1. Pixel is a game changer, because this is a real Google phone. It is not an HTC, LG, etc. phone with the Nexus name slapped on it. This time Google is taking full ownership of the hardware and the OS, and integrating features at a deeper level than they ever have. Going forward Android will be taylored to Pixel phones, and all Android development enviornments will be optimized for building apps on Pixel. 

Pixel will create a massive gap between Google's phone and the competition, and it couldn't have come at a better time. Samsung is in deep water right now, and Google is stepping in just in time to grab the people that are moving on.

2. Sony and Nintendo would do very well because they would bring out their own platform. Having its own platform is the reason Apple is the most profitable phone manufacture. When the company owns the platform, and the hardware, they get royalties on every transaction made on the device. This is why with only 40 million PS4's, Sony is making 100's of millions of dollars a quarter.

If Sony and Nintendo could even sell 50 million phones a peace, they would be making a couple billion in profits per year. I the they can recapture the 200 million gamers that typically buy consoles and handhelds, then we are talking about 10's of billions in profits per year between the two.

That is why having their own platform is vital. Even if they had a Pokemon Go sized hit every year, they would make nowhere near the amount of money they could make with just 50 million phones in peoples hands.

This is nowhere near the ball park of thinking people would buy an SD console with a remote. This is saying people will buy a phone that can play their entire library of PS4 titles, and allow full access to PSN and online gaming via 4G. This is something the market has never had the opertunity to experience, and the natural evolution of a once, very popular gaming market that was called handheld gaming. This is the addition of a features both Sony and Nintendo bypassed with 3DS and Vita, and totally killed a market the was rapidly growing.

As for cost. I already said it would be more expensive to manufacture than the iPhone 7, and yes probably close to twice as much. However, neither Sony, nor Nintendo have ever been about running a mass profit business, they have always been about bringing the joy of gaming to the largest market possible, and reinvesting profits back into the software and experiences. That is why even if the device cost $350 to manufacture compared to the $225 of an iPhone, the actual consumer price would be $400, as opposed to the outragious $650 price tag of the base iPhone 7.

Like I said above. Both companies would be profitable, because owning the platform leads to massive profits through royalties. It is the same way that a small market like game consoles can be so profitable when it is so small compaiered to Mac or Windows.

On your idea about a shell that parteners with a phone. That could very well work. It could be the trojan horse peripheral that leads to a gaming phone in the future. It we could get something like that with full industry backing, and full support of either Nintedo or Sony, then I would be all for it.

Because making your own platform is totally easy and not at all expensive or maintenance heavy. Nintendo and Sony can't even care for their own console platforms properly. So will they update their phones regularly like everyone else? No one wants to use a smartphone that is older than 2 years. In come the whining console owners for having to upgrade their platform more often than once in 7 years.

If both of them would just produce software for android and iOS they have a lot less risk and cost on their hands, that's why it's the smart thing to do. You seem to forget that Google, Samsung and Apple are in a whole different league than Sony and Nintendo. They can't make the same investments nor wager that kind of risk.

It's easy to talk big when you're not the the one taking billions of dollars worth of risk while having no clue about economics whatsoever.

I am very sorry that you would feel that way. I personally have never treated anyone one way or another based on the phone they have, the car they drive, or the clothes they were wearing. It would be heart breaking to me to know that someone lacked the self confedince to be themselves for the fear of what others may think of them. 

Having a passion for gaming is absolutly nothing to be ashamed of. I have seen tons of people with football or baseball team cases for their smartphone, I have seen people with pokemon, and hello kitty cases, their are people with dirt bike stickers and energy drink stickers on their phone, car, etc., non of these things are better or worse than gaming. 

We don't have to be closet gamers in 2016. If you love gaming let it be know, and let your work speak for itself.

I look at it in terms of overall mobile marketshare, not just the handheld sector. I get the data that you presented though, and it is a very interesting reperesintation.

In the big picture though, Sony went from 160 million PS2's to ~85 million PS3's, Nintendo went from 155 million DS's to ~60 million 3DS/New 3DS. Had 3DS offered calling and texting, that market would have went from 155 to 200M+, instead of plumiting to ~60M. With DS Nintendo delivered the mobile platrom people needed at the time. When 3DS and Vita came around, calling and texting where maditory for a mobile devices, and once they didn't have that basic feature, the market had no reason to adopt the platforms.

Sony already has the ground work for this set, they don't have to make a major investment. They have a partenership in place with AMD already, and they both know the PS4 architcture in and out. Building a phone that has a shrunk down PS4 APU, that would be mobile friendly while still devlivering PS4 software at 540P would be relatively easy and cheap at this point. Nintendo has a bit furthur to go due to being so late to the connected game, but it is not an impossible task.

As for updating platforms. Sony already puts out 2 major PS4 updates a year. They are also bringing the PS4 Pro out in a couple of weeks. The PlayStation business is shifting, and we will never see 5 - 7 year platforms again. Nintendo already updated the 3DS as well with the new 3DS, so both companies have made the shift to evloving within the platforms life cycle. People will be plently happy with using a phone for 2 or 3 years if it is still offering industry leading performance, and more importantly features not offered by any other phone.

On building games for iOS and Android, yes, of course it is the easy road, but it also does nothing to inspire, and the long term success and brand image problems it creates are not worth the short term gains. As for Sony and Nintendos size. Remember once upon a time, Apple was on its death bed, and Samsung and Google where start ups. Sony once had a dominate market position, but they lost it due to being stagnate, and not innovating or adopting to new tech fast enough. It is very possible for the mighty to fall, and Google, Apple, and Samsung have been standing still for a few years now.

It is also easy to talk big when you just preach to the choir. Unfourtunatly, if keep saying the same thing over and over again, then you will losse most of your following wondering, what went wrong. Sometimes you have to take risks, and try new things. That is how PlayStation started, that is how iPhone started, and that basically is how every major product started. Someone somewhere has to take a risk, or a precieved risk for innovation to happen, and creativity to thrive. 

At the end of the day, no decision could be more costly than the decision not to offer phone versions of the 3DS and Vita. Or, to an even greater extent, the decision by Sony, to dump billions of dollars into Xperia and a competing ecosystem and OS instead of investing that money in making their own mobile platform, on the most successful brand in their portfolio. Why did that happen thoug? Because the old gaurd preached to the choir until no one was listening, instead of looking at what was actually working.

... but they won't be able to buy a phone that can play their entire library of PS4 titles. The technology to do that currently does not exist, and likely will not exist for some time, especially at a manufacturing cost you seem to think is arbitrary. And you're also assuming that Sony and Nintendo already possess the technical know-how to develop a phone capable of emulating the PS4/NX perfectly, and adapting the PS4/NX operating system to do all of the necessary phone functionality users would expect. It stands to reason that the R+D cost for Sony or Nintendo to develop a device would be signifcantly higher than Apple's R+D cost to develop the iPhone.

And again, you're assuming that it only truly costs $225 to manufacture an iphone, and you're ignoring all of the additional costs of getting that phone in consumers hands. Perhaps it does actually only cost $225 per unit in parts, what if it costs an additional $300 per unit in R+D, assembly, QA, packaging, shipping etc? You're ignoring so many of the other costs to bring a product to market, just taking them for granted. On top of that, why on earth would Sony or Nintendo undercut the price of the iPhone if a) it's significantly more powerful b) significantly more capable and c) costs signifcantly more to make. There is no reason to think that this phone would not be the most expensive phone on the market when it is released. Any argument against this can easily be chalked up to "wishful thinking".

Also, why do you think users want to deal with yet another cell phone operating system in its infancy? How about you ask Blackberry about how having a buggy, laggy, feature sparse operating system compared to their competition leads to horrifically bad sales. Blackberry used to be a dominant force in the cell phone business. But they let their competition surpass them and couldn't catch up. If cell phone specialists such as Blackberry, who were once a dominant market leader, couldn't put together a user experience that would rival the likes of Apple and Google, what makes you think Sony can when they have tried and failed many, many times before?

No cell phone will every get "full industry backing".  Because it's a fucking cell phone, and users have clearly demonstrated en masse they have absolutely no interest in ever spending any more than $10 on a game for their phone. Anyone game company who has tried to charge more than that has lost their shirts. Companies can't even charge $60 for 3DS and Vita games, because the user base won't support it, and that's a dedicated game console. Why would this time be different?

If it is all that easy if you have your own platform... why didn't Blackberry or Nokia or WindowsPhone made a couple billion in profits per year in the last years?

If it is all that easy for Sony and AMD to shrink the PS4-tech... why is the PS4 Slim still that big and is still using up to 165 Watt and is still weighting more than 2 kg? How much power would that PS4-handheld/hybrid need for full PS4 games in "540p mode"? How big and heavy would the battery have to be for a decent battery life? How big and heavy would the device have to be?

Those two aren't incompatible. I didn't say I don't buy consoles if they do other stuffs than playing games. I said I don't chose them based on that. I choose them based on their games.

If Nintendo makes a phone that doubles as a handheld, yes that would be cool, I would throw away my phone and buy it. But if the games don't interest me, I'm not going to shell out 300/400 $ just for a phone with lame games.

I say that because to me the 3DS is not a great console either, I plan on buying maybe 4/5 3DS games (for the system I'm waiting on news about NX backward, or lack of backward compatibility), so if Nintendo makes a new phone, that replaces the 3DS, and it's choke full again of mario games, kirby, pokemon, mii games, lame ports, JRPGs shitty metroid games.

I will say no. So that's why I say the games are my number one concern, because it's a GAMING system.

But yeah of course side stuffs matters like being a phone, having a bluray player etc.

I'd imagine gamers would buy a 3DSPhone in a heartbeat. I know I would :P