Well, Pachter has made a lucrative career out of it......

People use CNET for stuff other than downloads?

What makes you think Vita will sell in Europe Jneul?

In UK Vita (with no Wifi) will retail for £229. Add to that you need a memory card means add another £39.99. Then on top of that you need a game meaning £29.99-£39.99. Which means on release day if you want to play say Uncharted your be spending pretty much £310. That is $482.
So a £310 Vita will be going up against a £130 3DS with Zelda. It is nearly x3 the price of the 3DS when you take into account what you need to start with.

The Cnet report is a load of rubbish but if you think people in the UK would rather spend £300 on a handheld instead of say an Ipad then your going to be dissapointed. Vita will post poor numbers until the price comes down just as the 3DS did. The difference being the Vita will have to come down in price a lot to be able to compete with the 3ds.

What i think they meant was that handheld console gaming is dying mobile/tablet gaming is taking that audience. People no longer think they need a console to play games on the move. Look at games like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YRYMh3ShzA and even this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaPzvpK3T8s
Those are playing on mobile phones and are better looking then the games on 3DS. Mobile gaming has caught up with handheld gaming.

hear, hear!

People said the exact same-thing when the Wii came out. They said the same-thing about smartphones not taking off as they didn't have buttons, they said the same-thing about Kinect which went on to be the fastest selling enertainment device in history.

Point being while you might not like it the casual audience does. And sadly it is that audience that has defined this generation. But more importantly is shaping the future of gaming. Look at things like Angry Birds. That game has been sold over 350m times. Did those people need a handheld console to play that? No. As you say it isn't about looks, graphics mean nothing. But when a phone can do exactly the same as a console and more why would the people choose the console?

For you or I we would choose the console because we are hardcore gamers who prefer physical controls. But we are now the vast minority. Sales of smartphones/tablets/touchscreen monitors/sensor technology etc proove that.

Phones have the ability to change things yearly such as the processor etc where as consoles don't. Look at the Google Nexus Galaxy. It has an HD screen and super fast processor. The speed at which these things are upgraded makes handhelds look out of date fast. Last year you could play GTA3 on your phone, whats to say next year you wouldn't be able to play GTA4?

So i think saying they are not a threat is quite laughable when you see sales of them destroy consoles. Iphone 4s sold over 17m in under 3 months. Samsung Galaxy s2 sold even more then that. Companies have worked out gaming on phones is a potential bigger industry. You might not like it, i deffinatly don't like it. But burrying your head in the sand and trying to pretend it isn't as big as it is won't make it go away.

Sales of smartphones etc proove what?

In the same time the handheld market increased with DS+PSP compared to Gameboy Advance etc.,

and now 3DS had a better 1st year than DS. So what?

You fooled yourself, like this puppet on CNET.

Smartphones are here to stay, like tablets etc., but the handheld market is still growing so your logic is just plain wrong.

Comparing handheld sales to phones and then conclude handheld is dying is like burrying the sand in the head.

That's the key here. PCs can do more than consoles, but people continue to buy them in greater numbers. Coexistance is the point here

Sales of smartphones proove there are people out there more interested in them then consoles. A lot of those people buy new phones for the same reason people buy new consoles i.e processor/memory etc

I have not fooled myself at all. I am a business analyst. Most analysts will tell you mobile gaming will take over traditional gaming eventually. Here is a good article that will educate you more about it http://geekaphone.com/blog/mobile-games-by-the-numbers/

Both Sony and Microsoft realise this hence why they have released gaming phones.....i.e Xperia play.

I think where your getting confused is on the definition of what is a handheld. Things such as a 3DS/PSP/Vita are handhelds in the old traditional sense. But smartphones are also handhelds but in the modern sense.

For example the Optimus 3D phone. Would you classify that just as a phone even though it has higher specs then a 3DS and can watch films and play games in the exact same 3D?

Or is a handheld simply something with buttons?

Point is that A LOT of people buy phones simply based on how well they play games. I got my old Desire because i could play old school Sega/Nintendo games on it. Very few people buy phones now simply because you can make a call on it. The additional things are more important now. For some people that is the ability to talk to their phone i.e Siri. For some it is the ability to take photos. For some it is because it has a built in MP3 player/music studio ala Dre Beats HTC phones. For some it is because it has Sat Nav in it. For some it is because the social network features it has i.e Facebook/Twitter and so on.

So i don't think it is me who has my head in the sand, far from it. Smartphones today are thought of for many in the same-way traditional handhelds were. You mention 3DS sales but yet fail to mention how it did when it released and the fact it had to cut its price in some areas by 50% within a few months of release. You fail to mention that even in Japan Vita sales nose dived in its 2nd week. Meaning chances are Sony will also have to go the same way and drop price.

Smartphones eventually will lose the "phones" part of the name because they do so much more then that.

When it comes to predictions like this, from what I have seen the vast majority of analysts are wrong almost all of the time ...

In the 1990s, as PCs were becomming common in most people's households and PC gaming was experiencing rapid growth because of this people were predicting the "death" of console gaming; over the timeframe of predicted death of consoles, the console gaming industry grew rapidly and, at the beginning of the 2000s, people started predicting the death of PC gaming. PC gaming didn't die though, casual and flash based games grew rapidly, MMO games became much more important and profitable, and the PC became another platform many/most games were ported to.



In my opinion, you will see phone based games continue to be the 5 minute time-killers they currently are that people play when they have nothing better to do; and handheld systems will grow into being more "complete" game experiences for people on the go.

lol the minute nintendo stops making handhelds that be the day gaming just hit a whole new low, look at their record!

they have out sold the ds starting sales with the new 3ds, dispite slow start --where have we heard this before oh ya they said the same thing about the ds passing gba numbers then gba passing gbc numbers and gbc passing gb, lol --- looks to me like their gaining not losing if you look at where ds is now we are most likely looking at where 3ds will be much faster then ds if not a slightly less-- not by much because mariokart nintendogs sims etc will bring casuals ,

also there is a market for everything, 

smartphones are mostly used as phones- prove me wrong i dare you

ipods are mostly for music /videos

gameboy/ds p;sp are handhelds ment for playing good games -not no game youll put down in 20 minutes,  also with wii u s tablet controller it is possible that nintendo might do somthing in the form of a ds player on wii u  --that plays 3ds games in 2d mode or ds games period  , ,-or if you use ur 3ds u still get 3d they can do that to ,  

but saying console handheld gaming is dying is perposturous because they will need to be around or else think about it--- less games less ways to play most people dont want no expensive phone just to play games --  

with that said cnet can kiss my royal behind