Nintendo apparently disagrees. It's already been announced that they are making a new Handheld. Unless that turns into the "Fusion" thing, which is even a worse idea.

I also have doubts that the mobile market is devouring the Handheld market. Before the mobile market exploded (GBA), they had 80 Million or so sales. When the mobile market started to blow up (DS Lite/DSi, not original DS) the DS sold 150 Million. Now people are estimating that the 3DS is going to sell as well/a tad less than GBA.

I agree that the mobile market has definitely taken away attention from dedicated Handhelds, but not enough to make the dedicated Handheld market (or just Nintendo, more specifically) die or shrivel up to just a small thing. A lot of the deductions from last generation are because of the PSV's absolutely horrendous performance.

It peaked a year ago man.

Mobile gaming was still not a big deal in the DS' prime, the whole scene was still very new and undeveloped. Even discounting the Vita; the 3DS is struggling to maintain a 50% sales rate compared to the DS, the toll the mobile industry is taking is massive, and since handhelds are competing more directly overall on convenience factor, they get the smackdown the worst.

I don't think Nintendo will release a tradtional, dedicated handheld, something not entirely unlike a smartphone or tablet is more likely. If they do release a traditional handheld; they're showing that they are no longer fit to be in the modern gaming industry as a hardware manufacturer, they have made so many mistakes now and have been dead-set on not learning and refusing to break tradition. They have to break tradition and start learning, even if the company itself can stand to post losses for a decade; the investors simply won't put up with that (and I honestly don't understand why more people can't see that).

The gaming market grew and grew and then the mobile scene, browser model and social games exploded and took a lot of the surplus that had been built by the more traditional devices; mostly the consumers with a more fleeting interest (the guy who turned on his PS2 once every week, the young couple who only played Singstar at parties or Buzz on weekends, the same crowd that bought Kinect and Eyetoy etc), they headed for the higher perceived value and the new focus of the fledgling gaming market segment: convenience.
Games simply became more mainstream and most of it aims towards the lowest common denominator.
Look at fantasy and sci-fi movies and hip-hop; they were niche only a decade (fantasy/sci-fi) or two (hip-hop) ago but have now become extremely mainstream and accepted; this spawned a massive casual fanbase with a shallow interest level who steer away from the heavy stuff and fall for the revised and more simplistic aspects of the field(s).

The more shallow consumers bought more traditional devices before simply due to the fact that if you wanted to play any kind of games, it was either consoles or PC (PC was "too complicated" and never tried to cater to the "party" gamer in the way consoles did), these people also found it nifty that the machines doubled as media devices to watch DVD's (and later Blu-ray) on, and in the 7th gen both the PS3 and 360 became popular choices for streaming. Almost the entire market for these services, the simple games and the less deep reaching side of traditional devices, have been usurped by the convenience segment.

The mobile market was not as big as it is now, yes. But, in 2008/2009, it really started growing, and the DS was still selling well then. There are people who can't be completely sustained with just mobile games, actually quite a few. There's still a market for traditional Handheld gaming. When Nintendo's Handheld starts to go below 60/65 Million each generation, then I'll agree that the traditional market is done.

Also, what do you have to say about the GBA~3DS estimates? 80 Million is not bad, the PSP did that and it was still a large success.

With the global turnover and overall size of the gaming industry today; 60-65 million for any console without competition is not good enough, especially with development costs having risen, marketing budgets exploding and attach rates being a bit fickle. The convenience segment goes for low development and consumer cost on average and crazy high product volume and sales while traditional gaming is almost opposite; a tough match.

I agree with the estimates of GBA = 3DS, at leats quite close, it depends on what they do with pricing, for the most part, the 3DS is still a fairly expensive console. I think I've said a long time ago that the 3DS would reach about half the sales of the DS, that would put it at 75-80 million or so. 80 million is possible if they reach my expected target for year end 2014 and the yoy drops aren't too massive, it also depends on what Nintendo in general do down the line in a couple of years.

80 million is a nice number, in my opinion, if the 3DS can get there, it will have done well considering the circumstances. I think the real problem will be finding a solution within a relatively short amount of time though, for Nintendo, they have purposefully kept their distance to western centric ideas and they have stayed out of the tech and overall market movements and thus missed out on experience, insight and practices/methodology that others have soaked up and developed a long time ago (look at how they're struggling with marketing efforts in the west and how they were caught off guard by something as trivial and widespread as HD development). I think Nintendo's power might move more and more towards Japan in the 9th gen with whatever solution they come up with, mostly because I don't believe that they'll hit their stride in the west as far as software and general philosophy is concerned but their very eastern centric ways paired with convenience factor will help them really take of in Japan (instead of 50-60% of their sales of their home console sales being in NA, it will be in Japan) with their "fusion" project. In short; their "fusion" project will take away the majority of their presence in NA (which is behaving more like Europe in some ways lately) and cause their home console to become more like the handheld and vice versa.

For the record; I think both Sony and MS will be more or less irrelevant in the 9th gen, but all of this is mostly speculation...

I meant the 3DS, that would be an overtracking of roughly 5 times (going from 250K a month to 50K)

I sure don't. We have one like 3 times a month.

Can you at least give me a reason as to why you trust this member on Neogaf so much? What are his/her connections? What makes him/her such an authority on console sales?

And, also, what makes his word substantially more trustworthy than the rest of Neogaf? Correct me if I'm wrong, but someone in this thread linked to this page which seems to claim that the 3DS sold 97K this month, which is signficantly different than the 50-70K that was being argued earlier.

I'm by no means trying to argue that VGC is some sort of definitive authority on sales figures, but if an entire website has trouble doing it, I imagine this member must have some incredible credentials.

I don't know that the mobile market is devouring the handheld market but the largest publishers and developers of hanfdheld games all have multiple mobile projects in progress today.  My hypothesis is that less development attention is what is "killing" the dedicated handheld market.  All of those mobile projects would have been DS or GBA games at that time.  Western devs were never really big on handhelds and they have switched over to mobile platforms almost completly.  That software gap we will call it would be why we don't see portables doing as strongly right now.  I think what we really need to do is look at the number of titles the 3DS has recieved overall and compare that with the DS and GBA in the same time frame. If I had the data I would bet money that the title number contraction is very severe and leading to this "decline".  

If that hypothesis holds true it really seems like the issue is getting the same amount of development attention that older platforms got because there were no other choices for those size projects before.  If software does indeed sell hardware then I think my analysis makes some sense.  These handhelds can't attain critical mass cause they don't have enough software.  I think we know where the software went.  Without western titles like GTA PSV never stood a chance at geting PSP numbers.  With less support from the major eastern publishers the 3DS didn't really have a chance to out do the DS.  The real question is how can handhelds attract that much development attention when there are other more appealing places to put those small projects.  When we can answer that question we can see portables "saved"

^this. And also, I've seen people here say that these gaf leaks are mostly accurate..... Mostly? If these people have access to genuine info, they would be spot on, 100% of the time. Then there's people who say that just to be on gaf they have to be verified, and that's why they should be trusted.... Just like misterxmedia, right? Yup, gaffers should be trusted, no questions asked..... I'm convinced. I'm a believer now... Make.beleive