It's becoming increasingly clear that gamers are playing on smartphones more and more and that these players are doing so to the detriment of traditional handhelds. One of the leading publishers on smartphones, ngmoco (now owned by Japan's DeNA), doesn't see a very bright future for the traditional portables. During a GDC interview, ngmoco boss Neil Young expressed his concerns about NGP and 3DS to IndustryGamers.

“I think they are hurt; I think they're clearly hurt,” Young said of the traditional portables from Sony and Nintendo. “I think PSP is done and the new [NGP] is dead on arrival. It's really difficult to compete with an app store that has hundreds of thousands of applications and a wide range of options where the average price paid is around $1.20 and there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of free applications that are really high quality. So I just don't think Sony's going to be able to compete with that.”

We played devil's advocate and noted that Sony would counter with the idea that NGP can provide a PS3-like experience, but Young wasn't buying it and he said horsepower isn't the key to success anyway.

“It's not a PS3 quality experience... And in terms of getting broad adoption, having great processing power is not necessarily a prerequisite for great adoption in the marketplace. You need a range of things and what I think the iPod Touch and iPhone have been able to do is offer people swiss army knife type functionality for a device that plays games really well. It's not like it's crap at playing games – it's pretty good at playing games and it can do a whole bunch of other things as well."

As for Nintendo, Young paints a better picture, simply because of Nintendo's always popular IP. "I think Nintendo will likely be competitive. My personal opinion is that the 3D piece of the puzzle is kind of gimmicky. But Nintendo has great franchises and there are tens of millions of people who want to participate in those franchises, so that always helps... But the real question is the degree to which there's a third-party community," he said.

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A bit doom and gloom surely? It's a bit early to write off the NGP yet, because we know very little about it, and reports show that the 3D in the 3DS is very impressive.

However, claiming that smartphones are the future by anyone shows that they are clearly misinformed. Sure, the Iphone may have a few good games on them, but I don't see it overtaking, or replacing,  handheld gaming anytime soon.

What do you reckon?

i quote a brilliant reply from a sixthaxis user:

"In other news restaurants are now seen to be dead on arrival as fast food outlets have more customers."

I am going on vacation in 2 days for and coming back in 5 days. I am not taking my modded PSP with me to play the usual emulators. I am also not taking my GP2X Wiz with me to do the same thing... I just loaded up my Windows Phone with games which should pe plenty to entertain me during the flight there and back.

Not saying that these handhelds will fail, but people have way more options these days when it comes to portable gaming. Some of us may decide to move on from the portable console idea since the phones are providing some pretty fun games.

Awesome. Exactly right

They aren't competing for the same space, it's like CD and DVD...

Yeah, I suppose under certain circumstances then maybe Smartphone gaming would be useful

However, the fact is, at the moment, smartphones don't have the resources, or memory, to make 'proper' games. As time goes on, gaming consoles will tend towards smartphones, and vice-versa, so the difference won't be noticable anyway in around 10 years

Today, high end smart phones can easily replicate the nintendo DS/3DS gaming experience for the most part. Minus 3D screen ofcourse, but that too will change...

PSP/NGP experience is a bit different as its console gaming on the go. However that type of gaming on the go doesn't appeal to as wide of a market as casual gaming on the go...

Take a look at the people on the bus doing stuff with gadgets to see this in action. Usually 50% of them are texting, tweeting, facebook, email etc. ~30% will be playing their cell phone games and maybe 20% (kids usually) will be doing the DS/PSP gaming.

So are you sacrificing interface (playing Wolfenstein with on screen emulated buttons sux) for the sake of compactness and versatility, or did you load up on games that work well with only touch screen functionality. 

@OP: I don't like anyone who thinks that you can't compete with the "market leader". So I don't have much resprect for what that guy sais. God of gamers forbid that the only place to get mobile games in the future to be the app store and the only deices to play them on the iWhatevers.

.... but... I... already play more on my iPhone then on my handhelds.... >_>

...I'm just waaay ahead of you guys..

Oh yeah?

And what sorts of games do you play then?

That's my issue. Not enough quality and most games are either dodgy, pointless, boring or short

There are exceptions (Mirror's Edge is fun, Angry Birds of course), but there's no 'big' games like Monster Hunter or Zelda to my knowledge, or real system-sellers.

And that's the thing which is holding back smartphones IMO

The thing is that I don't really care about interface, or what game I play when I'm on the go... Just want to be entertained for a short period of time and get my mind off other things.don't care if its solitare or Mario or Uncharted...

The fact I have 1 device which does this is a lot more appealing than having to deal with 2 or 3 different ones which may offer a better interface, or a specific game.