I enjoy games that I pick up and simply can not stop playing anymore. The last years their were a lot of those on smartphones/tablets. The quality of those games is also going up fast.

Dedicated handhelds will a thing of the past within five years or less, its inevitable. They will be left in an inbetween wasteland, not offering the depth, complexity and sheer power of home consoles and PC's and not offering the mobility, flexibility, multimedia and affordable software of smartphones and tablets.

The OUYA is headed for the same wasteland, only it will be dead upon arrival and this in itself will be proof of where the market is headed and how it is dividing.

Sure, you have billions of smartphones. But only very few of them are used for playing games. Therefore, the market is very unpredictable. Games like Angry Bird make shitloads of money, but the are also respinsible for the greatest part of income with games. Many smartphone games don't sell at all, even free games often never hit 100.000 downloads or more. Console owners on the other hand have interest in gaming for sure. So you have 150 million passionate gamers on the PS3 and 360 platforms combines. And the developers are also somewhat happy with the vita, at least the makers of jetpack joyride were full of praise for the system. Consoles are far more predictable for developers and therefore the safe option for making games. The production costs are higher but so are the sales and you won't have to get your money from micro transactions. And in the end, no smartphone game on the planet can compete with the massive income Call of Duty generates.

The future of gaming is somewhat unpredictable, but I don't see the one and only new plattform in tablets and smartphones. Even if they take over completely, I fear a new games crash, as 90 % of the games on the market is just plain shit, made for the quick dollar. Consumers will notice that and with no alternatives they will just lose interest in gaming altogether. Besides that, there could very well be the next big thing that kills smartphone gaming over night. What could that be? If I knew that, I would be making billions right now.

windows 8 tablets will offer the same games that are on pc's. I dont see that being a fad. Given a few more years time the same will be for windows phones.