Quote Originally Posted by Griking View Post
I've been saying for a few years now that Nintendo is in trouble. not that many people want to carry both a portable gaming system AND a cell phone with them. Especially when one of them can do both. Now, if Nintendo were smart they would design a Nintendo smart phone of their own that's essentially a DS in a phone. (Actually, if they were smart they would have done this a few years ago now.) And I don't mean a hand held that can make calls, I mean an actually smart phone that can play DS games.
My daughter's the 3DS owner in my household. She's seven. There's a snowball's chance in Hades I'd hand over a cell phone for her to use in lieu of a handheld gaming device. She doesn't need a phone. I don't want her to have a phone at this age. She has an iPod Touch, which can do all of the things pretty much that an iPhone can do, without a 2 year contract and data plan.

Plus, as an adult, I'd rather have a separate device for gaming. If my cell phone rings, I don't want my game auto-pausing so I have to stop and answer a call. If Nintendo makes a device that doubles as a cell phone, they'll have to market it primarily toward adults, and I'm sure it would be stuck into some contract with a cell provider everyone would loathe (or at least that some budget-conscious people like myself would loathe).

Don't get me wrong, I play my daughter's 3DS. But I don't have or want a smartphone right now because I can't justify $50+ a month for the calling and required data plan. Plus look at the n-gage picture above. That thing is an abomination. It doesn't do either function well. Where would you stick all the buttons that are on a 3DS on a smartphone and have it still be comfortable to use as a phone too? If you make all the game controls rely on the touchscreen then you're going to end up severely limit game options because not all types of games are conducive to that control setup.

I do not want my gaming world and non-gaming device world to merge - not to that degree. I don't think it's inevitable. Sure, some consoles have some overlap with PC functions or other home entertainment functions, but in the end, my 360 is designed to play 360 games.

And to the person who asked about digital vs. physical media, I know my choice, 9 out of 10 times I'm going to buy a physical copy of a game. I've only had a few exceptions, and those were because I didn't want to stand in line at midnight launches for World of Warcraft expansions but I wanted to be able to play with my friends immediately when the servers went live. In the end, I decided I trusted Blizzard enough to pay for a digital copy. I still don't trust a lot of other companies to handle digital products well. I don't want to risk losing my entire collection of games that way. I refuse to buy a game for a console or handheld that's digital-only. If you can't be bothered to put it out on physical media, it's not worth ponying up for (for me).

A lot of people are also stuck with broadband connections that have monthly data caps, or worse, live on college campuses where they're prohibited from connecting any device but a computer to the network (my former school has a very strict policy about this, they do not allow game consoles to be connected at all, not even through a router). Ultimately, the first console or handheld that makes a switch to all digital will be the first console or handheld I don't even consider purchasing. I'm already sick of the PP (perpetual purchase) model. I'd rather dig out my SNES and play one of my old games rather than buy it again from Nintendo's eShop.