Steam

[Loony BoB]

tl;dr

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 3DS hasn't sold well because it's crap, to put it lightly. The same reason that 3D televisions haven't sold well. It's a gimmick, not a must-have. Games are still being made for the DS and the 3DS has had more problems over the DS than it has selling points over the DS. To use the 3DS as a case study for handheld consoles in general is like using the SEGA Saturn as a case study for TV-connecting consoles in general. It's picking a bad launch and making a bold statement based on it.

The DS is the second highest selling console of any kind and the PSP has out-sold the NES, Xbox 360 and PS3. So going by sales alone, if anything, handheld consoles are selling better and therefore in a healthier position to continue as such. And you're also going on the assumption that Nintendo will be happy to put Mario onto a hardware device that isn't created by Nintendo. When was the last time that happened?

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?

Again, look at the DS and the PSP. They sold extremely well, better than the PS3/360 and in the DS's case better than the Wii. Handheld systems have sold more over time, larger consoles have sold less over time. It may sooner be that handheld consoles replace larger consoles by connecting to TVs.

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.

I don't know about where you live, but not everyone and their uncle has the latest phone where I am. It's a market, yes, but how powerful are the games, how much of the functionality do they have? Sony have already ported some games to the phone market, but would Nintendo do something similar when none of their games (to my knowledge) have ever been ported to another system - ever? Nintendo hasn't released a Pokémon MMO on the PC despite it being a guaranteed cashcow, possibly capable of bettering World of Warcraft (and it's the only thing I can think of capable of doing so) but they haven't. The only reason I can think of is that Nintendo don't want to develop games for anything but their own consoles.

Will consumers be happy to get a poorer product? Personally, I would rather pay ~£250 for a good handheld console and ~£80 for a phone that doesn't run games at all than pay £200 for a phone that plays games. Because it's not the same - and so long as there are enough people who are of similar opinion then I don't think the 3DS/Vita will be the last we see of handheld consoles. I think they have at least a couple more generations in them yet.

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.

Yes, they will care more about having their own phone. But unless their parents are loaded to begin with (in which case they'd buy both console + phone seperately anyway), the parents will probably not be coughing up £200 for a phone capable of running the latest games. They'll just buy them a £80 phone at best, and the kids will have to use their own cash to buy something better than that.

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.

Yeah, but how good are the iPod Touch games? Could the likes of Angry Birds really compete with Uncharted's supposedly PS3-quality graphics on the Vita, or the gameplay of Mario / Zelda / Pokémon games? Also, consider how many different systems that people would need to develop for. While the iPhone certainly has sold well, it still only has (after a quick check) around 4% of the cell phone market. That's the biggest share, to my understanding, for a smartphone out there. 4% is around 73million, which is about on par with the PSP. It includes all generations of the iPhone, and it is worth noting that many of the iPhone sales have gone to the same people after they bought each new generation, so it's unlikely there are 73million iPhone end users. So I'd still say the PSP has outsold the iPhone. And that's just a group (and a very differing group considering the changes made over generations) of operating system and hardware that a developer would need to design for. After that, there is Android, which has bugger all major selling games to my knowledge and the number of different phones it works on means a huge amount of varying hardware. And then of course some Android operating systems will work on some phones while others will work on others, depending on the phone's age. And then there is Blackberry and so on. Basically the only real market out there is the iPhone at the moment, and whether a £20 (let alone £30/40) game would sell well on the iPhone is something that is yet to be realised.

I end up playing my handhelds and home in bed and laughing at myself for the absurdity of it.

...but you still make use of them, and that sums up why they will continue to sell. Maybe not to the extent of the DS did, but they will still sell in the tens of millions and that's enough for developers to consider it worthwhile.

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...

Handheld gaming will evolve, and possibly merge with regular larger consoles. They'll find a way because there is a market for them and companies will always want to tap into that. Finally, they will find a way because it allows for stability and control, something the cell phone market can not really provide developers at the moment.

Sony have been trying to find a way to tap into the cellphone market for years and they have come up with a bunch of flops. That will also encourage their gaming console development for years to come.

In short, I disagree, with various reasons! xD