Is It Time To Retire The Nintendo-Handheld?

The short answer is no. Here's the long answer:

A lot of people grew up with Game Boy, GBA, or DS. Some do not know a Nintendo before handhelds existed. But during the NES-era, Nintendo was on top of the world without Pokémon or Animal Crossing. They had exclusive third-party support from the East and West. A lot of that was because of domineering business-practices, but that is beside the point. Even when they encountered stiff competition with the Genesis, they were #1 worldwide. People say Genesis had more sports-games, and that is true, but after a certain year, SNES got all the sports-games from EA as well.

We certainly have a more mobile society now. We have smartphones and cellular data, laptops are cheaper than ever, and gas-mileage is better than ever. But right now, multi-purpose smartphones with cellular data dominate. Unless Nintendo makes their own smartphone, they will lose to them. Should they make their portable games for smartphones instead? No, I wouldn't want that. I want d-pads, sticks, and buttons.

Game Boy was the invention of Gunpei Yokoi, who passed away a long time ago. Should his legacy continue on or rest in peace? Nintendo's best games have been on their home-consoles. Their best developers have an arcaede or home-console background and that's where their passion lies. The Game Boy used to be a place for ports of NES-games and some exclusives, but with GBA, and especially DS and then 3DS, it became a mighty second pillar for Nintendo. When Gamecube was floundering, GBA was thriving. Wii and DS both thrived, but when Wii U was drowning, 3DS was swimming.

On the surface, it seems unnecessary to have a handheld anymore. Smartphones took what Nintendo innovated with touch in games, and have run with the playerbase. When you delve a little deeper, however, you realize that Pokémon and Animal Crossing are arguably better on handhelds. They won't abandon those players. There are experiments with handheld-gaming that I think Nintendo wants to keep exploring, and if anything, Nintendo loves to try new things and explore the possibilities of hardware-software interaction.

So while I do not care for Pokémon, I do appreciate handheld-gaming with d-pads, sticks, and buttons, and I wish it wouldn't die, but I don't want the home-console to die either. Iwata must have come up with a solution to have them both thrive. I can't wait for his answers.

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