I mean exactly what I'm writing; the dedicated handheld has no future and will go away. Like Arcades, Amiga, console add-on's with CD drives and other things of the past, its simply not going to exist within a few years as their market is being swallowed by others and the handheld becomes the "inbetweener". The recent sales of Brain Age are the crown example of this, and in due time this will be the rule rather than the exception.

What was Patcher ever right on?  This makes me think Vita is about to take off...

and yeah it will be interesting to see the weeks following the price cut.

and what the hell are you talking about? what does the "sony doesnt market enough card" have to do with anything i said?

Out of curiousity, what do you think about the rumored 9th generation Nintendo handheld? Basically, early rumors and guesses suggest it will essentially be a powerful handheld with HDMI compatibility, making it both a handheld and a console, sort of like that handheld Genesis Sega made back in the 90's. Would that count as a dedicated handheld? Could it suceed? What kind of identity would it have?

That's the main problems dedicated handhelds are facing; identity. This is also the Wii U's problem, these machines are trying to compete in several markets at once, a near impossible task.

The Vita is trying to offer a PS3 experience in handheld form, this is not what consumers want, nor do they want to play big budget games with good visuals on a big screen and surround sound with a half-assed touch controller. The reason the 3DS has done so much better is that it had a clear identity, the games on it separated themselves from home console games with the easy going, on the go games all the while retaining the depth to pull in some more dedicated gamers with some good RPG's and strategy games, still very much custom made to fit the handheld controls, visuals and sound though.

Handhelds might adapt all they want and add connectivity, features and formats and services right and left but the problem will yet remain; they will be between the smartphone/tablet market and the home console/PC market with home consoles and PC offering the depth and richness for a relatively high but justified premium and smartphones/tablets offering easy fare on weaker hardware for a tiny buck, with most of the connectivity and features of a home console and PC but on a smaller and much weaker scale. This makes the handheld something no one needs, essentially, a middle man no one asked for. They will offer gaming on a smaller scale for a high premium and none of the bangs and whistles of PC/home consoles and they will lack the connectivity and application of the smartphones and tablets at a similar price, hardware-wise. Tablets especially, are also adopting more serious and full fledged games as an alternative to handheld games of more merit, the release of Baldur's Gate is one such event of note, there are more to follow.

There's a reason why I never imagined the 3DS doing numbers anywhere near the DS when all is said and done and the combined DS/PSP numbers that will likely be in excess of 235 million will stand as a jaw dropping monument of the all time great high of the dedicated handhelds once we see the 3DS and Vita struggle to reach half that number combined lifetime. Home consoles have become and are becoming multimedia hubs with dozens of feature and very good connectivity, the smartphones and tablets are the portable counterpart with dirt cheap software. The dedicated handheld is being squeezed between two monolithic ships here and will find itself having to submerge itself completely, likely never to resurface.

I don't think it's a matter of identity. The Vita was positioned as a high powered handheld, was made as a high powered handheld, and sold as a high powered handheld.

The issue isn't the execution, but the strategy and targeting. They fundamentally chose the wrong group of consumers to target.

back when sony announced the playstation meeting that would happen on the 20th of feb pachter blew us all away with predicting or confirming that the ps4 will indeed be announced