Steam

[Loony BoB]

But the common flaw with all of your (except BoB!) arguments is that you seem to believe if one thing is selling well, none of its competitors can sell at all. Much like my argument in the handheld thread, if non-digital products have enough demand, companies will happily produce to meet it.

None of us is arguing that at all. What we're arguing is that digital sales are far better for the developer than retail sales.

Hey, I wasn't arguing that! I was arguing that the Vita/3DS is not the end of handheld gaming and that phones are not going to replace handheld consoles after this generation, which was suggested earlier on. I do think digital sales are going to overwhelm retail sales. My argument was more in line with phones vs. consoles.

You can talk about how many people like Angry Birds all you like, but that doesn't stop Call of Duty from selling 20 million, Battlefield from selling 10 million, and Skyrim and Uncharted each selling 5 million, all at $60 a pop, in a span of about two months, with all of them releasing in about a three-week window.

This really isn't an argument for physical sales still being popular in the future. Sure those games sold a lot of physical copies. That's because consoles are lagging far behind on digital distribution so if you're going to look at how some of the biggest games of the year sold in their biggest markets, of course people bought physical copies. It was either that or not buy the games at all.

While Bolivar might have been arguing the digital vs. retail angle, I can take what he said and use it in the phone vs. console angle... basically just because Angry Birds is selling well doesn't mean that there isn't going to continue to be a valid "tens of millions" market for gaming consoles after the 3DS/Vita generation.

more tl;dr, you guys make me feel like Iceglow sometimes...

Point being, console sales haven't declined considering this generation isn't even over yet, so your point about handhelds supplanting consoles based on sales doesn't hold up.

Touché in that consoles have not sold less over time (PS2 and Xbox sold 177m, PS3/360/Wii sold 202m to date), but the handheld market has surpassed the console market going by generation. The DS and PSP combined have sold 222m units, the PS3, Wii and 360 combined have soled 202m units. This is going by Wikipedia info, so obviously it could be skewed or out of date, but it's still just as reliable as any other random gaming site out there when it comes to information.

So the original point that the handheld market is booming still stands. The 3DS was a terrible launch and it isn't a good way to judge the market in general.

while they may never be as powerful as a dedicated handheld like the Vita at launch, it would be somewhat foolish to think they couldn't be comparable, or even surpass them within a few short years.

While true, I'd say it would also be foolish to assume that they will, and even then, that they will be marketed correctly and people will buy into the concept.

Only the hardcore Nintendo faithful would remain interested in what platform they're developing for, and that is not the market that Nintendo was attracting with the Wii to begin with.

I think that's a pretty bold assumption. The DS sold 150m consoles, yeah? The 3DS was a failconsole only because if you ask most people in the street about it, they'll assume it's just a 3D version of the DS. But so long as Nintendo want to launch another console beyond the 3DS, I can see them doing very well with it. I'm not arguing that phones will never eventually take over, I'm arguing that the Vita + 3DS are not the end of the handheld market.

casual gamers don't care who develops the games

No, but they do care what games they get, and Nintendo make a large number of the games that many people feel are "must have" games. I don't see Nintendo selling the exclusive rights to Pokémon, Mario or Zelda.

Given the number of downloads Angry Birds has had since release this question is moot. It may not compete directly with those games since it is far cheaper and on a completely different platform, but the market has spoken and it is a huge success. It's already competing with them and making Rovio as much money as any of those series bring in in a single release.

Angry Birds was a success. But it's a success because it's an extremely simple game. The backend may be complex for all I know, but it's like saying that Tetris and Snake were incredibly popular on phones some time ago. Complex handheld games are not successful on phones yet. They will probably be later on, but I just don't see this happening before another generation flows through.

You and me are of the same mind, but I don't know that most consumers are.

But we are proof that there is an ongoing demand for handheld consoles rather than phones that are capable of gaming. And so long as there is a demand, and we are two of many I am sure, there will be a product.

The other big deal is that a phone that plays games also does dozens of other things. People aren't buying a phone that plays games. They are buying a phone with internet access, GPS, app capability and ultra-multi-functionality. The fact that it plays games is ancillary, but ultimately has the large effect of making other handhelds look less attractive.

Outside of holding a console to the side of your face so you can make a voice call, I see no reason that the Vita etc. can't continue to evolve and become capable of doing everything that a phone can do. The success of the Kindle and iPad also adds to the idea that there is a demand for large-screen products. I have no doubt in my mind that eventually we will be able to make video calls, send emails/text messages and work on documents using something created by Nintendo or Sony that is (primarily) a gaming console. You could say "but that's basically just a smartphone!" - if it does everything, it does everything. A phone is just a phone. I can make phonecalls using my computer. Does that make it a phone? No. The primary purpose of a gaming console will remain gaming, but it will have that added functionality that phones and tablets both provide. It'll just be the "midway point" between phone and tablet. Portable as a phone, powerful as a gaming console, functional as a tablet. But with the buttons a gaming console would otherwise have. Touchscreen for typing.

I think you're underestimating the quality. I certainly did before I had one. You realize there are ports of games like Secret of Mana and FFIII, right? There's a game called Mage Gauntlet that's iOS only and it's basically a SoM type game and it's great. Then there are games like Infinity Blade and its upcoming sequel (which looks like it adds a ton more depth).

Not only are there pretty decent and deep games, but games like Infinity Blade take advantage of the control scheme and uses it in an idiomatic way. The Dead Space game for iOS was also incredibly deep with amazing controls (really no functionality was lacking compared to DS2) and it added to the storyline.

Not all games are Angry Birds or Tiny Wings. There are lot of great games.

Yes, but how many of these ports are selling to the number of one or two million? I'll concede that some of those games are better than I'd thought, but having them out there and having people want to buy them on the phone rather than a console is a big ask. And let's face it, FFIII is pretty far away from today's PSP and DS games.