Gamers ditching handheld consoles for smartphones!

The Gadget Show  Monday 21 November 2011

Handheld consoles, such as the Nintendo 3DS and Sony PSP, are fantastic gaming devices offering some of the best portable entertainment around. However, even these seem to have been unable to stop the onward march of smartphones, like the Apple iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy SII, especially when it comes to gaming!

According to a new report, ‘casual’ gamers are abandoning handhelds in favour of downloading and playing games on their smartphone instead. The survey found that, of those polled, 26 percent of gamers that considered themselves ‘casual’ gamers played on a Nintendo or Sony handheld. Meanwhile 52 percent played games on their smartphone instead. Just 37 percent said they use dedicated handhelds.

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Analysts Cowen and Company, the company behind the survey believe that over the last five years, the casual gaming audience for handhelds has declined by 29 percent, with the biggest part of that drop happening in just the last two years.

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 Smartphone games on Apple iOS and Android smartphones have become increasingly popular. Just recently, game developer Rovio announced that smartphone hit, Angry Birds topped sales of half a billion. Over 266 billion Angry Birds levels have been played for a total of 200,000 years.

Nintendo has in the past argued that the smartphone scene is not affecting Nintendo’s plans, however, after focussing on ‘core’ gaming, Nintendo is expected to announce more casual games – a major success story for the original DS, in the near future.

What do you think, have you found yourself playing more games on your smartphone, leaving your handheld console to gather dust, or can nothing beat the feel of a great game on a handheld? Let us know what you think in the Comments below.