@Iceglow

Perhaps the word stand alone was a misnomer. When I think about the term expansion, in my mind, it indicates reliance on the full version of the previous product. Otherwise most people would just call it a sequel. I'm just saying that Rockstar and Blizz are about the only two out there that still put what would otherwise be DLC into a form you can pick up off of a shelf.

As for audio bitrate and iTunes... they are slowly making songs available in higher quality, lossless, etc. If they don't, competitors will trump them by stealing all of the audiophiles. They've also moved into the cloud business to keep competitive with Amazon. As our world gets more connected and more wireless, the cloud stuff is going to be even more prevalent and eventually people are going to probably laugh at the concept of using hard drive space to keep their media. Sure, we'll probably have thumb sized 4 TB SSDs by then and it might not matter, but I have the feeling the wireless trend will beat the media storage increase and people will probably want access to their huge libraries of BR quality movies on the go. Why keep 25+Gb file when you can just stream it?

It's not that unlikely that people will have access to personal libraries of hundreds of movies through a cloud (hell, Amazon basically has this going on now and so does Netflix, though without ownership).



@BoB

Most of me wants to agree with you entirely. I still want gaming hardware that is made to do what it does well. I want all the things the Vita has. However, I'm not sure it's going to continue to be a viable thing. The DS had unprecedented popularity partly because it offered casual games on the go before phones got in on the business. Some adults got one from Nintendogs or Brain Age... or they got one to pacify their kids. I still see a lot of kids walking around stores with a DS in tow.

I think a big part of why the PSP didn't do as well (apart from the library) is that we, the myopic gamers, think that gaming is all about us. But a device aimed at only us, the "hardcore," isn't going to sell enough.

We can blame the flop of the 3DS to its launch line-up, but now there are some decent games out and even though it sold amazingly well on BF with Mario, it's still not doing gangbusters like the DS before it.

The hardware is too expensive for the casuals and they all have phones now. Hell, the hardware is borderline too expensive for the gamer and the games are certainly too pricey. I think this might spell doom for the Vita as well. It's great and impressive and I want one, but is it going to sell enough to make a decent profit?

As many kids as I see with DSs now... I also see many kids with a phone. Their parents have Angry Birds or something similar that they got for a buck and they hand it to their kids in the store. It makes it hard to justify spending hundreds of dollars on a gaming device and then 20-30 bucks on the games when you can spend 1 dollar on a device you already own to keep your kids happy.

By the time the kids are in their teens they will care more about having their own phone than having a gaming device and the games will come along for the ride.

As much as you and I love dedicated gaming hardware, kids growing up now probably just aren't going to care enough. I think as less people get interested in having a gaming handheld in lieu of just using a phone, the companies just aren't going to waste the money.

Hell, I love my DS and PSP, but I've gotten to the point where I don't bother carrying them with me because my iPod Touch is easier to game on on the go unless I'm going to be sitting still for 3+ hours on a plane or something. I end up playing my handhelds and home in bed and laughing at myself for the absurdity of it.



If handhelds are going to hold out, they are going to have to change significantly. They are going to have to be something that ties into the console experience allowing you to take your console game with you to some degree. The Vita is leaning in that direction, but I'm not sure it will fully get there. I think we'll have to see our handhelds as an extra piece of hardware that connects to our console (like a Kinect or Move) and works with it to give us something new rather than a standalone console of its own that costs over 200 bucks with 40-60 dollar games.

Okay... I believe that was the least concise thing I've ever typed...