作者：Christian Donlan

对手持游戏行业来说，2012将是个极具吸引力的年份。iOS继续着改变整个市场的势头，一方面游戏开发日趋民主化，另一方面改变了用户愿意为游戏支付的金钱数额。同时，3DS似乎最终达到了最佳的竞争状态，索尼也通过大幅增产Vita展开行动。对于所有竞争者来说，手持游戏领域还有足够的发展空间吗？

如果这篇文章与Eurogamer其他趋势类文章相比显得更加纠结于单个问题，那么我想原因在于手持行业的现状就是如此。在这个新兴的充满应用和免费增值游戏的世界中，任天堂和索尼似乎正处在不利地位，这在5年前是很难想象的。这种情况让我们萌生出许多有趣的问题。

手持主机是否仍有足够的市场吸引力让开发商冒险制作售价为30英镑的高预算项目？App Store的崛起是否会开始让团队将全部注意力放在iOS上？如果我的iPhone丢失，那么《线条滑雪》是否能够在售价特别便宜的HTC野火S上顺利运转？

对于这些问题，我都不知道要如何回答。因此，在过去数周时间里，我通过邮件与手持游戏领域里那些最睿智的人交流，询问他们的想法。以下便是我所得到的结果。

改变将是唯一始终不变的趋势

Greek Balls of Fire from indiegames.com

这是Heraclitus的说法，当时他的3回合变体游戏《Greek Balls of Fire》冲击iPhone Top 50排行榜的行动刚刚失败。与我交谈过的多数人似乎都同意他的看法：目前行业正处在地震周期。但是，这是场像在地震测试实验室召开啤酒聚会那样令人兴奋的地震，还是场会对你造成严重伤害的9.3级地震呢？

PopCap旗下《宝石迷阵》系列游戏商业总监Giordano Contestabile在我询问他有关手持游戏发展的时候说道：“兴奋已经不足以描述这种感觉。这场地震正在重新构建整个行业，让它变得更大！如果‘手持设备’包括智能手机和平板电脑在内的所有可携带游戏设备的话，那么我们未来能够接触到的潜在玩家数量将超过5亿，其中许多人之前根本没玩过游戏。此外，多数设备都能够相互连接，这使得跨平台、社交和在线游戏的流行变得可能，因而创新空间和机遇也将大幅增加。”

WayForward Technologies创意总监Matt Bozon分享了行业让他产生的激情，但也提出了些许警告。他告诉我说：“制作手持游戏的平均成本和开发时间都在增加，视觉效果分辨率要求更高，需要更庞大的团队来开发和运转游戏。这会导致大量小型开发商转向iOS，某些经验丰富的主机游戏开发商也将被迫转入不甚熟悉的手持游戏领域。”

Dakko Dakko公司制作过绝妙的PSP Mini游戏《The 2D Adventures of Rotating Octopus Character》，现在正努力制作2012年续作《Floating Cloud God Saves The Pilgrims》。Rhodri Broadbent是Dakko Dakko的创始人，他更看重的是竞争的积极效果。他说道：“我最大的愿望是，Vita和3DS之间健康的竞争会让整个手持游戏行业活跃起来。我很希望能够看到更多目前专注于家用主机的开发商能够尝试进行手持游戏开发。现在，可携带游戏技术的限制性与以往相比显著减少，我认为手持游戏有巨大的发展潜力。长期以来，手持游戏一直都被视为是孩子在漫长旅程中在汽车后座上打发时间用的产品，但是我认为这种想法完全低估了这种游戏体验的便利性和可接入性。”

Vita和3DS

现在，让我们来探讨些更具体的内容。任天堂和索尼都向市场推出了新硬件。这两家制造商都倾向于摒弃苹果的方法，主要专注于游戏和销售渠道的控制。

Vita在日本的发布有些摇摆不定，其目前的销售量仍是个未知数。有趣的是，与我交谈过的所有体验过这个设备的人都对其赞不绝口，但有个问题是逃避不了的：当用户已经习惯于只花费69便士购买手持游戏时，他们是否还愿意花40英镑来购买游戏？

Motorstom RC游戏总监Paul Rustchynsky很欣赏Vita确定了清晰的目标。他说道：“对玩家来说，PS Vita是款当代游戏设备，这会让他们感到很兴奋。重要的是，该设备的游戏体验已与PS3相近。正如你所看到的MotorStorm RC产品，在这两个平台上呈现出的体验完全相同。它的出现还使得开发商可以将更丰富的游戏体验带到手持平台中。通常情况下，FPS游戏很难在手持设备上运行。但是，使用PS Vita，玩家可以体验到射击类型的游戏。”

WipEout 2048 from ign.com

《WipEout 2048》游戏总监Stuart Tilley承认道：“过去数年来，手机游戏发生了很大的改变，但过段时间就会逐渐平息。随着Vita的面世，手持游戏行业将再次发生改变。智能手机上确实有些许很棒的产品，但是它们往往都是以触碰控制方式为基础的小型游戏。它们可能并不像我们小时候用控制器玩的游戏那样出众。我们认为，智能手机游戏在2012年还将繁荣发展，但是随着Vita的面世，类似《WipEout 2048》等更大范围的高产值游戏将随即显现，与PlayStation Minis的小范围游戏共同配合，占领市场。”

Broadbent将设备的丰富输入方式作为潜在的创意来源。他告诉我说：“我很喜欢Vita，希望能够尽快以该设备为目标平台来制作游戏。它不仅仅提高了技术层次，还为开发商创造了诸多机遇。输入方式便是个值得关注的创新渠道。这个新时代的手持设备让我回想起职业生涯中那段最快乐的时光，也就是在我刚刚加入Q-Games的时候（游戏邦注：时间大约为任天堂DS发布前夕），在那里我同一位设计师配合为随后发布的《StarFox DS》游戏开发新的控制方式。当时，触摸屏的出现让行业中出现许多新颖的新想法。我们执行和测试新想法，当制作人在尝试新想法时，从他的脸上就可以看出强烈的兴奋感。我希望在Vita上获得同样的经历和体验。设备的屏幕真是太棒了。”

James Mielke是Q Entertainment的制作人，该工作室正准备在索尼的新掌机上发布游戏《Lumines: Electronic Symphony》，他对Vita在欧洲的发布发表了自己的看法。他说道：“我必须承认，《Gravity Rush》的设计确实很棒。它让我回想起Moebius漫画书，重力机制确实不错。对我来说，它就像是该系统的《超级马里奥64》。它完全展现出Vita的特性。我希望能够在今年看到更多PS3游戏与Vita同步。我的意思是，我希望能够看到《上古卷轴：天际》或《黑暗之魂》等游戏，我既可以在PS3上体验，也可以在Vita上继续我的旅程，随后又可以转向PS3，进度保存在云端。”

显然，优秀的处理能力意味着需要承受更大的责任，对索尼和任天堂的设备来说都是这样的。Bozon说道：“提及3DS和Vita，行业中的AAA主机游戏体验似乎将会重生、压缩或简化到掌机系统中。这确实很不错，但希望开发商能够找到迎合手持游戏玩家独特口味的方法。手持游戏与主机游戏有所不同，所以体验也有着明显的差别。我不希望手持游戏被视为‘弱化的’主机游戏体验。多年以来，手持游戏一直都是与众不同且深受消费者青睐的。我希望，设备的升级不会导致开发商因成本过高而放弃差异化设计此类游戏。”

Contestabile对该行业抱观望态度。“作为游戏玩家，某些游戏声称将针对该平台开发新作品，这让我感到很兴奋，尤其是那些适合该设备的‘核心’游戏。从商业的角度来看，该平台的成功与否取决于平台持有者的发展能力以及平台能否适应快速改变的行业现状，尤其是能否让玩家连接网络和社交平台来，获得跨平台游戏体验。这些平台上的游戏开发和发行门槛有所提高，尽管会使得游戏的平均质量获得提升，但与智能手机上丰富的选择性相比，这最终将成为平台发展的劣势和障碍。”

他继续说道：“近期，我们可以看到手持游戏市场开始出现两极分化，‘核心’游戏找到了适合自己的设备，而‘休闲’游戏转向智能手机和平板电脑。但是，智能手机设备性能的提升也使得运行‘核心’游戏成为可能。从这种情况来看，手机将进一步尝试传统的手持游戏设备市场。”

“另一方面，我们可以看到年轻玩家的数量不断增加。这些人群本该转向手持设备，但是他们却被iPod Touch等易携带设备所吸引。我的观点是，游戏手持设备将成为适合某个特定群体的平台，锁定狂热玩家及特别的游戏题材。”

那么，现在是否还有足够的用户支撑起Vita这样的新平台呢？任天堂也必须思考这个问题。

Mielke说道：“显然，任天堂已经凭借3DS构建起发展势头，所以接下来的动向可能会很有趣。但是，任天堂的平台仍面临众多挑战。比如，许多人购买3DS是因为其价格下跌和《怪物猎人》的推出，那么其他非任天堂游戏能否在该平台上获得成功呢？这依然是个有待思考和讨论的话题。”

智能手机

Vita和3DS的发展像是个赌局，原因在于智能手机和平板电脑的崛起。Contestabile说道：“就目前的情况而言，iOS是成长最快和最高效的手持游戏销售平台，而且是游戏商业史上最好的盈利机会。但是，我认为如果开发商有多个强大的平台和大量潜在用户群体，那么他们将获得更大的收益。因此，我希望Android能够逐渐成熟并削弱分裂性，Windows Mobile也能够获得大量的用户。我还希望索尼和任天堂能够勇敢地向连网游戏和社交游戏世界迈出发展的步伐，进一步开拓他们的生态系统。”

智能手机平台是否存在危险之处呢？Mielke说道：“智能手机继续保持成长势头，不断蚕食原本属于普通功能手机的市场份额，游戏市场自然也是如此。结果，这个市场中的游戏开发变得更为廉价，而且游戏数量不断增多。问题在于，如此多的公司进军社交和手机游戏市场，使其变得相当拥挤，开发商想要杀出重围变得更加困难。如果我们希望同社交游戏巨头竞争，那就必须创造出新的游戏方法。我只是希望真正的创新不会被Zynga和Evony等公司的克隆行为所淹没。”

Scribblenauts from wireless.ign.com

来自《Scribblenauts》开发商5th Cell的Jeremiah Slaczka对这种观点表示赞同，他说道：“现在，App Store似乎是个绝佳的淘金之处。我听说，平台每天发布的游戏将近175款。而且，这个数据统计的还只是游戏而已，不包含其他种类的应用。很显然，多数游戏都不是很好，最终都未能获得成功。想到这一点，就市场的质量而言，即便现在开发商疯狂地冲向手机设备，但这个市场仍然需要更加成熟。”

5th Cell确实有资格对智能手机和掌机开发的对比情况发表意见。该团队曾在iOS上推出了《Scribblenauts》这款市场巨作，但后来却开始针对DS开发游戏。因为在后者这个平台上，他们可以花更多的资金来制作游戏，因为最终产品的售价可以多达30英镑。那么，69便士标准的流行是否使得多数开发商无法触及部分游戏题材呢？

Slaczka回答道：“我相信，《无尽之剑》的开发成本肯定比《Scribblenauts》多。iOS上可以有多种选择，小公司可以将目标放在小型市场上，大型开发商必须将目标放在高端市场，因为他们想要获得稳定的收益。开发商必须要根据自己的情况针对平台制定特定的战略。与生活中的所有事情一样，这不存在通用方法。”

这或许才是核心所在，事实上，2012年的手持游戏市场将是个分裂市场。用户需要知道如何去找到他们期待获得的东西，而开发商需要知道如何更有效地定位他们的游戏。

但是，这种分裂性可能并不那么新鲜。最后，我将分享的是Broadbent的看法，过去十年，他主要在日本工作和生活。他说道：“在DS发布之时，日本的功能手机已经是很成熟的通信设备，许多可以搭载免费的广播电视，所有用户都习惯用手机发邮件。所以，在用户时间投入方面的竞争与现在几乎相似。然而，DS却成为与该背景背道而驰的一种社交现象。同样，随着《怪物猎人：携带版》的逐渐流行，PSP在过去数年中在日本也获得了很高的销售量，智能手机和已经相当普遍的功能手机丝毫未对其构成影响。”

“如果内容极具吸引力，我觉得玩家会考虑选择合适的游戏硬件。正如《Brain Training》或《怪物猎人》那样，只要有合适的软件，硬件的销售也会随之提升。因此，我相信掌机不仅将存活下去，而且还会继续繁荣发展，尽管智能手机和iOS设备不断流行。”

“或许平衡正在重建，许多DS流行年代的狂热用户逐步发生动摇，因为他们看不到掌机平台的价值。诚然，如果他们购买系统只是为了获得《Nintendogs》、《Brain Training》或《Dolphin》等游戏，那么我就不会将《The 2D Adventures of Rotating Octopus Character》这样的游戏出售给他们，当然也就不会出现过去25年的那些成功作品。我手中的市场依然存在，每年都有新的玩家加入，而且我们通过数字化营销不断改善这个市场。”

游戏邦注：本文发稿于2012年1月18日，所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Trends of 2012: Handheld Gaming

Christian Donlan

2012 is going to be a fascinating year as far as handhelds are concerned. iOS continues to screw with the marketplace, for one thing, helping to democratise development while also redefining how much audiences expect to pay for a game. Meanwhile, the 3DS appears to have finally hit its stride – or has it? – and Sony’s getting in on the action with the almost implausibly lavish Vita. Is there still enough room for everybody?

If this article seems more preoccupied with a single issue than the rest of Eurogamer’s trends pieces, I suspect it’s because the handheld industry is similarly preoccupied. Weird as this would have sounded five years back, Nintendo and Sony feel like the underdogs in this brave new-ish world of Apps and freemium releases. That leads us to some interesting questions.

Is there still a place for the bespoke handheld console that allows developers to take a risk on big-budget projects that sell for £30? Will the increasing clutter of the App Store begin to deter teams from putting all their chips on iOS? Will Solipskier ever run properly on the ultra-cheap HTC Wildfire S that I really shouldn’t have bought when I lost my iPhone? Will Dale Cooper escape from the Black Lodge and sort things out with Heather Graham?

I haven’t got a clue, which is why I’ve spent the last few weeks firing off emails to some of the smartest people in handheld gaming and asking what they think. Here’s what I found out. (Spoiler: Coop isn’t going anywhere.)

The only constant is change

Heraclitus said that, shortly after his match-three variant Greek Balls of Fire failed to chart on the iPhone Top 50. Most of the people I’ve been speaking with seemed to agree with him: this is a seismic period for the industry. But is it exciting seismic, like a kegger party in an earthquake testing lab, or is it frightening seismic, like a 9.3 that leaves you trapped and bleeding under a heavy refrigerator while your Alsatian decides that you’re already dead and begins eating your feet?

“It is more than exciting,” says Giordano Contestabile, PopCap’s franchise business director for Bejeweled, when I ask him about the proliferation of handhelds. “It’s reshaping the whole industry, and making it much bigger! If we assume that ‘handhelds’ include any portable gaming device, including smartphones and tablets, we are now looking at an addressable audience of more than 500 million potential players, many of whom weren’t playing games before. Additionally, most of those devices are connected, opening the possibility of cross-platform, social and online gaming, therefore leading to an explosion of innovation and opportunities.”

He’s a fan, then. Matt Bozon, the creative director of WayForward Technologies, shares his enthusiasm, but also sounds a note of caution. “Handheld games on average are becoming much more expensive and time-consuming to create, requiring much higher resolution visuals and larger teams all around,” he tells me. “This could send a lot of smaller devs towards iOS, and force experienced console devs into unfamiliar handheld territory.”

Rhodri Broadbent, the founder of Dakko Dakko, which created the wonderful PSP Mini The 2D Adventures of Rotating Octopus Character and is now hard at work on a 2012 follow-up called Floating Cloud God Saves The Pilgrims, is more excited by the positive effects of all this competition. “My biggest hope is definitely that a healthy rivalry between Vita and 3DS excites the entire handheld industry,” he says. “I’d really like to see more developers who might have hitherto chosen to focus on ‘bigger’ experiences on home consoles try their hands at handheld game development. Now that portable gaming tech is significantly less restrictive (performance-wise) than ever before, I see huge potential for developers to play on the more personal, intimate experience of having the whole game system in your hands wherever you are. Handhelds have for a long time been viewed as for the kids to play on the back seat on long journeys, as ‘throwaway’, but I think that is to hugely undervalue what portability, accessibility and local wireless play with individual screens can bring to the gaming experience.”

Vita and 3DS

Let’s try and get a little more specific now. Nintendo and Sony both have new hardware in the marketplace. In both cases, they’ve opted to ignore Apple’s approach, focussing primarily on games and controlling the sales channels.

Despite a slightly wonky launch in Japan, Vita remains an unknown quantity. Anecdotally, everyone I’ve spoken to who has played around with one ends up very excited about it, but there are lingering questions over whether audiences are going to pay £40 for games when they have recently been led to believe that sort of thing should only cost 69p.

Paul Rustchynsky, game director for Motorstom RC, appreciates Vita’s clarity of purpose. “As a gamer it’s so exciting that PS Vita is first and foremost a contemporary gaming device,” he says, before singling out that second analogue stick for particular praise. “This is massively important due to that near-parity with the PS3. As you’ll see with MotorStorm RC, it gives us a virtually identical experience between the two platforms. It also allows developers to bring a wider range of game experiences to the handheld platform. Typically FPSs have been unwieldy on handhelds but with the PS Vita you’ll be able to play the sort of shooters you’d expect to play on your PS3.”

“Mobile gaming has changed hugely in the past few years, and it’s going to take a little time for this to settle down,” admits Stuart Tilley, the game director for WipEout 2048. “With the arrival of Vita, this is going to change that landscape again. Smartphones do some really cool stuff, but they’re often smaller-scope games designed to work with a touch-based control scheme. They perhaps aren’t as great at the types of games we all grew up playing with a DualShock controller. We think smartphone games will continue to thrive over the coming year, but with Vita offering larger-scope, high production value games like WipEout 2048 for games on the go, complimented with smaller-scope games from PlayStation Minis.”

Broadbent cites the machine’s embarrassment of input riches as a source of potential creativity. “I am massively enthused for Vita and am looking forward to making games for it very soon,” he tells me. “It opens up many possibilities not just on a technical level. The toybox of input opportunities means that there are new creative avenues to peer down. This new generation of portables reminds me of one of the single most enjoyable times of my career thus far; shortly after I joined Q-Games (just before the launch of the Nintendo DS) I was working with a designer there on a variety of new control schemes for the then-untitled StarFox DS game. So many new and different ideas came simply out of having a touch screen and stylus to play with. Implementing them, testing them all out, and seeing our producer’s face when he tried a new idea was massively exciting and rewarding work. I very much look forward to similar experimental periods on Vita. And the screen is so very pretty.”

While we’re in a positive mood, James Mielke, a producer at Q Entertainment – the studio’s currently readying Lumines: Electronic Symphony for release on Sony’s new handheld – thinks he may have spotted a star in Vita’s European launch line-up. “I have to say that Gravity Rush is brilliant,” he says. “It reminds me of a Moebius comic book come to life, and the gravity mechanic is wonderful. To me it’s the Super Mario 64 of the system. It really shows what the Vita can do. As for the rest of the year, I’m hoping we see more PS3-to-Vita type simultaneous releases that speak to each other. By that I mean I want to see games like Skyrim or Dark Souls, where I can play on my PS3, continue on my Vita, and then resume again on my PS3, with my progress saved in a cloud.”

With great processing power, though, comes great responsibility – and that counts for both Sony and Nintendo’s machines, apparently. Bozon: “Speaking to 3DS and Vita, the AAA games in the industry hopper appear to be console experiences reborn, shrunk down, or simplified onto handhelds. That’s cool, but hopefully they will still find a way to cater to a handheld gamer’s unique tastes. Handheld gaming is special, and it would be a shame to see a blurry line between a living room experience and one designed to be taken on-the-go. I don’t want to see handheld gaming viewed as the ‘lesser’ living room experience. For many years handheld gaming has been as unique and fun-loving as its audience. I’m hoping it doesn’t become bogged down, or too expensive to experiment and create imaginative and spontaneous kinds of games.”

Contestabile’s on the fence. “As a gamer, I’m excited about some of the titles announced for those platforms, in particular in ‘core’ genres that are particularly suited to controls optimized for gaming. From a business perspective, it will depend on how progressive platform holders will be, and how flexible in adapting to a rapidly changing landscape, in particular in terms of allowing players to connect with online and social platforms and to engage in cross-platform gaming. The higher barrier to entry in terms of developing and publishing games on those platforms, while guaranteeing a higher average quality bar, will eventually be a disadvantage when compared with the wealth of choice offered by smartphones.”

“Until recently, it was possible to see the handheld market bifurcating, with ‘core’ games finding a home in dedicated devices and ‘casual’ games dominating the screens of smartphones and tablets,” he continues. “However, the increasingly powerful hardware specs of mobile devices have made it possible to reach success on smartphones also with games that are aimed at an enthusiast audience. In that sense, mobile phones are further invading the traditional space of dedicated handheld gaming devices.”

“On the other side, we’re seeing an increasing number of younger gamers, historically a strong segment for handhelds, being lured by the appeal of portable devices such as iPod Touch. My view is that dedicated gaming handhelds are going to become more and more a niche platform, aimed at an enthusiast audience and at specific game genres.”

Burn. So is there still a big enough audience to support a platform the Vita? It’s a question Nintendo must also be asking of the 3DS.

“Obviously Nintendo has built a lot of momentum with the 3DS, so that will be interesting to watch,” says Mielke. “There are still a lot of challenges for Nintendo platforms, though. For example, tons of people bought the 3DS because of the price drop and Monster Hunter (in Japan), but can other non-Nintendo games succeed on the platform? It’s something we think about a lot.”

Smartphones

If Vita and 3DS seem like something of a gamble, it’s because of one thing: the rise of smartphones and tablets. “As of now, iOS is by far the fastest growing and most efficient handheld game distribution platform,” says Contestabile, “and it’s one of the best things that ever happened to the game business.” Get a room, dude. “That said, I think developers would benefit from having several strong platforms with a definite identity and a large addressable user base. As such, I hope that Android will mature and become less fragmented and that Windows Mobile will achieve a larger usage footprint. I also hope that Sony and Nintendo will make bolder steps into the new world of connected and social gaming, opening up their ecosystems further.”

Are there any dangers here, though? “Smartphones continue to grow and take over the market share once dominated by regular mobile phones, and of course the gaming market as well,” says Mielke. “As a result, being able to create more games, more cheaply, remains a compelling formula. The problem is that so many companies are swarming towards the social and mobile gaming markets that it has become that much harder to stand out in the field. We need to innovate and create new ways of gaming if we hope to compete with social gaming giants. I just hope that true innovation doesn’t get buried under the avalanche of Zynga and Evony clones flooding the market.”

“The App Store feels like a gold rush right now,” agrees Scribblenauts developer 5th Cell’s Jeremiah Slaczka. “I heard that there are close to 175 games released per day. And that is just games, not apps. Obviously, most of those are probably not very good and won’t be particularly successful. With that in mind, even if there is a mad rush to churn out games for mobile devices, there is still a lot of maturation needed, in terms of quality of the market.”

5th Cell is in an excellent position to compare smartphone and boxed handheld development. The team had a huge hit with Scribblenauts on iOS, but it initially developed the game for DS – a platform for which they could presumably afford to spend more money on production, because they could expect to sell the finished product for £30. Is the increasingly standard 69p price point of iOS putting a certain kind of game out of reach for most developers?

“I’m pretty sure Infinity Blade cost more to make than the original Scribblenauts did,” answers Slaczka. “There are different tiers of iOS titles; smaller companies can aim for smaller, niche markets, while the bigger developers must focus on the top tier if they want to make sustainable revenue. Developers should always approach the platform they are releasing on with a very specific strategy. Like everything in life, one size does not fit all.”

That may be the heart of it, actually: the handheld market in 2012 is going to be a fragmented one. That means audiences are going to need to know where to look to find the things they’re after, and developers are going to need to know how to target their games more effectively.

Perhaps, though, this fragmentation isn’t quite as new as it seems. I’m going to leave the last word to Broadbent, who spent much of the last decade living and working in Japan. “At the time of the DS boom, Japanese feature phones were already highly sophisticated communication devices, many able to pick up broadcast TV for free, and all of them the primary means of e-mail for their owner,” he says. “The competition for a user’s time was therefore just as strong then as it is now, and yet the DS became a social phenomenon against that backdrop. Similarly the PSP has seen huge sales in Japan over the past few years with Monster Hunter Portable becoming fiercely popular, again all alongside the dawn of the smartphone, but also alongside the already entrenched and still much more common feature phone.”

“If the content is compelling, I see no reason why players would now stop seeking out dedicated games hardware. And as with Brain Training or Monster Hunter, it only takes for the right software to come along, and the rising tide lifts all ships. I’m therefore very confident that the dedicated handheld will not only survive, but continue to thrive irrespective of the spread of smartphones/iOS devices and the much touted loss of ‘casual gamers’.”

“Perhaps there is a rebalancing going on, where the huge swell of users in the DS boom years shakes out and some don’t see the value in a dedicated platform any more – but frankly if they bought their system for Nintendogs, Brain Training or My Dolphin, I was never likely to be able to sell them The 2D Adventures of Rotating Octopus Character, nor were they likely to pick up many of the most successful portable games from the past 25 years. The market that I am addressing is still there, with new gamers every year, and our access to that market via digital distribution continues to improve.” (Source: Eurogamer)