The Great Schism Of Nintendo-Fans: Console vs. Handheld

This is a response to Reddit NX post: https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoNX/comments/4vk9u1/issues_with_handheld_gaming/

This issue comes up a lot and is one of the biggest issue Nintendo faces - the schism between its home-console fans and handheld fans.

I'm more of a home-console fan as well. For the most part, I only play handhelds when I'm outside my home.

A lot of fans of handhelds say that they only play Wii U for one or two games and the majority of their time is spent on 3DS. I'm the opposite. I spend the majority of my time on Wii U and only use my 3DS when I'm bored and there is nothing better to do.

Let us try to understand why this is.

Handheld-Fans:

Why do they like 3DS so much? They even claim it's the best handheld ever. To understand this, we must understand the previous generation: DS. DS is Nintendo's single most successful platform, and the gaming-industry's second-most successful device ever. Every kid probably had a DS, and now these children have grown up and have a 3DS. They are going to love it. They never played Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, nor Star Fox 64, so these seem like new games to them.

From an objective standpoint, no, 3DS is not the best handheld ever. From an objective standpoint, DS would be the best because it sold the most and had the largest library. 3DS's library doesn't even come close. GBA's library handily beats 3DS's as well.

From a subjective standpoint, my favorite handheld was GBA.

Console-Fans:

Our History

We grew up with and prefer stuff like NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube and Wii. Maybe our parents could afford to spend a little more and get us the home-consoles. Maybe the parents of handheld-fans could not afford to get their children Wiis and Gamecubes and had to settle for DSes and GBAs.

Ergonomics

I don't like holding the 3DS and playing; it's not comfortable. One of the most important aspects of gaming which is overlooked is comfort. My hands hurt when I play Kid Icarus Uprising, Blast Ball, or even Ocarina of Time 3D when I need to Z-target a lot. Why should they have to hurt?

Aesthetics

Aesthetically, many 3DS-titles look terrible, especially when they sacrifice resolution for the sake of keeping 3D-mode at a playable framerate; the text looks terribly interpolated. I'm not criticizing its shortcomings in graphical horsepower; I am criticizing the lack of attention to aesthetics by developers when faced with these shortcomings. Time and time again, developers stick to polygonal graphics that look terrible instead of choosing a more aesthetically pleasing artistic and technical direction.

Look at Final Fantasy Explorers. Hideous. 7th Dragon III Code: VFD? Terrible name and terrible looks.

Conversely, if I look at GBA-games, they look a hundred times better aesthetically because most of them are in 2D. Even though GBA doesn't have the same horsepower and resolution, devs used the hardware in an optimal manner to create optimal-looking products.

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