Nintendo loses a bunch of money, announces big 3DS price cut coming soon

[Weltall]

I am not an Apple devotee, but I do believe that smartphones will eventually marginalize handheld gaming devices, if not necessarily eliminate them entirely. Casual gamers are the bulk of users for almost any successful games device, and smartphones are changing people's expectations as far as casual games are concerned, and one of those expectations is that $40 for a handheld game is pretty goddamn ridiculous. And, the thing is, they're right in a lot of cases. There definitely are games that justify a $40 price tag, or even $20... but, not very many, not enough for most people to spend $250 on a device that only plays games when their phone--something most people own anyway out of necessity--satisfies their gaming needs.

I expect that as mobile phone technology gets better, handheld gaming will become largely a feature on those phones rather than a standalone market. That standalone market will persist--Nintendo will resist this for years, knowing them--but Sony is already ditching physical media for the Vita and PSP, and they already have a significant stake in the mobile phone market (Sony Ericsson). It would not surprise me in the least to see either a future version of the Vita, or at least, its successor, to be a smartphone. The Xperia Play is no doubt a prototype of their vision in this regard.