^ How many people play a full featured street fighter game on handhelds in the first place?

The PC dominates the casual market, it isn't a hardcore system despite what many have claimed. In that respect PC access to casual games outstrips consoles such as the Wii by a significant margin.

I've recently put a GBA and SNES emulator on my Android and I've added a few other games from the marketplace and I've found that I play portable games way more often now. I've had a DS and PSP since launch, but in the last three years I've barely touched them. I play with my Android for at least a couple of hours a day now.

They probably have a point.

Yeah. I don't own a smart phone. Then again, I don't play my DS so yeah...

But when 3DS is released, it will be replacing my iPod as my music player. Suck on that Capcom.

@kyliedog  if you consider that crappy ass port of SF4 a "full" experience then thats all good, im talking more along the lines of SFAlpha3Max for PSP or SSF43D for 3DS

@Squilliam I do, its my favorite genre

From a quick google search, the average price of an iPhone game is $1.66 ...

Being that a publisher (probably) makes around 10 times as much from the sale of a PSP or Nintendo DS game Capcom will (probably) only have to sell 350 Million iPhone games at the average price to make the same revenue they earned on the PSP and Nintendo DS. Who thinks that is likely?

You'd figure given MH's prominence for Capcom's financials, this guy's gonna get a stern talking-to for talking down one of Capcom's most lucrative business ventures. It's like if the director of Galaxy 2 declared "No-one will pay full price for a 2D platformer"

wait what??

wasn;t it that the causal and core are leaving the portables for smart phones and that only the hardcore market remains

if you are an hardcore gamers and wants an portable device you would buy an ds or PSP not an HTC desire 

Less dev costs and no shipping costs either.

Don't forget that the average price is bogged down by a lot of repeat crapware.

When it comes to real success on the iPhone, sales aren't usually to the $0.99 titles, but the $2.99, $4.99 and $5.99 titles.

In response to the OP, I'm not surprised. I've been a big believer of the downfall of portables for some time. I honestly believe, and have believed for some time, this coming generation is the last you will see of the dedicated portable gaming device.

Its kind of like Steam vs. Retail PC. Steam is superior in almost every way for publishers and developers (higher freedom to promote/sell content, pricing schema, much higher profit margins). With phones its the same way - you can put the app out, and make a cool 70% on it. Comparatively, that DS title may earn you 50% if your lucky, and it will only stay on market for so long. Bit different with the major Smartphone OSes.

The killer advantage with smartphones is their always-on capability to download content. It is a market advantage that is unparalleled. Not even the PC has the 100% connectivity of a smartphone, which is why its so lucrative - 100% of devices are able to install gaming applications.

There is a massive amount of growth to the platform, and huge upsides. Despite iOS having huge leads, its still in its infancy. Google has some right ideas with QR codes. I think that there is a long way that can go with QR codes, and content promotion. For example - an ad in a video game magazine could have a QR code to the beta of Resident Evil on a smartphone. Or VGC could add a QR code in the browsewrap for a new Civilization title. There is a lot more innovative marketing that can happen, as you can drive content purchases anywhere and everywhere.

Its still not perfect - future leaders like Google's Android need to get their butt in order and push more uniformity concerning hardware fragmenation to make it easier on developers. Once that is in place, and easier billing, it'll blow up. Its a scary thing to think of a system like iOS or Android selling more phones in a year than Nintendo sold of its entire DS line in 6-7 years, but its coming very soon - 2011 should see Android sell well over 100 million phones.