and they’re not particularly “agile” in the sense that they can’t rapidly change when there is a new market opportunity.

This is where Nintendo's (more or less) gaming only focus has their advantage; and, while I can't predict what they will do to compete against the devices of the future (that I also can't really predict) I do believe that they will find a way to offer something which can't (really) be done with these multi-function devices. As an example of what I mean, consider the 3D on the 3DS; while it is not (necessarily) a revolutionary technology, it can't really be done on a smart phone today (or a tablet PC) because changing the angle or orientation of the screen by too much eliminates the effect, and these devices operate under the assumption that users will constantly change the angle or orientation of the screen.