Can Anyone Stop Nintendo's Monopoly Of Handheld Consoles?

when you think of handheld gaming devices you almost immediately think of Nintendo they have dominated the market of mobile gaming long before apps on phones or iPods ever existed and still continue to do so they seemingly have a monopoly in this market with their home consoles now even featuring mobile experiences from the original Game Boy all the way up to the 3DS Nintendo has sold tens of millions of each of these devices with a few selling well over 100 million with so much success why hasn't there been much competition in this space are other companies just scared to try and enter a market that has been so heavily dominated for several decades well no not really there have been several similar gaming devices released over the years dating back to the late '70s none selling even close to as many units as Nintendo did until the mid 2000s although Nintendo didn't enter this Market until 1989 they completely took it over with their first release in the Game Boy selling over 118 million units when including the later Hardware revisions in the Game Boy Pocket and The Game Boy Color in 1996 and 1998 their closest competition up until then and over the next decade or so was The Game Gear developed by Sega Who Sold only 11 million units Sega followed this up in 1995 with their second and also last handheld gaming device in the Sega Nomad which only sold about a million units there have been a few other attempts by companies in this market during this time that sold a couple million units of their own devices but they couldn't even come close to sega's original device let alone Nintendos Nintendo followed the Game Boy with the Game Boy advaned in 2001 and although it didn't sell as much as their first device they still sold upwards of 81 million units only a couple years after its release they made a hardware revision and released the Game Boy advanced SP in 2003 which sold an addition 43 million units or so pushing sales to surpass the mark set by the original Game Boy Nintendo then released another new device just a year later in 2004 which was the Nintendo DS here is where they finally see a bit of competition in this market Sony released their first handheld gaming device the PlayStation Portable or PSP also in 2004 they appeared to knock it out of the park on their first try selling around 80 million units this thing seemed to do it all at the time of release it was compatible with PlayStation consoles it had the best handheld Graphics at the time it had a massive Library of games and it even had a music and video player it was also very easy to jailbreak which was a huge Pro for a lot of people they probably could have sold even more units with better timing on the release because by releasing the PSP around the same time as the DS they were competing with what is now the second highest selling gain console of all time right behind the PS2 even with the DS overd doubling the sales of the PSP we're finally seeing some competition in the Market at this time by seeing what works with each company's console we're sure to see a close of FS battle for the next release of Sony and Nintendo's handheld consoles right wrong while it was near impossible to top the Nintendo DS's numbers Nintendo released the 3DS in 2011 selling 75 million units half as much as the original DS losing half the amount of sales that means Sony took over the market share then right also wrong they released their PlayStation vaita and only sold a fifth of what the PSP did selling 16 million units a big factor for this is that Sony didn't have much support with the vaita as most of their focus was on the PlayStation 4 this saw Nintendo regains sole control of the handheld Market as Sony hasn't released another handheld conso since the V with Nintendo seeing how much they dominate in the portable landscape in 2017 they released their newest console the Nintendo switch as a hybrid console that has the ability to turn into a handheld device this is a bit of a gray area since it's a hybrid console but the portability very well may have contributed to its success is currently the third highest selling console of all time with over 141 million units sold so I do believe it is worth mentioning here but why can't anyone dethrown Nintendo from the handheld Market a large consensus is that they don't compete with Hardware they compete with IPS with their exclusive content Nintendo holds a lot of power with their titles including Mario Zelda Pokemon and Super Smash Bros most of these titles have been popular since the time of the original game boy so there weren't many other options to play these games other than Nintendo consoles however with today's emulation capabilities I am curious if a new purely handheld device would be as successful as they have been just a decade ago but that brings me to the new players in the market the steam deck and the Asus Rog Ally there are currently no upto-date sales numbers for both of these the information that is out there however is that the steam deck has sold around 3 million units as of 2023 meanwhile the rogg Ali came out in 2023 with the only sales numbers I found being that they sold around half a million units in their first 2 months these are both essentially portable PCS with the capabilities to play almost any PC game with at least 30 FPS these are respectable numbers for the handheld Market especially considering the high price point that both consoles have and a short amount of time that they have been available both also reportedly have the successor coming out as kind of a hardware upgrade so each of their sales must be a lot higher than what we currently know about them their price point isn't even that favorable either ranging from $400 to $650 for the steam deck and $700 for your rogi there are many out there that are also considering using these devices to replace their desktop PCS so I think that this could really challenge Nintendo in the handheld Market as this trend catches on after all it is a hell of a lot cheaper to buy one of these rather than investing in a new gaming PC there are also reports out there that Sony and Microsoft both may be working on handog consoles of their own but there's no real confirmation for either side another thing to look at is mobile gaming on phones and TBL as well although these aren't considered gaming consoles more people on average all over the world appear to be playing games on mobile devices rather than PC or consoles they also CER approximately 51% of all Gaming revenue today I not sure whether these statistics are strictly for phones and tablets or all mobile gaming devices like the ones we talked about but based on this article it appears that these numbers are just from phones and tablets alone since Apple's App Store came out in 2008 and introduced a variety of apps that could be readily installed and played there have been heavy advancements in what could be played on a mobile device this growing competition also makes it harder for newcomers to enter the market which may be why companies have been staying away from it for so long the handheld gaming Market appears to be heating up and Nintendo may be facing some of the toughest competition they've had in a very long time do you think portable PCS will start to take over do you believe in what Sony or Microsoft May soon produce or do you think Nintendo will remain comfortably on top of this Market it's certainly an exciting competition to watch but only time will tell who will take the throne let me know what you think in the comments and please help me out by liking and subscribing thank you for watching and until next time I'm out

Channel: Bourquechop

Views: 876

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Id: qvTb0XpMOoA

Length: 5min 59sec (359 seconds)

Published: Wed May 29 2024