[POLL] Are handheld gaming consoles dying?

Are handheld gaming consoles dying?

  • Total voters
    39
6ranTur15m05

6ranTur15m05

515
Turkey
The Internet
muratkaan2000
DON'T GET ME WRONG!!!
Until like a year or two ago, portable gaming was mostly a handheld console thing. But these days, smartphones and tablets are something that a lot of people have, and you can do a lot more stuff with them. I have my iPad and there are like thousands of games available, most for free. I don't know how handhelds are selling in your country, but here, handheld console sales slowed down dramatically over 2 years. The only good handheld that is still on sale here is the PlayStation Vita (which I don't think it is selling well these days). Nintendo stuff are no longer sold here. And because of that, we won't be able to get the 3DS and the Wii U. The rest are some cheap ones that are no worth to talk about.
But, I still like the handhelds, because some very popular games are available for them and they feel like they are made for gaming. Because of that, I still keep my DS (fat case, from 2005) and my PSP (Slim 3004, from 2010). So, I think I wrote everything I can. What do you guys think? Are handheld gaming consoles still good or they're dead? My answer: I don't know. Maybe in the next few years, Nintendo will start selling again, and both Sony and Nintendo will make great handhelds that will become really popular. Or maybe smartphones and tablets will sell around the world like they do here. We shall wait and see.
 
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The only thing keeping handhelds are the exclusive titles. When you have games like Pokemon, Zelda and Super Mario aswell as superior controls (phones/tablets are hardly ideal controller devices for games) then it's easy to see why handheld consoles still have a place. It might sound suprising but I'm pretty sure Mario and Pokemon are the biggest selling game franchises of the last decade, and of all time.

Personally I don't want them to die off because I hate playing games on tablets/phones, I own a 3DS and to be honest I don't think it is all that great, it is flimsy and though the controls are infinitely better than using a tablet they are still not amazing... But the games are great, there are some really great games that just cannot be found elsewhere.
 
Maybe they're dying wherever the OP is, but anywhere the DS/3DS is sold they're still going to be going strong. They're not that expensive, and there's too many good games that would be largely impossible to do on a phone/tablet for them to completely die off.

If anything, I sort of think the smartphone craze got a lot of people into casual handheld gaming that otherwise would never have touched it, and those people then think about picking up a cheap DS.
 
As much as I love my Vita it is tanking. I think it has as much to do with total cost if ownership being high as tablets and phones. 3DS is killing it though. No, I don't think handheld gaming is dying.
 
6ranTur15m05
Well, as I said earlier, it may be selling good wherever you live. Read OP and you'll get my point.
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Is it surprising that handhelds don't sell well in Turkey?

Your original question is phrased very broadly. Worldwide, handhelds are definitely not dying. In the OP it sounds a lot like you're trying to extrapolate what you're seeing in your country to the world at large, and it's not like that.

Maybe handheld sales are dying in Turkey, but you're probably better placed to answer that question than any of the rest of us.
 
Well, handhelds aren't dead, as evidenced by the 3DS. Do I think that, in the (more or kess) near future it might very well die? Actually, yes. Smartphones and tablets are getting better at being allround entertainment devices and they're getting more affordable as time goes on. Handhelds might still sell well enough to warrant production and R&D, but I'm willing to bet that that trend isn't going to be last. The situation in Germany isn't as dire as it seems to be in Turkey, but it's not entirely dissimilar.

When was the last I saw someone play with a 3DS? Well... I suppose that would've been my ex girlfriend, three months ago. Last time I saw somone play a game on their smartphone? A few hours ago, as I left work.

This, of course, is not representative at all. But everyone's equipped with mobile entertainment devices, anyway. Give the market some time to grow and some recognizable game franchises to be developed and smartphone and tablets will start to replace handhelds.
 
Luminis
Give the market some time to grow and some recognizable game franchises to be developed and smartphone and tablets will start to replace handhelds.
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This, and also the controls need to feel like you're playing on a handheld. That way handhelds will have no chance of getting popular again.
 
Unless smartphones start to come with a dpad and lots of buttons then handhelds will be fine. There is just not the same interaction from a tablet as there is with handheld. Similar to kinect its a gimmick and not a threat to serious gaming.
 
mika haka
Unless smartphones start to come with a dpad and lots of buttons then handhelds will be fine. There is just not the same interaction from a tablet as there is with handheld. Similar to kinect its a gimmick and not a threat to serious gaming.
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There were 1 or 2 examples of this in the past, not sure about now.
 
mika haka
Unless smartphones start to come with a dpad and lots of buttons then handhelds will be fine. There is just not the same interaction from a tablet as there is with handheld. Similar to kinect its a gimmick and not a threat to serious gaming.
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Yeah, not like you could use peripheral equipment with a smartphone. Boy, I wish these things came with Bluetooth or something.

Ahem. Either way. Serious gaming? No, you will likely need a handheld for that, even in years to come. But... In case you haven't noticed, the casual market is huge. Seriously, the enthusiast market is going to dwindle down, slowly. Handhelds don't seem to cater to the hardcore players, at the moment, actually, and the casual crowd will sooner or later drift towards the mobile market. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that more and more people buy smartphone. These phones are able to do a lot of what a handheld can. And with them getting better, the amount of people who care enough to buy a second mobile gaming device for what little benefits it offers above a phone will start to diminish.

You can actually see the very same trend with computers and laptops. The amount of people who're willing to invest in a mobile computing device in addition to their phone is going down, as the benefit you have from having such a second mobile computing devise diminishes as phones become more and more capable. Sure, there're likely always going to be people that are willing to pay for what few benefits are left with laptops or, in this case, handhelds, because they need these benefits or value them quite highly. Doesn't change the fact that the market is seeing the sort of competition it has never seen before.

And, again, the question is "are they dying", as in, what's the future going to bring for handheld gaming. Not "is handheld gaming dead yet". It quite obviously isn't, but with smartphone becoming ever more popular and ever more all-encompassing in terms of their offerings and abilities, I'd still say that handhelds are facing a huge uphill battle. Oh, and, besides, 'handheld gaming' basically translates to 'Nintendo 3DS', these days, doesn't it? There's a bit of competition from Sony, but aside from that, has there been any real 'handheld gaming market' in recent years?

/edit: Kinda funny that the Pokemon-device is now the herald of 'serious gaming' :D
 
mcfizzle
As much as I love my Vita it is tanking. I think it has as much to do with total cost if ownership being high as tablets and phones. 3DS is killing it though. No, I don't think handheld gaming is dying.
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^Sadly this is true. I adore my Vita as well, (even though its primary use is to be a Persona-machine.) and I really hope that the rest of people realize that its a wonderful machine.

I still voted no, because aslong as Nintendo keeps Pokemon only portable, and only on the DS, it WILL survive.
 
It seems to me that the casual market is occupied by people who buy things with more capabilities than they ever needed. All they want from a computing device is the internet, email, etc...basic stuff. Over the past decade, companies have been whittling down a computing device to a simplistic and convenient form, trimming off the extra abilities many customers never actually wanted. Phones and tablets are almost explicitly designed not to do all the things PCs/laptops or gaming handhelds can do; they're a "lite" version of a computing device. From certain tasks and projects to the controls of a game, phones and tablets are all about compromises.

It's not that there are fewer and fewer people who need or value the extra capabilities of a proper laptop/PC or gaming device. At least with PCs, ever since they took off 20-30 years ago, the numbers never really reflected the actual "hardcore" market. I would bet that market is actually growing, but overall we're seeing a decline as the casual users are swept away from the top.
Luminis
Yeah, not like you could use peripheral equipment with a smartphone. Boy, I wish these things came with Bluetooth or something.
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If you're going to do something like that, I see no point in craning your neck to peer at a screen small enough to fit in your pocket. You might as well connect a gamepad to a laptop.
 
You could argue that laptops, PCs and handhelds have a good few advantages that phones will never have, and I'll agree with that. But if the compromise people are getting with a phone can be considered 'good enough', why bother with another device?

As for the market itself, the handheld market doesn't seem like it's aimed at hardcore players. Might just be my impression, but a gaming device that thrives on Pokemon just doesn't seem very harcore to me. The games are popular and hardcore players are obviously not turning away from the franchise, but my impression is that Nintendo's audience consists of mostly casual gamers. It worked for them with the Wii and the (3)DS never broke that trend, as far as I can tell. This is mostly going by what experience I personally have with other people who I'd consider casual gamers - and they're not carrying a Gameboy or DS like thit three years ago, they're occupied with Temple Run and whatever crappy game is getting hyped at the moment.
 
To me a casual game is one that's lacking in depth or meaningful gameplay, like an internet click-a-thon timewaster or a shallow showcase of touchscreen/motion control. I haven't played Pokémon since the first generation, but I don't think there's anything casual about a turn-based RPG with an ever-growing list of combatants and strategic matchups to track, breeding, and a traditional structure of progression. The depth of a modern Pokémon game seems to dwarf that of the all-time classics.

Nintendo sure knows how to capitalize on a killer app or feature, and the Wii and (3)DS are more examples of devices with more potential than the casual consumer ever needed. I can't imagine how many Wiis there are that were only used for Wii Sports and maybe another party game or two.
 
My only interest in handhelds was at a young age, back when many didn't have a second television. But even then I bought my own TV second hand soon as. My sister had the Sega game gear and I completed Sonic on it a few times but both of us lost interest. Before gameboy era, handhelds were standalone games like donkey kong which I had hours of fun. Many of us had these type of handhelds when on school coach trips.

A big screen has always been my thing and very rarely feel I need to game while out and about. I could only consider it if I was on a long train journey to work. I also don't feel the need to game around the house via streaming on the newer devices but I do see how this is gaining popularity and watching twitch while the misses is reading a book/magazine, I get it.

Please note I'm not saying handhelds are for kids but I think many are like me which could be the reason why PSP/Vita Atari Lynx Game Gear don't catch on in units or software sales. They go for the console in your hands but I don't want that, ever. Any game I play I'd rather savor on the big screen. Nintendo and smartphones seem to be the only ones who get that. The high prices have also not helped the powerful handheld. 3DS had a hard time pushing the fancy tech and had to drop price a lot and its doing well now.

I've read stats over the years where its said most playtime on handhelds is at home.
 
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