Handheld Console vs Mobile Smartphone Gaming

(Nintendo 3DS Aqua Blue above)

(iPhone 6 concept above)

Nintendo has seen some nice success start to heat up with the 3DS over the last year and a half since the system launched over 2 years ago. Now with the 3DS becoming Nintendo's main money maker as the Wii U struggles to become relevant in a world of unknowns, there is an unforeseen challenger on the horizon.

In 2014, Apple is set to launch the iPhone 6 and as everyone knows, iPhones are the hottest selling portable device on the market with over 35 million iPhone 5's sold in just 6 months time since launch to April of this year. The iPhone is over $600 each but offers just about every feature available in electronic media, and the gaming is fast becoming one of the biggest features on the device. The question has always been, can mobile gaming offer a deep enough experience on a single touch screen to warrant dedicated gaming to it? The answer might be becoming a slow "yes" with numerous games on iPhone 5 that are far more than "flicking" experiences, here are a few:

(Infinity Blade 2)

(Mass Effect Infiltrator)

(The World Ends With You: Solo Remix)

(Final Fantasy Tatics: The War of the Lions)

(Asphalt 7: Heat)

(Dead Trigger)

The games shown above for the iPhone 5 and other IOS devices, are all intended to give the user a deeper more full gaming experience, something that has lacked in years past but has been increasing over the last year or so. How is someone supposed to truly get portable console gaming control with just the touch screen though? It seems that Third Parties and Apple have been working to release add-on's to the iPhone to make them fully gaming ready, like this one for example:

While it is easy to see that mobile gaming has come a long way over the last 5 years, it still has a few hurdles to overcome for it to completely overtake the gaming handheld market from Nintendo. I think a couple of the biggest obstacles are the legendary Nintendo name brand IP's, Nintendo's ability to surprise with innovation and the overall prices of the systems they release.

Due Nintendo's ability to make outstanding single pieces of innovative software that only play on portable devices that they provide, it's hard to think that Nintendo will suddenly be kicked out of the handheld console business. It sure is easy for investors to right the company off and just tell them to jump on the IOS bandwagon, but what they don't realize is that Nintendo is still making profit on the handhelds that they make and sell, not to mention the games they sell are making them a ton of money as well. For Nintendo to leave the handheld market would actually be a very poor business move. Those games shown above might be some of the best full game experiences on the iPhone, but there is something about Nintendo games that span across all barriers that only they can seem to provide countless times over:

Just because Smartphone gaming has just released a good dual stick style controls scheme for the iPhone doesn't mean that all current and future Nintendo software should jump over to that platform. Nintendo's hardware, including home console and handheld devices are always made with a choice of design of gameplay in mind first; and if Nintendo can't decide what type of interface a game they make uses, they have gone on to say countless times that it would destroy the creative powers at the company to be so limited by someone else's design philosophy. 

Here's wishing Nintendo the best in hopefully another 30 plus years of handheld gaming systems like these: