Gaming is officially over. People buy the same game over and over again and are now paying $300+ for a console that plays most of what their existing console will already play.
In other news the Xbox 720 is a walkman and the PS4 is a lump of granite with pre-order records broken for both consoles.

Yep pretty much like every platform before it.

The Vita? The Vita is a flop, in my honest opinion. Handhelds have overstayed their welcome and will be fazed out of the market within 5-10 years. I don't hate Nintendo, I just don't see the vision and plan with the WiiU, the console has no focus and is all over the place and I cannot fathom why some people expect it to perform on par with the Wii.

As for my gaming preferences; I play the PC and that's pretty much it. I own all three consoles but I don't really use them, except my PS3 for movies, that is.

I understood everything but the "handhelds have overstayed their welcome" part. Fazed out in 5-10 years, yeah right lol. Maybe Sony's handheld division but definitely not Ninty's. Do you even play handhelds? If you did then you would actually know what you were talking about.

Don't you know, Nintendo allocated only 3 units to pre-orders (one to the US, one to Europe and one to Japan) to create a "sold-out" effect. Please don't misinform with these kind of threads. Thank you.

On a more serious note, yup, it's launch and holidays, Wii had a great effect until what, April of the next year?

I'm still of the opinion that Nintendo gave the overwhelming bulk of their pre-order slots to Wal-mart. It's believed that they have an atypical agreement which other retailers aren't very happy with. Of course, there are also more slots out there with Amazon not doing business directly with Nintendo.

The handheld market will be overtaken and killed by/merge with tablet and phone gaming, its pretty obvious, we'll see a massive decline in Japan first and then US and Europe will follow shortly after. Its already happening, no handheld will ever sell anywhere near as many units as the DS did, it was the last great one. I don't need to like or play handheld to make observations about them and the market. Phone and tablet gaming is not a viable alternative to home consoles but certainly for handheld games.

It's already happening? Are you sure? Have you seen Kowen's "3DS vs. DS vs. PSP vs. PSV" thread. It's pretty clear to me you haven't, if you had you would know the 3DS is right on the DS's ass and things are getting worse for the DS since the 3DS hasn't had it's 2nd holiday season while at the same point in the DS's life it had already had its second holiday. So no you are wrong the only handheld in trouble is the Vita.

Your cute.

Much of what can be said about phones and tablets killing Handheld gaming is remarkably similar to what many said in the 1990s about the rise of PCs in everyone's home killing home consoles.

The big advantage consoles and handhelds have is their manufacturers are focused on producing the best gaming experience they can, and there are different visions and approaches to how to achieve this, and there is rapid advancement in what is being produced. While Miiverse may not seem to have much to do with XBox Live or the Playstation Network, Sony and Microsoft's online services (probably) inspired Nintendo to focus more heavily on their online infastructure; and the media functionality of the XBox 360 and PS3 most certaily had an impact on Nintendo creating Nintendo TVii. At the same time, Kinect and Move (along with many of the UI elements of the PS-Vita) were most likely in response to the UI work Nintendo has done with the Wii and Nintendo DS.

5 years from now playing games on a phone or tablet will likely be similar to playing games on a phone or tablet today, but I wouldn't be surprised if the next generation of handhelds has created a gaming experience that is several steps ahead of what they're doing today.