Why drop a feature that pushes 3DS's visuals above the competition? Especially one where the user has the ability to adjust and disable it (I don't know why).

because it costs money.

But what I said about the battery life is the real thing to look for.

3DS is gr8

Contradiction. Unless you are saying the DS will compete with the 3DS?

I don't see Sony leaving the handheld market. As bad as Vita sales are, it'll be profitable eventually and those 3.7m Vita sales are in fact sales that could have gone to the 3DS......Vita wont' be discontinued. There's no reason for it to be.

vgpach.. opps!! Vgking beware remember the things you say tend to have a contrary efect in the real world.

While your point initially seems like a good one, I think you're looking at it wrong.

There are obviously more people interested in non-gaming while travelling than travelling. There are also most likely more people doing slight bits of gaming on the Iphone than there ever will be people in the handheld market. However, that doesn't mean that

A) There's much of an interest - or profit - in the phone market from high-profile game makers

Or that

B) That the handheld market has to decrease in size.

A) should be fairly obvious, but I'll explain it anyway. People don't spend money on apps on their smartphones. The average spending on apps a year is 3 dollars. I don't have any actual statistics for how much of that is on gaming, but the Business Insider article I have it from (http://read.bi/Vbludj ) suggests that it's roughly two thirds of the total. So 2 dollars a year.

You won't see high profile games on the smartphones, simply because people don't spend enough money on them. This might change in the future, but there's also a large chance it won't. The smartphone gaming market is still very small compared to the regular one.

B) is partly derived from A, and partly independant.

The smartphone vs handheld competition is very similar to the Wii vs HD consoles one. The Wii expanded the market to the side of the undedicated gamer, but the HD consoles didn't suffer. The Ps360 is looking to sell as much - if not more than - the PS2+XBox.

Similarly, the smartphones are dragging new people into gaming. But that doesn't mean they're stealing the handheld gamers any more than the Wii did the PS360 ones.

You could also draw an analogy to piracy here. The people who commit piracy are, interestingly, usually the ones who also spend the most on gaming (or films, or music, if that's what they're pirating). They use piracy for the games they wouldn't spend their money on, but spend their money on the games they feel are worth their money. I'm not saying I agree with the logic, but that seems to be how it is.

The same applies for the smartphones. People happily play free games on their Iphone - 89% of all app downloads are free, so the vast majority of games should be as well - but that doesn't mean they're not willing to pay for the other games.

While your argument makes logically sense, it goes against history on these subjects. All-around products, or broader-appeal products rarely eliminate or heavily damage the dedicated ones.

Flawed I own a Vita and a 3DS so Vita sales aren't necessarily lost 3DS sales, as a Vita owner the fact that the platform is struggling is plenty reason to discount even if some people want to remain blind to it, the's no saviour here for Vita coming from anywhere else but Sony themselves and them not discounting it will further hurt the platform. Could care less about how much the tech costs them because that was their own choice and the should of been an immediate plan B incase things didn't go to plan, Vita maybe more powerful and good tech like it's predecessor was at it's time but it hasn't retained the situational advantages and things are only going to get worse over the next few years if Sony doesn't step in.

Somewhat surprisingly, Kitler seems to be correct here. I thought he was off until I actually checked myself,

Last year, the 3DS saw a 15% increase from the week ending 10th December to the next, and then a 16% increase the next week. Followed by a 62.5% drop.

If the same happened this year, we would see

Next week: 784k
The week after that: 910k
The next week: 341k

Total: 2026k

The 3DS needs another 2155k to reach its 2011 sales. In other words, if it tracks exactly as it did last year, it'll end 129k off.

And, judging by how the 3DS has been tracking so far this holiday season - with a smaller holiday boost than normal - it's actually seeming more likely that it will fall more than 130k short than less.

That is, unless VGChartz counts the next week as well. I'm not completely sure how VGChartz counts the years. It might count the fourth week too, and if it does, the 3DS' 2012 will be larger than its 2011. That's pretty much the only way I can see that happening, though.

3DS fighting the good fight,i still see a future for the vita in japan with games and a pricecut but this handheld gen has a long way to go to avoid the inevitable flop threads regardless what they sell

You say this despite the 3DS outselling the first year of the DS?