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[Spyder_Monkey]

No

 

[Yatōkiri_Kilgharrah]

The snartphone market has shown that quantity > quality. No matter how great the $40 3ds games are they just can't match the endless stream of android/ios titles.

This was made in 2011. When smartphones and tablets were at their height of sales. The 3DS was in trouble. Then it went on to sell 45 million units in 4 years. Its at 16 million in japan but its tracking behind the PSP in the west at 10 million. They offered the 2DS but its not a 3D machine. They have to sell it cheaper next year.

I maintain that there's still an opportunity for a dedicated handheld device in the current market, and that the 3DS is proof of that, almost because of how bad it is. We've reached 'peak smartphone / tablet', and yet the 3DS, a poor console at a poor price with muddled marketing, has managed to sell millions due to the strength of its software and name recognition alone.

What could Nintendo do if they got the hardware right, the price right, the online apps and ecosystem / accounts right? I think they could be successful again, I really do.

I also think the 'people don't have room to take 2 devices with them' issue is a non-factor, because (anecdotally) I never, ever heard of people doing the majority of their handheld gaming outside of the home. People game on handhelds relaxing on the couch while their girlfriend watches TV, or a kid plays on his bed while his parent cooks dinner, thinking the kid's doing homework.

Even a decade ago, I saw 4 gaming sectors - PC, Home Console, Handheld, and Mobile. Even back then people were happy to play Snake or Solitaire on their Nokia 7990's or what have you, but I never saw anyone ever play a DS in public. Everyone had them, yeah. People I knew had them, and loved them. But they never left the home.

So convergence isn't the sole issue here. Make a properly great device with an appealing form factor. Get the price right for hardware and software (realistically launch at 150 and 25 dollars for the machine and games) and then market it properly and kids and gamers will buy in. The DS days aren't returning, but the market isn't 'over' either.

--

The one issue I see is that with the DS you could make a cheap sprite game and charge 25-30 bucks for it and sell millions. Now that we expect console-quality 3D gaming on the go, it might be the case that the cost of making handheld games is no longer feasible given the size of the market that's interested in such games. With AAA 'mature' games, that has been proven to be the case without a shadow of a doubt by the Vita, but even Nintendo's portable games these days are full-blown 3D extravaganzas, as shown by how similar their big Mario games for 3DS and Wii U ended up being.

Yeah this is why Nintendo's making more cross platform stuff to save money and push both pieces of hardware


Im hoping the next nintendo handheld keeps 3D and dual screens, improves AR and is focused on being cross platform with their next console

 

[Coxy]

3DS is pretty old. How can you expect it to constantly sell millions when pretty much everyone has one?

I must have been asleep the day humanity was wiped out. 3ds isnt anywhere remotely fractionally near "everyone has one"

 

[CoconutTank]

The gaf thread about broken iOS games seems like a good thread to tie back to this:

http://www.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=949600

Do you guys think software compatibility/reliability will matter when it comes to retaining game developers? Would that matter for retaining game consumers?

 

[Father_Brain]

I maintain that there's still an opportunity for a dedicated handheld device in the current market, and that the 3DS is proof of that, almost because of how bad it is. We've reached 'peak smartphone / tablet', and yet the 3DS, a poor console at a poor price with muddled marketing, has managed to sell millions due to the strength of its software and name recognition alone.

What could Nintendo do if they got the hardware right, the price right, the online apps and ecosystem / accounts right? I think they could be successful again, I really do.

I also think the 'people don't have room to take 2 devices with them' issue is a non-factor, because (anecdotally) I never, ever heard of people doing the majority of their handheld gaming outside of the home. People game on handhelds relaxing on the couch while their girlfriend watches TV, or a kid plays on his bed while his parent cooks dinner, thinking the kid's doing homework.

What exactly leads you to the bolded conclusion?

And, well, you know what they say about anecdotes.

 

[Yatōkiri_Kilgharrah]

What exactly leads you to the bolded conclusion?

And, well, you know what they say about anecdotes.

There have been multiple reports of declining mobile and tablet sales. You can read up online about it.

 

[March of the Crabs]

Nope but Nintendo has it on lock and I doubt we will ever see another viable competitor besides mobile, and clearly they can coexist.

 

[Herb Alpert]

You should probably thank the handhelds if you can still play Nintendo games on your living room console.

He didn't specify which home console...

 

[Griss]

What exactly leads you to the bolded conclusion?

And, well, you know what they say about anecdotes.

Here's the New York Times from a year and a half ago. Link. Says that smartphone sales were already dropping as market saturation was 60%. I've read that it's 82% in Ireland and the UK, but don't have that link. It will be approaching that soon in the US. Smartphone sales dropped in 2013, in the big western markets, and it will shock me if they don't again in 2014.

Take out the elderly who don't want smartphones and basically everyone has one. You can afford a cheap one if you're on the dole. Children get them because their parents need to do something with their old one once they get a contract upgrade every two years. Back in 2010/2011 I took the train to work, which stopped by an elementary school and a high school. Every child had a smartphone. 3 years ago.

Whatever disruptive element smartphones played, that disruption is over. This is now a settled and understood element of the market, imo. We've even seen that with the big smartphone gaming companies finally coalescing into some major ones with smaller contenders, rather than the random noise of the early years, the wild west.

So if the 3DS is still alive in the US now, there's no reason Nintendo can't find another device to do the same or better.

 

[Maximus.]

If Nintendo games were on phones they wouldn't need to be $40. There are over 1 billion smartphones in use today. That is a vastly larger audience than the current 50 million for 3DS. Assuming an equal attach rate, you could sell Zelda on phones for $2 and make the same amount of profit as selling it for $40 on 3DS. Or you could sell it for $4 and double your current profit. Minus profit from hardware sales.

Naturally that is oversimplifying things, but the point is that it's extremely viable.

No this isn't how things work. By lowering the price from $40 to $2-$4, you are lowering the value of your product. That doesn't translate to bigger profits and a more viable business solution. There's significantly more factors any business must consider when looking at new models.

 

[Opiate]

Do you mean dedicated handhelds? Absolutely, yes. Do you mean portable devices generally? Not only are they not declining, they are rapidly growing.

 

[Hoho for breakfast]

I'm highly against people telling me consoles are dying (I understand they well might in their current physical form) but yeah handhelds have clearly taken a dive because of other devices like phones and tablets. It's just the way it's going. Those devices will get more powerful and become the next handhelds. Nintendo should imo then start expanding and making games for those devices.

 

[Tiktaalik]

yes yes yes yes yes

At this point almost all of the most interesting games are appearing in the mobile space. My 3DS has sat in a drawer for months. The only interesting developers IMO are Nintendo and Atlus.

 

[Impotaku]

Im curious why western devs find it so hard to actually put out quality games on 3DS, the majority of the 3DS library still comes from Japanese devs and is translated for the other regions, the only western made games i tend to see are always the kiddy licensed stuff like barbie & lego games. It was also like this on the DS too but during that time in between the huge amounts of shovelware there were western devs putting out some fantastic games as well but in the 3DS gen all those games have pretty much vanished.

If anything that's why western handheld gaming is collapsing the west just doesn't bother to support it much, when i go into game here in the uk it's always the same scenario. Usual Nintendo published stuff, a few 3rd party games from Japanese devs and a lot of western kiddy licensed shovelware.

 

[mrklaw]

Well say goodbye to the likes of Phoenix wright and other ports to iOS. A big reason they exist is because the cost of production was already covered on 3DS, so a relatively cheap porting exercise is free money. If handhelds disappear, I don't see how companies can justify the investment required for those kinds of games when they have to sell for so little on iOS.

 

[Darius]

The comparison in the OP is a same-point-in-lifecycle generation over generation comparison.

Compared to these November 2008 DS sales also PS4 last months sales look quite bad.

3DS sales aren´t comparable to these heights but over half a million last month is still a healthy amount of units, something that I wouldn´t classify as a collapse, for that it should have reached numbers that would have been considered not worthy of any notable investment from the 1st party side, which isn´t the case when it comes to the 3DS. Sure the OP wants to imply that by adding the PSP into the comparison, but he simply ignores that at that point in time PSPs hardware sales in the US were still considered quite good (software sales were the big problem at that point), but going forward not so much and the "PSP" same-point in life comparisons won´t be that much of "use" for that and likely dropped, the same way as the missing 3DS-PSV comparisons, due to "missing" data.

In Japan the 3DS is by far the most successful dedicated gaming system right now, just last week it handily outsold again all other systems combined with quite an significant difference on top of that, it even broke a software sales record last week. This is in fact quite an reassuring message for handheld gaming in Japan, but it´s no surprise that spin-doctors had to miniscule this achievement by comparing 3DSs performance with the entirety of the smartphone market, Android+Appstore.

Going forward Nintendo should look for efficiency and in expanding their IP portfolio. A big problem they face right now is that unlike mainstream consoles, especially in the US it doesn´t benefit from all the significant marketing from huge publishers like Ubisoft, EA, Activision etc. on top of the marketing-dollars from the hardware manufacturer. The visibilty of their systems/handheld is mainly just due to Nintendo alone, even when it comes to games like Bravely Default. In fact Nintendos marketing dollars are splitted in half (handheld and console) and competing against the combined marketing dollars from EA, Activision, Square, Sony, MS etc. when it comes to dedicated gaming systems, on top that the complete smartphone industry.

Considering how their handhelds are still their biggest money-maker and that it seems that they´ll have a much better fiscal year this time it´s quite ridiculous to see some of the suggestions in this thread.

 

[Ninja Dom]

Tech-wise, I'm not sure of the point of a dedicated handheld device. Tablets and smart phones are thinner and have much larger screens, plus have their obvious other uses. Handhelds just seems like an obsolete tech at this point, IMO.

Kinda true. The Vita has the same GPU as the 3rd Generation iPad. We're now on the 6th Generation iPad which has the fastest mobile chipset the world has yet seen.

 

[Aquamarine]

Short answer: Yes

Long answer: Yeeeeeeeeeeeees

 

[stan423321]

Here's a funny little silly theory of mine. A bunch of Android brands could absolutely destroy handheld market... but this won't happen anytime soon because they actually prefer the current IMHO flawed mobile app markets for some reasons (maybe data? maybe just profits?).

Honestly, I have no idea. Due to price to wage ratio differences, in Poland dumbphones blocked the stubs of handheld market. NDS had a moment of relevance when grab-and-drop piracy started... yeah.

 

[Prine]

Can't justify £28 per game. You just can't.

 

[DarkLordMalik]

I blame it all on Minecraft and the Angry and Flappy birds.

 

[Yatōkiri_Kilgharrah]

yes yes yes yes yes

At this point almost all of the most interesting games are appearing in the mobile space. My 3DS has sat in a drawer for months. The only interesting developers IMO are Nintendo and Atlus.

.... Lol what? Clearly you need to move to japan if that's the case XD

In the west all the interesting games are on the PS4 and everything else is on mobile, either an indie game, a port of something or some localized japanese game like Brave Frontier, Pazudora or Monster strike.

Nintendo released like 8 simulators last year and 4 games in some other genre on the 3DS and atlus released a bunch of dungeon crawlers.

Can't justify £28 per game. You just can't.

The UK isnt part of the conversation here lol.

Im curious why western devs find it so hard to actually put out quality games on 3DS, the majority of the 3DS library still comes from Japanese devs and is translated for the other regions, the only western made games i tend to see are always the kiddy licensed stuff like barbie & lego games. It was also like this on the DS too but during that time in between the huge amounts of shovelware there were western devs putting out some fantastic games as well but in the 3DS gen all those games have pretty much vanished.

If anything that's why western handheld gaming is collapsing the west just doesn't bother to support it much, when i go into game here in the uk it's always the same scenario. Usual Nintendo published stuff, a few 3rd party games from Japanese devs and a lot of western kiddy licensed shovelware.

Western publisher only greenlighting low budget affair on handhelds and many western devs not putting their best foot forward on the weaker devices.

They either want to work on consoles or make cheap shit to stay afloat.

Indies are the only ones with gumption on that front.

 

[Yatōkiri_Kilgharrah]

I'm highly against people telling me consoles are dying (I understand they well might in their current physical form) but yeah handhelds have clearly taken a dive because of other devices like phones and tablets. It's just the way it's going. Those devices will get more powerful and become the next handhelds. Nintendo should imo then start expanding and making games for those devices.

No not at all.

Short answer: Yes

Long answer: Yeeeeeeeeeeeees

Nope.

 

[Cheech]

Tablets and smartphones don't have real controls. That's the biggest problem.

Nearly everyone disagrees with this viewpoint, which is why nobody is buying the things.

People who value traditional games and game controls play on PC and console. Touchscreen gaming for on-the-go is good enough for well over 99% of the population.

And even if it wasn't, who wants to carry two devices around?

 

[KillerMan91]

Compared to these November 2008 DS sales also PS4 last months sales look quite bad.

3DS sales aren´t comparable to these heights but over half a million last month is still a healthy amount of units, something that I wouldn´t classify as a collapse, for that it should have reached numbers that would have been considered not worthy of any notable investment from the 1st party side, which isn´t the case when it comes to the 3DS. Sure the OP wants to imply that by adding the PSP into the comparison, but he simply ignores that at that point in time PSPs hardware sales in the US were still considered quite good (software sales were the big problem at that point), but going forward not so much and the "PSP" same-point in life comparisons won´t be that much of "use" for that and likely dropped, the same way as the missing 3DS-PSV comparisons, due to "missing" data.

In Japan the 3DS is by far the most successful dedicated gaming system right now, just last week it handily outsold again all other systems combined with quite an significant difference on top of that, it even broke a software sales record last week. This is in fact quite an reassuring message for handheld gaming in Japan, but it´s no surprise that spin-doctors had to miniscule this achievement by comparing 3DSs performance with the entirety of the smartphone market, Android+Appstore.

Going forward Nintendo should look for efficiency and in expanding their IP portfolio. A big problem they face right now is that unlike mainstream consoles, especially in the US it doesn´t benefit from all the significant marketing from huge publishers like Ubisoft, EA, Activision etc. on top of the marketing-dollars from the hardware manufacturer. The visibilty of their systems/handheld is mainly just due to Nintendo alone, even when it comes to games like Bravely Default. In fact Nintendos marketing dollars are splitted in half (handheld and console) and competing against the combined marketing dollars from EA, Activision, Square, Sony, MS etc. when it comes to dedicated gaming systems, on top that the complete smartphone industry.

Considering how their handhelds are still their biggest money-maker and that it seems that they´ll have a much better fiscal year this time it´s quite ridiculous to see some of the suggestions in this thread.

PSP packaged software sales in the US:

2005: ~10 million
2006: ~14 million
2007: ~18 million
2008: ~18 million
2009: ~13 million

3DS:

2011:~8 million
2012: 11 million*
2013: 16 million*

Even if we assume slight rise for 3DS software this year (I don't know if we should though as Nintendo had pretty empty release calendar before Smash compared to last year) 3DS is trailing behind PSP also in software sales. Sure because of digital comparison is not 100% valid but even with that it's not like there is huge difference between PSP and 3DS.

 

[Yatōkiri_Kilgharrah]

PSP packaged software sales in the US:

2005: ~10 million
2006: ~14 million
2007: ~18 million
2008: ~18 million
2009: ~13 million

3DS:

2011:~8 million
2012: 11 million*
2013: 16 million*

Even if we assume slight rise for 3DS software this year (I don't know if we should though as Nintendo had pretty empty release calendar before Smash) 3DS is trailing behind PSP also in software sales.

Nintendo didnt have an empty calendar at all.

Yoshi's New Island
Inazuma Eleven 3: Team Ogre Attacks! (Published by Nintendo in Europe only)
Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (Published by Nintendo outside of Japan)
Disney Magical World (Published by Nintendo in North America only)
Kirby: Triple Deluxe
Mario Golf: World Tour
Tomodachi Life
Wagamama Fashion: Girls Mode Yokubari Sengen! Tokimeki Up! (Japan only)
Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS
Pokémon Art Academy
Fantasy Life (Published by Nintendo outside of Japan)
Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire
Ultimate NES Remix
Chibi-Robo! Photo Finder
Steel Diver: Sub Wars
Pokémon Battle Trozei
Rusty's Real Deal Baseball
Photo with Mario
Dedede's Drum Dash Deluxe
Kirby Fighters Deluxe
Nintendo Pocket Football Club

Everything they published/released in 2014

 

[KillerMan91]

Nintendo didnt have an empty calendar at all.

Yoshi's New Island
Inazuma Eleven 3: Team Ogre Attacks! (Published by Nintendo in Europe only)
Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (Published by Nintendo outside of Japan)
Disney Magical World (Published by Nintendo in North America only)
Kirby: Triple Deluxe
Mario Golf: World Tour
Tomodachi Life
Wagamama Fashion: Girls Mode Yokubari Sengen! Tokimeki Up! (Japan only)
Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS
Pokémon Art Academy
Fantasy Life (Published by Nintendo outside of Japan)
Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire
Ultimate NES Remix
Chibi-Robo! Photo Finder
Steel Diver: Sub Wars
Pokémon Battle Trozei
Rusty's Real Deal Baseball
Photo with Mario
Dedede's Drum Dash Deluxe
Kirby Fighters Deluxe
Nintendo Pocket Football Club

Well I guess you are technically right but I meant biggish software. Animal Crossing New Leaf alone probably sold more than most of that list combined before Smash got released.

 

[Yatōkiri_Kilgharrah]

Nintendo's more or less pushing more midtier software and trying to grow franchises

Also I think stuff like Code Name Steam will also appeal more to the west.

 

[Stereogatari]

The question is whether the core gaming demographic is enough to keep handhelds financially feasible for Sony and Nintendo. In the past the casual/kid/semi-core demographic helped prop it all up. Now this demographic have their tablets/smartphones.

I think Sony missed the boat on this a long time ago. People were clamouring for a PSP phone, open source development and finger touchscreen back in 2005. If they had followed through with user demands they very well could've established themselves in a better place in the smartphone market early on. I always look back to the PSP homebrew scene; that was like smartphone apps before smartphones were a thing, yet Sony just looked at it as a bad thing. Now look at how mainstream mobile apps have become thanks to Apple and Android.

 

[Darius]

PSP packaged software sales in the US:

2005: ~10 million
2006: ~14 million
2007: ~18 million
2008: ~18 million
2009: ~13 million

3DS:

2011:~8 million
2012: 11 million*
2013: 16 million*

Even if we assume slight rise for 3DS software this year (I don't know if we should though as Nintendo had pretty empty release calendar before Smash compared to last year) 3DS is trailing behind PSP also in software sales. Sure because of digital comparison is not 100% valid but even with that it's not like there is huge difference between PSP and 3DS.

Comparisons shouldn´t be made without context, besides the missing eshop sales, the even more important thing that´s beeing ignored is the distrubution of these sales to the number of retail releases. While PSP was heavily supported in its first years by either western or japanese publishers with full EA support and relevant releases like the GTA games for example, these sales had been shared between a very big amount of games. While on the 3DS software sales and 3DS software support mainly equals Nintendos output, something that lead to even more 1st party support instead of an abandonement, while the "better" sales of PSP lead to western publishers leaving. Therefore it would be more informative if you add the amount of retail releases to your list.

 

[Ecotic]

Maybe there never really was a handheld 'market'. It's a thought I've had of late. Imagine a physical marketplace where townspeople can gather to happily make gains from trade. There never really was a healthy handheld gaming ecosystem with active market participants like that. It was mostly just Nintendo thriving and everyone else trying to crack the code and hoping for a spare bone.

Playstation, Xbox, Apple's App Store, Google Play, they're all predominantly reliant upon third party software and foster an environment where publishers and developers feel like they can do business, like they have something of a fair shot. Until the App Store and Google Play came along that never existed in handheld gaming. So maybe it never really was a 'market', in the sense of it being an active ecosystem. It was just a successful line of singular Nintendo products once. A closed system, a Nintendo playground, not an open market.

 

[SeanR1221]

I don't see Nintendo backing out of handhelds anytime soon. I think they'll go the hybrid route.

I've said this before in other threads, but I think Sony will focus on its phones and tablets, offering remote play as the main portable option and maybe create like....a playstation specific App Store on there for indie titles with trophies? I dunno.

The next nintendo handheld doesn't have to be a total powerhouse. Keep it inexpensive, keep it really open to indies, make it so it can run GameCube quality games (imagine re releasing Melee on a handheld?)

 

[JonathanPower]

The problem with Vita is that they seriously fucked up with the ridiculously expensive memory cards. They should have used a standard micro SD port and maybe they should have used android, although I think the Vita OS is really great.

 

[small44]

The question is whether the core gaming demographic is enough to keep handhelds financially feasible for Sony and Nintendo. In the past the casual/kid/semi-core demographic helped prop it all up. Now this demographic have their tablets/smartphones.

I think Sony missed the boat on this a long time ago. People were clamouring for a PSP phone, open source development and finger touchscreen back in 2005. If they had followed through with user demands they very well could've established themselves in a better place in the smartphone market early on. I always look back to the PSP homebrew scene; that was like smartphone apps before smartphones were a thing, yet Sony just looked at it as a bad thing. Now look at how mainstream mobile apps have become thanks to Apple and Android.

The psp phone idea is stupid for a financial reason,Sony struggles with their smartphone,so even a psp phone won't do well.Psp buyer was core gamers few peoples who bough a psp was casual gamer

 

[Sammy Samusu]

Collapse, no.

But the market shrank, and Nintendo needs to do something next-generation to compete against mobile.

 

[monpiece]

It is good to learn that the handheld market in the West is fine, and the only problem is that every third party developer is failing its obligation of only developing games for 3DS.

 

[Yatōkiri_Kilgharrah]

I don't see Nintendo backing out of handhelds anytime soon. I think they'll go the hybrid route.

I've said this before in other threads, but I think Sony will focus on its phones and tablets, offering remote play as the main portable option and maybe create like....a playstation specific App Store on there for indie titles with trophies? I dunno.

The next nintendo handheld doesn't have to be a total powerhouse. Keep it inexpensive, keep it really open to indies, make it so it can run GameCube quality games (imagine re releasing Melee on a handheld?)

Melee can run on the 3DS

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

The snartphone market has shown that quantity > quality. No matter how great the $40 3ds games are they just can't match the endless stream of android/ios titles.

I remember that comic (both singular and plural, but for this purpose, singular) and realizing it was signifigant for some reason. Soon I found out why: "The greatest enemy of Good in gaming is Good Enough, and people carry around Good Enough already."

 

[Darius]

The psp phone idea is stupid for a financial reason,Sony struggles with their smartphone,so even a psp phone won't do well.Psp buyer was core gamers few peoples who bough a psp was casual gamer

Not so sure about this, seeing how sonys handheld business completely collapsed in the west after the big casuals shift towards smartphones.

 

[ChiefofCitadelSecurity]

It's been like that for awhile now. Apple and Google made their case, most agreed with it. lol

I really wanna see what Nintendo does this time. Someone said earlier that they move to the beat of their own drums. That's what makes things interesting.

What is their solution? Or are they comfortable with the 40+ million install base they have so far and think it's enough to work with.

 

[Father_Brain]

Here's the New York Times from a year and a half ago. Link. Says that smartphone sales were already dropping as market saturation was 60%. I've read that it's 82% in Ireland and the UK, but don't have that link. It will be approaching that soon in the US. Smartphone sales dropped in 2013, in the big western markets, and it will shock me if they don't again in 2014.

Take out the elderly who don't want smartphones and basically everyone has one. You can afford a cheap one if you're on the dole. Children get them because their parents need to do something with their old one once they get a contract upgrade every two years. Back in 2010/2011 I took the train to work, which stopped by an elementary school and a high school. Every child had a smartphone. 3 years ago.

Whatever disruptive element smartphones played, that disruption is over. This is now a settled and understood element of the market, imo. We've even seen that with the big smartphone gaming companies finally coalescing into some major ones with smaller contenders, rather than the random noise of the early years, the wild west.

So if the 3DS is still alive in the US now, there's no reason Nintendo can't find another device to do the same or better.

I don't really see that as a convincing case that the impact of mobile devices on the dedicated handheld market is over and done with, but okay.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Only a matter of time before dedicated handhelds are finished. Every kid these days is growing up using a phone or tablet.

 

[sörine]

It's already collapsed. Casuals are already gone and kids are also migrating away outside Japan. What's left is essentially the core gamer market who's willing to pay higher pricepoints for Nintendo, indies and niche Japanese games.

This trend isn't limited to handhelds either, there's going to be a domino effect on consoles too. The major publishers are fighting it but they're going to lose.

 

[small44]

Not so sure about this, seeing how sonys handheld business completely collapsed in the west after the big casuals shift towards smartphones.

Since when psp was a casuals consoles if you look to best selling games majority of them are hardcore games,the reason why vita sell that bad it's because 3rd parties didn't support it with their biggest IP.
PSP third parties support is 1000 better then psv and a lot better then 3DS support

 

[Father_Brain]

Smartphones and tablets may be reaching saturation, but that hardly means that consumers' preference for a single device they carry everywhere that offers a sea of dirt-cheap or "free" games (as opposed to a $150-200 secondary device that exists primarily to play games that cost $30-50) isn't going to become even more entrenched.

Nintendo is taking steps in the right direction, but they can't make their hardware anyone's primary portable device or compete on software pricing. And if they can't compete on those things, they can't compete, period.

 

[Altima]

Because of region lock and slow localization of software.

 

[small44]

It returning to it's normal size after casuals stop buying handheld

 

[sörine]

Because of region lock and slow localization of software.

These are issues for core gamers but not really the markets that actually drive handhelds (casuals, kids). If anything mobile is worse than handhelds when it comes to localization delay.

It returning to it's normal size after casuals stop buying handheld

Casuals leaving isn't the big issue. It's kids.

 

[Combichristoffersen]

Tablets and smartphones have filled the niche handhelds previously occupied in the Western market.

 

[MastaKilla]

I dont think there will be dedicated handheld gaming devices in the near future. All the parents just download free apps and games
for their kids on their phones and it does the job.