I strongly disagree comapring portables with home consoles. The radical shift you mentions only applies to japanese game development which of course translates to actual sales but in no way you can mix all portables and home consoles in the same bag with each generation. For example, Wii is the best selling console of the seventh generation, this is what you will hear from 99% of the gaming community, nobody is gonna throw DS in because it's a handheld. Seriously, i have been reading GAF and other forums for more than 10 years and first time i am seeing someone saying that PS3 ended 4th of it's generation, or Wii ended second. Home consoles and portable are different, apple and oranges. That's how i see it and i think the majority too. Because otherwise let's throw mobile too and call it the best selling gaming system ever made, since going by you saying, mobile has spawned a radical shift for gaming too.
Ok, I don't understand the point you're trying to make in the vast majority of this post. What does it mean that we can't mix portables and home consoles in the same bag with each generation? Or better: you can make such argument with a more solid ground if we're talking about the pre-DS era, but the DS was a paradigm-changer. The announcement of DQIX for DS was another major event back in 2006: the next main installment in the biggest gaming franchise for Japan coming to a portable console. That's exactly when the two bags (using your own terms) started looking more and more like just one bag. And then the PSP saw its sales increasing thanks to MHP2nd (and MHP2nd G) bringing lots of sales and convincing more and more developers about the console's potential of selling software, thus more games announcements (with several former PS2-games/brands coming to PSP). How did this not have an impact on Wii/PS3/360's software support, especially early on. The past few years, with 3DS and PSV? Mostly the same. Only now we're starting to see a bigger amount of releases for PS4, but again, why should be ignore the platforms (well, the platform mainly
) that by far represented the healthiest piece of the cake? A piece of the cake that received relevant support from Japanese publishers and developers? What's the point in doing so?
Also, what's with referencing what "the gaming community" says and extending it to what happened years go in Japan? It's true, in the West we see a bigger separation between home consoles and portable devices, and this comes from developers as well, but what does it mean that "the gaming community never referenced the DS, because it's a handheld". Yes, gaming forums may be home console-biased, and? What does it have to do with how things actually play out in the real life, especially since we're talking about Japan, where it's crystal clear how the handheld/home division is not so important for both customers and developers.
Ok, you've been reading forums for 10+ years and it's the first time you've heard PS3 was the 4th best selling console in Japan while Wii was the 2nd (then 3rd) best selling platform. And? Does that change the actual sales numbers in Japan for that generation? Does the incredible enthusiasm for Platinum Games change the fact that the vast majority of their games have failed to see respectable sales (Nier: Automata, of course, is one of the exceptions, what a great success story)?
Finally, handhelds and home consoles aren't exactly apples and oranges: certainly more in the West, since the development community has usually failed to bring major franchises to handhelds, outside of specific versions / spin-offs / etc. But this is not the case for Japan. We have lots of relevant and less relevant Japanese-focused franchises that have been released on handhelds, which is completely different from what we can usually see in the West. Also, if we really want to speak of gaming as a whole (outside of the "traditional" space), mobile can't be ignored. Like, at all.