It's null and void because PSP was a competing platform which backs my point that competition would have heavily hampered GBA more and that it may have even sold significantly less, you still fail to understand the position of a monopoly. You're cherry picking regions I'm looking at total perfomance, if GBA performed worse in those regions during a monopoly era then it highlights how much better the other platforms were at competing in the market during a harder era.

GBA was in the market for 10 years yes yet in the SNES era it outsold both consoles individually and went on to sell a further 60m during the PS1 era with the GBC model which would mean it beat out both N64 and Saturn easily leaving only the PS1 selling more during that time. You're not even making sense with the following part as GB came out during the SNES/MD era not the NES era, Megadrive was already out when GB launched in 1989 and the NES launched back in 1983 where the portable back then was the Game and Watch. To top it off lets look at your logic that you're trying push here gaming was recovering but wouldn't affect portables like it did consoles? Your whole argument here is to combine sales of 3 gens to one gen of portables to try and push your point that's moving goalposts on a next level sorry.

3DS was more powerful than PSP because they had competition at this point you're either not understanding that 3DS was how it was because of a competitive market or you're simply only reading parts of the point to focus on with little context, it took Sony to force the portable market to follow consoles into having 3d graphical tech for reference.

You don't say PSP sold a tonne you know why? Because it was competitive hardware in both tech and pricing, due to the brand power of Playstation at the time with the PS2 and the GBA being vastly inferior to PSP's hardware the whole industry expected the latter to outsell the DS easily in the end it didn't but it sold well its problem was that PSP had rampant piracy so developers never made their money back and began dropping support for it later on, when the 3DS arrived the same devs could resume what they were doing only this time they were expecting 3DS to outsell Vita making the rise in costs a problem for Sony.

Yes it is you know why because arguing about being cut short is like arguing that Atari would still be market leader if the crash never happened, guess what I don't care for it because it's another what if dream like your 3 platform scenario, GBA got cut short because they made a decision to drop it in the wake of competition time to accept that and that it's not going to help your argument in anyway repeating it as it's been addressed already.

No Nintendo feared Sony's entrance to the market and rightfully so what they've achieved in the market doesn't offset respecting a competitor's presence, this was bang in the middle of the PS2 era at the height of the brand's power and many fans of Nintendo themselves felt that with the PSP's arrival that would be it for them, Nintendo having left the SNES on the market when the PS1 and Saturn came out ended up surrendering the console market to Sony because the PS1 established itself. The SNES itself also didn't go on to sell as much they hoped for as a result, when the N64 came out it's flaws pushed devs away to the already established PS1 and Sony began to power on through and steamroll them many older gamers from back then often cite that had the N64 come out alongside the Saturn and PS1 they may have crushed the competition while they were still an unknown entity instead they allowed it to grow into a beast that capitalized on their mistakes. When the PSP was announce they had flashbacks of that era only this time they made the decision to take on the competition head on instead of being casual about it.

You were the one who claimed that GBA sold better than 3DS because it had a monopoly; i showed you that despite having a monopoly in 3 regions, it still got outsold in 2.
That alone should prove you that monopoly isn't an excuse to say that 3DS sold worse [because it didn't have a monopoly - as if there was some law that prohibited consoles to perform equally or better in a non-monopolistic position].
I really don't see how you can still try and look at this as if it's irrelevant.

Also, how can you call a comparison between Xbox and GBA, a fair comparison, when they performed so differently from one another and one clearly had a lot of room to grow sales even further?

So, GB beat Snes and MD individually... who's cherry picking now...
On one subject you look at the whole, on another you look at the parts.

I said GB was out for 10 years before being replaced by the GBA, but i was wrong, it was out for, give or take, 12 years (1989-2001).
During it's lifetime (not just 1989-2001), it sold 118m consoles (GB, GB Light, GB pocket and finally, GB color). On the other hand, Nes, who came out in 1983 in Japan (1985 in the US - New York, as the first market), started a 18 year run for consoles until 2001 (XB and GC came out that year).
But your argument was that there was a shift, and that before that shift in the PS2/GBA generation, portables were the top choice (over consoles).
Thing is, if you add up all console sales since NES came out, to 2001, you get about 550m consoles sold worldwide. If you add up all handhelds (GB, GG and Wonderswan) you get 139m handhelds sold worldwide.
It's 550m vs 139m.

If what you said was true, and handhelds were the top choice, then, how could the difference be so great?
Even if you take out the 6 years that GB was not it in the market, the difference is still 344m vs 139m. That's an average of 28,6m per year, versus 11,5m per year.
You can check the numbers, if you don't trust me.

Of course i have to add sales of several generations. How fair would the comparison be, if i compared a consoles' sales with consoles that weren't for sale anymore? 
And wasn't your point that handhelds outsold home consoles before the PS2/GBA generation?

Well, seeing as NES came out in 1983 and GB, in 1989, i think whatever "bad press" hindered NES sales in the US (released in 1985), went away when GB got released 4 years after.


"3DS was more powerful than PSP because they had competition" 
 You're bending history to fit your argument.
Every Nintendo console was more powerful than it's predecessor. 
Also, if Nintendo feared the 80m PSP's sold, they would have followed that route instead of making a DS+3D screen. In your own standards, that's not being competitive as they still went with old tech against new tech (same for DS vs PSP).
3D tech was just a question of time, not a question of Nintendo having competitors or not.

"You don't say PSP sold a tonne you know why?"
I actually did say that. I even used the same expression you used.
Nintendo fearing the competition because they used old tech to compete? Wasn't that Nintendo's m.o. since like, the N64?
Nintendo always competed with old tech and that still hasn't changed.
Whatever people thought is really not relevant. Nintendo had/has a way of doing things that it's different and clearly doesn't rely on following the competition.
If GBA hadn't sell 67m before DS, your views might have had more strength.

Again, i'm not saying Nintendo didn't fear the competition. All i'm saying is that none of Nintendo's actions say that, whatever they did, they did it to fight Sony or to be "competetive" like Sony.

No I said the GBA sold what it did quicker in a time of no other competition as opposed to following gens where the portables out had competition and mobile to deal with yet inspite of mobile the portable market as a whole has increased the number of units sold, you've yet to counter this in anyway tbh your only response was to cherry pick regions in a null and void argument. The Xbox part of your argument is showing hypocrisy as you claim GBA had room to grow but not the original Xbox which many at the time felt was cut too short in order for MS to gain a head start in gen 7, sorry but I have to dismiss this view.

What are you on about GB beat out SNES/MD combined and individually, waht are you even talking about here it's like you're not even reading the entire posts and only certain lines at this point.

Again your whole NES part highlights moving goal posts trying to compare 3 gens of consoles to one gen, this part of your argument makes little sense other than you trying to save a heavily debunked argument as first you claimed consoles were always on top then when shown how the GB demolished the consoles in its gen you then try to move GB to the PS1 gen only to realize that GB still outsold all the platforms there so now it's GEN 1/2/3 total against the GB's total (one platform) okay mate we see what you're attempting here, what's funny is that the argument highlights what I said in portables always having equal footing when you need to attempt such an argument. The flaw in what you've attempted here is that many of the sales of later platforms ignores the fact that many consumers already had the GB when later platforms arrive so when the platform is at 118 which individually is more than all platforms that came previously it won't sell much more because the consumers buying the new platforms will already have bought it.

You seem to not be reading posts properly as I didn't say their portables weren't more powerful than their previous I said the 3DS was made with a competitive increase which is different from just increasing power and functions in half decent jumps. 3DS had to be more powerful not only than the DS but the PSP as that's what the competition forced. DS used old tech yes but it also used something that many devices at the time didn't utilize, a touch screen interface, they fought with a ok jump and innovation and it was an approach that even Apple themselves took note of as it triggered their own use of touch screen interfaces in their own products. Sorry but their actions highlight that they had quite a lot of concern about the competition to the point that they dropped a successful platform to compete.

My claim was always that 3DS wasn't capable of outperforming the GBA. And it was not because it had competition or that it didn't have a monopoly, as despite those two circumnstances it still managed to outsell GBA in Japan.
I then used the PSP example (a non monopolistic market and still having to face the DS) as another console that could outsell the GBA.
So, neither the competition argument, nor the monopoly argument, can be used as an excuse for 3DS' results.

You then tried to say that 3DS+Vita > than GBA. Which is obvious, as instead of 1 console to attract gamers, you had 2 - who could naturally attract more consumers.
You also tried to act as if if Vita didn't exist, then 3DS would have sold 16m more. Which was a wrong, as not everyone has the same tastes and naturally, even if 3DS would take some of those sales, it would only take part of them, not the whole thing (assuming that no 3DS owner already had a Vita).

It's true that people said that XB's life was cut short, but that was in regards to the year that it supposedly had left and not sales it had left.
XB sold 20+m before it was replaced. GBA had sold 65m before it was replaced. There's really no comparison here.
Not to mention that those extra 16m more it gained after 2005, the bulk of it were gained in the 2 following years.

Your consoles vs handhelds paragraph just confused me...
Let's recap: your argument was that a shift occurred in the PS2/GBA era - with consoles, from that point onward, starting to be the most bought product.
So, i went and checked how consoles sold versus handhelds.
What i got was that, even just by looking at the time where GB entered the market, you got an average 11+m handhelds sold per year, versus 28+m consoles sold per year.
Now, you can say that GB sold more than this or that console. Ok, that could have happened. But you can't say that handhelds beat home consoles as average shows that even if they beat home consoles in a year or two, the majority of years are on home consoles side. Which really nullifies your shift argument and 3 gens vs 1 gen argument.

"the platform is at 118 which individually "
So, who's changing goal posts now?
Also, it's irrelevant that while GB had 12 years to achieve those sales, most consoles only had 5 years on the market?

You can say as many times as you that competition forced Nintendo to improve their handhelds over the prior gen when that's exactly what they have been doing since ever.
You can also ignore how DS was in development at the same time as the PSP and that despite the competition, neither the DS or 3DS, were designed to be compete against the PSP and Vita. 'cause if they were DS would have been a GBA 2.0 and 3DS would have been GBA 3.0 or even a PSP 2.0.

Again you claimed 3DS could never outperform the GBA while I pointed out GBA had a monopoly in its era unlike the 3DS which battled competition as well as mobile, your response was to use the PSP which was a competent competitor which actually backed my point as PSP would have beat out GBA in that region going by that performance and had GBA had to fight such a platform from launch it may have numbers similar to 3DS now.

I highlighted that 3DS and Vita repesenting the whole portable market had increased over GBA because you kept banging on about how mobile has hurt prtables and what not when in actual fact the market has just normalized, all of this you have not debunked yet and keep repeating the same null and void arguments while not even reading the posts you're replying to properly and I'll keep telling you that until you realize.

XB had competition in the PS2 and GCN and was beating out the latter it had a lot of life left in it as specs wise it was well ahead of the other platforms, it stopped selling because MS did the exact same thing Nintendo did with the Wii U, anounced its successor and drop support for it as soon as its replaced. The comparison therefore sticks even if you don't want to admit it, fact is both platforms being dropped doesn't changed the validity of the argument and still leaves another point you haven't debunked.

No I'm not confusing you you are confusing yourself as the console vs portable part is a prime example of you either not understanding the point, not reading the post properly or maybe even both, you don't even understand what moving goalposts is and just desperate to try and use the term when the's no context it applies to. I highlighted that in its gen GB outperformed both SNES and MD to the point that both platforms were even outsold by it combined, you then tried to shift GB to PS1 to try and argue against the combined part but failed to grasp that the GB still outsold or sold on par with each of the home platforms which was the point, you then came back with an argument trying to combined sales of every console in 15 years to compare to one platform and the hilarious thing is it still fell flat because the point to begin with was that portables always sold on par with the home platforms so GBs 118 is still on par or more than any home platform before the PS2. This whole debacle is you moving goalposts and still letting in a goal because you failed to understand the point well done.

You again fail to understand another point the's a difference between functional progression from a prior platform and competitive progression, when a company has no competition they progress things how they want as it suits them when the is competition however they're force to consider progressions that they'd normally wouldn't bother with or want to leave for much later. Had Sony not entered the portable market we may not have gotten PSP level perfomance in a portable for a while because no one was forcing the issue, the last part of your post is another bit that isn't coherent because new platforms are always in development.

It's easy to say now that Nintendo was never in dire straights but it really did look like their dedicated hardware business was in big trouble last gen.

It wasn't just that the Wii U was a flop and that the 3DS was increasingly seeing its lunch get eaten by smartphones as the generation went on, it was more that there was no clear direction for Nintendo to take to come up with a successful console after the Wii U. Going the "power" route became impossible for Nintendo as soon as Sony and Microsoft announced their new hardware and this left only the "innovation" route for Nintendo to take which was a very perilous path after the Wii U failed so incredibly. Nintendo's brand strength fell out of the top 100 for the first time in like 30 years during the Wii U era and kids started to increasingly grow up without knowing who Mario and Link were.

Lots of people on this forum were talking about the "fusion" concept as early as 2014, but this wasn't a guaranteed win for Nintendo. I am really glad that the Switch executed it perfectly and the console is now is working out so well for Nintendo. I will be absolutely clear, though: as a Nintendo fan I was very uncertain about their future in the dedicated hardware business during last gen. The Switch needed to be a success and it is, but it could have easily gone the other way and we are fortunate that it didn't.

I never claimed that 3DS couldn't outsell GBA. Quite the contrary!
I always said that it was a possibility - a possibility that 3DS failed to turn into reality (i gave you two examples on how 3DS could have surpassed the GBA, despite GBA having a monopoly and no competition).
It's impossible to tell how things would have gone if GBA had competition in the form of PSP.

When you spoke about 3DS+Vita being above GBA, remember what i told you? I said that it was only natural for that to happen as there were two consoles instead of one, which, naturally, would result in widening the market. You rejected this idea of more competitors = wider market.
Such rejection was unreasonable as not everyone has the same tastes, therefore, you couldn't just lap in 16m to 3DS if Vita didn't exist.
The end result? In a "what if" scenario (without Vita), 3DS still wouldn't have passed the GBA, despite having more time to do it.

"had a lot of life left in it as specs wise it was well ahead of the other platforms"
No, it hand't. PS2 had a lot of life left despite being replaced (and it did!).
Specs wise, the market just didn't care enough to warrant XB more millions.
If you want to ignore how different GBA and XB were in market appeal, then...

Let's take a step back and remind you that your claim was that a shift occurred in the PS2/GBA gen. You claimed this shift represented a move from portables to consoles, as product of choice.
I was the one who said that no said shift occurred except in the japanese market; aswell as that if any change happened was that home consoles just started selling even more.

GBA outsold MD and SNES. And what exactly are trying to prove here? That a handheld can be strong enough to beat a console or two?
This has got nothing to do with your original market shift point.
Strange how you don't compare GBA with the PS1+Saturn+N64... maybe that's because it doesn't make your case.

The reason i brought the home console vs handhelds numbers was to show that your market shift never happened.

Again, despite the handheld market always being a healthy one it never sold on par with home consoles.
Just look at the number i gave you and you'll see that the average is in home consoles' favor (it also keeps being in home console's favor).
Even if the GB era had been a DS+PSP era, home consoles would still be ahead of handhelds.

"Had Sony not entered the portable market we may not have gotten PSP level perfomance in a portable for a while because no one was forcing the issue"
Here, you're just taking the "what if" scenario as fact.
Nintendo would still upgrade their handhelds even if competition wasn't there, or do you think that the market is inifinite and doesn't need to be refreshed from time to time?

If we look at the original GB, it was Pokemon that extended it's lifetime.
If that game didn't get released GB color would have sooner. And speaking of GBC, the console got released in 1998 and 3 years later we were getting the GBA.
To me, that's a sign that despite not having competition, Nintendo wasn't slacking.

Again as I've told you more products doesn't mean more consumers, Gen 2 already highlighted this when presented with this rebuttal you side stepped it entirely as you had no answer for it.

Xbox had plenty of life in it right when MS anounced they were dropping the platform was when games that were PS2 exclusives were making their way over to the platform, games like the GTA saga, Onimusha, Project Zero and so on, the platform already was getting multiplatform titles and was gaining drive only for MS to can it.

You brought in consoles vs portables and it backfired on your whole argument to the point you still have no response to it all your replies to it are practically pointless clutter that tries to dismiss the numbers but ends up coming across as more desperate to save a dead horse hence why most of it is not making any coherent sense you can't even properly remember the points you're arguing against at this point whether it's a lack of understanding on your part or you being on tilt as you're creating arguments againsts points you can't even properly recall. The numbers back my point that portables and consoles were on even footing in the west up until the PS2 which I didn't say this is when the shift happened I highlighted the shift started in gen 7 the gen after it with the 360 and such as I regard both the DS and PS2 gaming anomalies in their performances.

Another case of you trying to move goal posts again, having failed with the GB now you want to bring GBA back to a previous Gen when it released with the PS2 and such because ironically moving posts before didn't help your stance so lets move other platforms to different gens maybe that will revive the dead horse.

It's not a what if scenario you know why? Because DS was not PSP level of performance so had Sony not entered we would have had the GBA for a while into the DS so no this was practically proven but circumstances already. Read your own post GBC releases in 98 while the original model of GB released in 89, that's 9 years of a platform that didn't have a color display despite the fact that tech was viable and ready for portables long before then congratulations you just proved my point about strong competition forcing issues.

More products don't bring in more consumers?
So your answer is that everyone has the same tastes and those 16m done by the Vita would automatically result in more 16m sales for 3DS (even if Vita owners were already 3DS owners).

Yes, a console that sold around 20m in 4 years had plenty of life in it.
I imagine the things you could say about GBA's 67m done in 4 years and the other 15m done against PSP and DS (who in their first did 19-20m combined), with around 10m sold in 2006-2007... no, wait, you see this as irrelevant for comparison towards XB and 3DS+Vita comparison.

"You brought in consoles vs portables "
No, you brought it with your market shift argument claiming that there was a time where handhelds sold better than home consoles (then you changed it to "they are selling on par").
"my point that portables and consoles were on even footing in the west up until the PS2"
No they weren't.
If you look at sales just for the west for both portables and home consoles, the values are (estimated to be) 270m vs 100m, in favor of home consoles.

You compared GBA with SNES+MD.
I asked the point of that comparison and why you didn't compare it with the following gen.

Of course you'd have GBA for more years. And that proves what?
When did i say that competition doesn't make things happen?
What i said, and what you forgot to mention, was that you wanted to prove that DS and 3DS happened because of Sony. That was your first point.
I argumented that there was a clear difference between what your "narrative" described and what happened (2 old tech consoles, with the latter being a DS 2.0).
After that you came with that talk that Nintendo would have lingered and not done anything relevant if they were left alone. I pointed out that despite having GBC for 3 years on the market, they still brought the GBA (a sign that Nintendo wouldn't slack as you implied).

Look, there's no point in keeping this conversation if you change points all the time and ignore stuff like more products = more consumers (i even gave smartphones as an example of that being true) and ideas like market and sales appeal (the GBA vs XB, for example).

The first part of your post highlights exactly what I'm talking about in your replies in that you come up with things that aren't even said in this this case when you are told more products doesn't automatically mean more consumers your response is arguing against everyone having the same tase when that was never said, it also highlights how you again have no response to the Gen 2 example.

Xbox was at 20m 3 years into its life when MS annouced they were dropping it sales dropped after that as MS cut all support for it, its performance was very similar to what X1 does tbh it just couldn't match the PS2. The rest of your sentence again makes no sense I think its time you sit down and reread things properly as you're starting to come up with random comments now.

No mate you brought in consoles vs portables when I highlighted that before Gen 7 they were on even footing at which you tried claiming consoles were always ahead then I showed you the performance of them which started your goal post moving shenanigans and yes they were on even footing because the one platform you're comparing selling 118m means it outsold all other platforms like it or not these are cold hard numbers you can't deny in any shape or form I'll keep telling you that until you swallow it.

No I compared GB to SNES and MD not the GBA, this is again another example of you failing to remember the points you're arguing against I'm starting to think you're well out of your league here at this point.

GBC was another model for the GB a platform already out and it took 9 years for them to finally have a portable with color when that tech was around and viable for years prior why? Because the was no strong competition to force the issue you claiming its progression is like saying New 3DS is significant progression because it has a better processor, this circumstance flat out shoots down your whole narrative here, Sony shook the industry and Nintendo with their anouncement that they're entering the portable market with the PSP to the point Nintendo had to drop GBA to bring forward the DS to not risk another PS1 style takeover. The fight Sony and the PSP put up influenced their R&D which is what competition does. No changing points here you just seem to be struggling and tripping over your own arguments.