I think the Switch has proven that the mobile sector is very much alive and kicking. - The Switch is very much a dedicated handheld that has a charging dock with HDMI output over USB-C. - I would argue that Nintendo has abandoned the home console market, but it also doesn't matter.

The issues plaguing the 3DS/Vita era are/were many...

Higher prices, 3DS had a poor name so people may have thought it was a variant in the DS line (Just like WiiU was perceived as an accessory), in Vita's case there wasn't much in the way of support or even advertising in my opinion.


But yeah. None of the markets are dying, but the industry is certainly consolidating currently as Nintendo and Sony have abandoned their handheld/fixed home console dual device model and publishers/developers get bought up.

Yep phones offering a far, far worse gaming experience means they can't kill off consoles. Consoles won't be around forever but they'll be doing well for at least the next decade easily.

Consoles are dead? Probably when you see an affordable "Ready Player One" around.

I mean the platforms that released between 2011-2013 for the most part did astonishingly worse than their predecessors.

DS - 154 M

3DS - 76 M

Difference - 78 M

PSP - 81 M

Vita - 16 M

Difference - 65 M

Wii - 102 M

Wii U - 14 M

Difference - 88 M

Xbox 360 - 86 M

Xbox One - 51 M

Difference - 35 M

PS3 - 87 M

PS4 - 117 M

Difference + 30 M

So barring the PS4 compared to the PS3 all the dedicated consoles were down massively compared to their predecessors and the PS4's gain were modest in hindsight. Around 236 M units less collectively. Certainly wasn't a healthy period for dedicated gaming devices.

The dedicated handheld market is pretty much dead. The closest thing surviving is the Switch Lite. The Switch was a bounce back of sorts but...

And a few years, might we expect the same topic but changing the subject to cloud "console" services ?
Cuz not too far ago we had the streaming bros coming at us telling it was the end and the beginning of a new era for gaming ... Which resulted in the collapse of a big player in the field with Google and now you don't hear much from the subject anymore aside from Microsoft cloud projects ...

 You are leaving out how 3DS was overpriced on launch. It's entire gimmick was dead in 2 years. No second analog stick. Vita had poor marketing and support from Sony. Vita overpriced memory cards. AT&T. Wii U again poor marketing. Not reading the room in the Wii brand was dead by 2011. Bad hardware. Xbox One HORRIBLE showing and all the BS about DRM no used games. Always online. Don Matrick telling people to buy a 360 instead if they don't like it. TV TV TV TV TV SPORTS SPORTS SPORTS. Call of Duty. $500. Poor first part support through it's life. Canceled projects. PS4 and Sony said no DRM. Play used games. $400. Mobile had little to do with it. PS5 pretty much got everything right from the get go. It took a service for MS to somewhat course correct and Nintendo to release a new console.

What I’m seeing are two articles using hyperbolically pessimistic titles as clickbait, it wasn’t their argument. They focus more on the growth of mobile relative to the console space. Mobile not only grew, but grew significantly faster than the dedicated console space, and is now considerably larger. The majority of devs still look to mobile platforms for success, not home consoles. What they pointed out is actually accurate, barring their clickbait title—you could have argued their argument was hilarious at the time if you focused on the title.

Decline and change is happening. As has been pointed out by other users in this thread, Nintendo abandoned home consoles, Sony abandoned handhelds, and Nintendo has largely pulled away from handhelds as a major part of their strategy. Nintendo found great success with a hybrid device. Their handheld line is now an extension of the hybrid device’s marketplace, rather than a core strategy like their handhelds in the past. Additionally pointed out, the total volume of hardware sales has declined greatly from the massive sales during the Wii and DS generation. This dedicated console decline occurred, despite the massive overall growth of the gaming industry.

I think Nintendo should be applauded for reversing the trend of decline more than once, having industry scale impact. The reason Nintendo saw growth with the Switch is that it adapted and evolved into something more useful, similar to what it did with the Wii, and the DS, Gameboy, and NES before it. The Switch is a convergence of the different strategies Nintendo has used in the past, but also offers players a new experience. They’re also making the home console space much more attractive to indie developers—an initiative that started as early as the GBC, and saw improvements during Wii/DS/3DS, but it was the Switch that made it a mainstream thing. While ubiquitous software strategies began trending 15 years ago with companies like Apple and Google have pushed, Nintendo has gone with a ubiquitous hardware strategy with the Switch. Apple and Google are looking toward accessing software from a variety of devices, while Nintendo has adapted their hardware to use in a variety of situations—something I’m a big fan of.

To be realistic, outside of Nintendo, the dedicated console business is stagnant and shrinking.

Absolutely, there were issues plaguing that lineup of handhelds. I think one of the biggest mistakes with Vita was doubling down on non-gaming features, it led to more direct competition and comparison to smart devices, and drove up manufacturing cost to boot. Sometimes, Sony has a hard time leaving their media side out of their gaming endeavors. Which is perhaps no wonder, since it has also helped them a great deal in the past. As I've written (way too much) about in the past, in some of the insanely long discussion threads, I think the number one mistake has been misreading the market completely.

As for the inudstry as a whole today, it's doing really well across most segments. The majority growth in the past 2-3 years has come off of increased revenue per capita, and not mainly expansion of demographics per se. It'll be exciting to see how they calulate figures when cloud/streaming comes in more heavily as it technically removes the entire concept of attach rate. I imagine something akin to the Nielsen readings for streaming services, but these give only about half the picture at best. I remember how hard it was simply to track digital sales for console games in the beginning.

I view them as two different markets. The revenue from mobile games comes from adds and micro transactions while games on consoles are mostly from buying the game even if micro transactions sadly are on the rise there as well. Simplyfied it is the old quality vs quantity. Sell something cheep a lot of times or something expensive fewer times.

There are a few mobile games that I think matches the experience on consoles, but almost all of them have annoying ways to generate money that lessen the experience. But a few nuggets exists on mobile as well, but then the games cost a pretty penny in the same way that games cost on consoles.
The number of games that are free to play or very low in cost have created the expectations from consumers that mobile games need to be cheep or they are not worth the time.

Don't know how it is today, but some years back Doug Bowser said that the split between playing switch docked vs undocked is even, 50:50. So I would presume Nintendo thinks of the Switch as a device that delivers as much of a mobile experience as it does a home console experience.

I mean it is a 100 % true what you are saying. Regarding its tech, its built, the Switch is absolutely a mobile device with a dock. But in practice, it is as much a mobile device as it is a home console. At least that is what it was a few years back. Did not read anything recent on the split though.