What's up with the Handheld market?

[thatmariolover]

Sony has redesigned their handheld with the PSP Go. Nintendo is redesigning theirs for the second time with the DSi XL. And while they're wasting time doing the same stuff over again, there's something brewing that could completely change the game. All it will take is a few simple ingredients and Nintendo will find themselves being toppled from the handheld market - competing with Sony for table scraps from those willing to innovate.

More and more phones are going to have smartphone abilities. Even the midrange phones will be able to compete with the DS or PSP within a year. Once better controls are put into place more developers will be able to port their titles to smartphones.

And they WILL.

You can't compete with what Apple has done with the App store without mimicking it. The biggest trouble for Nintendo and Sony in the fight vs Smartphones is the pricing scheme that Apple has brought to the game. The over-the-air low price scheme is garnering a ton of profit for very creative development. Primarily because developers get such a generous cut of the sales (70%) with no need to go through a publisher.

And yet, both Sony and Nintendo, the leaders int he handheld gaming market, are remarkably slow to adapt. I'm seriously starting to think it's because both companies are run with an iron fist by a bunch of aging Japanese businessmen with no grasp of their own market.

Maybe it's just me though.