Who would have thought, 22 years after the Game Boy’s (first) release, that the handheld market would be the most controversial front of the gaming war? The insurgency of Apple, the stalling of the Nintendo war machine, and the strategy of Sony’s looming Tet Offensive are all in a current state of flux – as are the opinions of the peanut gallery. 

Marc N. Kleinhenz, gaming ronin:

The 3DS, despite (more than) its fair share of hiccups, is $80 cheaper than the PS Vita and will have been out for almost a year before Sony's new handheld launches – which is not to mention the very ambivalent track record of the PSP.

So... what's the prognosis? What chances does the Vita have of matching – or surpassing – the PSP's level of success?

Sir Gordon Wheelmeier, TotalPlayStation guru:

The problem for me is that the Vita is being sold on the basis that it is the most cutting-edge portable gaming rig available today. Or, more importantly, when it comes out.

The problem, though, is that the iPad 2 already features the same GPU that the Vita does, albeit using two cores rather than four. But now that we all know the Vita won't launch until early 2012, we'll have already seen the iPhone 5 and, probably, the iPad 3, both of which will at least meet or – as is likely in the case of the iPad 3 – exceed what's in the Vita. You know that Epic will be right there with a new UE Mobile demo (maybe as an update to Infinity Blade), and then the Vita will have already been beaten before it even hits shelves.

And that could very well be on a device that costs $50 less (under contract) than the Vita, running an app that could cost as little as 99 cents (or even nothing).

Marc N. Kleinhenz, gaming ronin:

So... what you're saying is, between the 3DS and the Vita, traditional portable gaming is dead?

Sir Gordon Wheelmeier, TotalPlayStation guru:

No. What I'm saying is that a system that was designed to be, and will be sold on the basis of being, the most powerful portable available for purchase is going to already be outdated by the time it hits the market.

Derrick Bitner, GameXplain editor:

Traditional portable gaming is far from dead. If it were, the DS's sales would've plummeted long before the 3DS was released. There's little doubt in my mind that the reason that Nintendo's handheld is in such dire straits is because it has no games. Apple devices may have played a small part, but that's just not enough to explain such a lack of interest from gamers. The reason was clear enough when I visited GameStop today. After a quick perusal of the 3DS titles, I immediately realized that none of them appealed to me in the slightest. Sure, you have a remake of Ocarina of Time, but I'm not going to buy a brand-new handheld just to get an updated version of a ten-year-old game.

Of course, I'm not saying that the 3DS will never have games. I'm quite excited about Kid Icarus: Uprising, Super Mario 3D Land, and Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance. But it all comes back to the same problem that Nintendo has had time and time again: they release a brand-new system and early adopters have to wait months for new game content. It happened with the Nintendo 64, it happened with GameCube, it happened to the Wii, and it's happening to the 3DS.

As for the Vita, I think Sony has learned some lessons, not only from the PSP, but also from their experience launching the PS3. $250 is still not a bad price for the handheld even after the 3DS price drop. Gamers aren't going to forget the original price of the 3DS, and Sony knows that after the debacle they went through with the PS3's $600 launch. There's also the small fact that there's a lot of great games, both big and small, in development for the Vita. Whether they'll hit the launch window or not, I can't say, but Sony seems focused on having games of all genres ready when it does release. And if the rumors are true that Sony is giving indie developers free Vita development kits, then that's all the more proof that Sony means to avoid this problem.

Personally, I think they will. Already I find myself interested in Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Sound Shapes, Little Deviants, Gravity, Super Stardust Delta, and Ruin. Add to that all the digital PSP games that you can buy that you may have missed out on, and you have plenty to keep yourself occupied.

I may not buy the Vita right away, but I'm sure I'll get it before the 3DS.

Ryan Perez, Bitmob/Destructoid intern/writer:

First off, many people seem to look past the fact that Nintendo likely only dropped the 3DS price because of the Vita's announced price. Very rarely does Nintendo ever sell hardware at a loss of profit, but they realized the pickle they'd be in (on top of the one they're in now) with Sony selling a handheld with superior hardware for the same price.

In terms of the iPad being some sort of a deterrent for people getting a PSV, I highly doubt it. Gaming has been, and always will be, a secondary feature for Apple products; therefore, the games on them are relatively low-end – both cheap to make and cheap to buy. Most people don't buy iPads to play games on them... especially seasoned gamers who desire a little more quality out of their games.

With that said, the PSV market will probably consist of people who expect high-end performance with regards to their games. Sony is marketing the Vita as a beefy handheld with a lot of popular, big-budget franchises that can't be found anywhere else. Hardware means shit if you don't have good software to back it up, and Sony seems to recognize this more than anyone (especially Nintendo).

Honestly, I don't like handhelds because I feel they merely try to mimic the experience of a console... but I was pretty tempted by the Vita. An exclusive BioShock title and an original Uncharted game? Fuckin' sign me up.

Sir Gordon Wheelmeier, TotalPlayStation guru:

I'm not saying that people won't buy the Vita and will instead game on an iOS device – I'm saying that the Vita's trump card of ultimate power won't be valid anymore, and then that $250 will start to look pretty expensive...

As much as I love all of the 99-cent games at my disposal, my iPhone will never deliver on action titles the same way that a proper portable will simply because it lacks buttons. But at the end of the day, whatever wow factor Sony planned to bank on by way of the Vita's cutting-edge graphics will be old hat by the time it's out.

Ryan Perez, Bitmob/Destructoid intern/writer:

That's only if gamers care about the technical specs of iOS devices to begin with – which they don't. I've heard plenty of discussion on the Vita, and you're the first person to compare its power to Apple products. Whenever people contrast the Nintendo/Sony handheld market to the mobile market, they do so with a focus on pricing, not power.

Nonetheless, whether or not the iPad 9 will be more powerful by the time the Vita is released is irrelevant to the success of the system; it will still be the most powerful game-dedicated handheld on the market, and Sony will undoubtedly push that fact in its marketing.

Sir Gordon Wheelmeier, TotalPlayStation guru:

We'll see.

By the way, I never said that consumers would be comparing specs – I brought that up because it's essentially apples to apples (pardon the pun) in this case. Consumers are just going to care how closely the visuals compare to their PS3/360, and, despite Sony's insistence that they're basically identical, that's actually very far from the truth. Bend is doing a lot of tricks with Uncharted that lesser developers will have a hard time matching – mark my words.

Marc N. Kleinhenz, gaming ronin:

Consider them marked by Marc, sir.

Shaun Mason, TotalPlayStation mascot:

Even with the strength of Apple's iPad and iPhone, which has started to significantly bite their way into the portable market, let's bring things back to the Sony arena for a second. The PSP by itself was a captivating piece of hardware that was shackled by one of Sony's perpetual flaws, which is the need to develop and push a media format that it will frequently abandon support for, leaving many consumers to hold a worthless library of items. You just need to look at the MiniDisc and the UMD, not to mention previous issues, to back that up.

However, the line was slightly tarnished because when the company decided to push a fully digital solution in the PSP Go, it tried to charge a premium without giving users a chance to transfer any digital copies of their games or have some kind of digital crossover with their PS3s. That combination was highly flawed and definitely not necessary for most consumers, especially when a PSP 2000 or 3000 was available with a large number of UMDs still being created and sold in stores.

The decision to make Vita a fully digital device from the start eliminates that confusion – we know that these titles will be downloadable, and that you won't be able to get the same kind of experience on the Vita that you would from an older PSP. Transferring levels seamlessly in ModNation Racers? Constantly updated progress by data in the cloud between the Vita and a PS3 console for Ruin? Multiple thumbsticks, touchscreen functionality, and inclusion of gyroscopes? Features like this make the Vita stand out much more than the original PSP (which also retailed for $250 at its launch many years ago).

The biggest strength for this portable system will be the fact that it will launch with games. Let's face it – the 3DS launch lineup sucked. Out of the few games that were available when that system first hit shelves, you probably could only point to one or maybe two games that you would want – the rest were portable gimmicks and features that hadn't even fully been fleshed out by Nintendo when it was released, like the downloadable store or the video channel. Further hurting it was the lack of significant games for weeks after that. Who wants to spend $250 on a system and wait half a year or more till the holidays to get premium games that highlight the investment? The delay of the Vita means that more Sony studios and third-party devs will be able to put out solid games at launch that will help push those systems into the hands of consumers and use the tech in creative ways.

Now, if they screw it up by simply tossing dump-truck loads of Minis into the store instead of downloadable PSX or PS2 games, or keep touting the strength of AT&T for the 3G version (epic fail on their part, by the way), then we should all grab pitchforks and storm the barricades.

(P.S. I still think Vita is a stupid name for the system – I get what it means, but it just sounds dumb.)

Andre Segers, GameXplain editor-in-chief:

The colloquial definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And that's exactly where Sony finds itself again, offering a "superior" product at a vastly more expensive price (incidentally, the same price as the original PSP, as previously mentioned). The only main difference this time is not only are they battling Nintendo, but Apple, too, which I think all but guarantees the Vita will see even less success than that of the PSP.

With that said, Gordon does bring up an interesting point that the Vita will undoubtedly be eclipsed by phones and tablets when it comes to technical specs, if not by launch, then surely soon after. However, I don't think this will have any significant impact on Vita at all, seeing as the price points of iOS games prevents the budgets from ballooning to Vita-like levels. Hell, people are freaking out about Final Fantasy Tactics on iOS, which costs only $15 – a price that would be a bargain on any other system. Unless things change drastically in the iOS ecosystem in the next few years, losing the graphical fidelity war is the least of the Vita's worries.

Plus, as history as demonstrated time and time again (even now with iOS), portable gamers aren't particularly discerning when it comes to visuals.

Shaun Mason, TotalPlayStation mascot:

Interesting points, but there are only a few discrepancies with simply tying parts of the Vita success to price points. For instance, to take your Tactics example, people are freaking out about FFT on iOS not simply because it’s $15, but because it’s $15 and it looks like crap, which clearly doesn't take advantage of the screens of any iOS device. That's actually more expensive than the downloadable PSN version without new content, and it’s the fourth release of essentially the same game – that comes across as a money grab by Squeenix, not a great favor to iOS owners.

That brings up a further point, which is that, assuming that the Vita loses on the technical specs, the strength of the handheld will lie more within the PSN and the persistent nature of the gaming environment. I don't have a game that I play on my phone, transfer stats and progress to my iPad, then project gameplay onto a TV with an Airport Extreme. That persistent state has been hyped as a typical feature for many Vita games, PSN-enabled phones (which are a whole other kind of roundtable altogether), and the PS3/eventual PS4 sometime down the road. Besides, look at the number of optimized games for the iPad 2, versus the number of launch titles and released games for the Vita. I think games will be fine in a visual sense because they will at least be completely optimized for the handheld.

However, let me mention one other thing that we haven't touched upon yet, which is that no one knows how expensive these games will be. In that respect, Apple does have an advantage with their usually limited pricing scheme. If there was a way to ensure that your progress was seamless across every game (so you could easily test for a license or finish races in career mode on-the-go with a portable version of Gran Turismo and transfer that to your system), I don't know if Sony could get away with charging full price for this kind of digital experience without some backlash. Now, if you paid a bit extra for a PS3 game disc, and that extra included a code to download the game or persistent segment to the Vita, that might work.

Ryan Perez, Bitmob/Destructoid intern/writer:

Vastly more expensive? The Vita is only $80 more than the 3DS at this point. Not only is Sony's handheld launching at the same price as Nintendo's was originally, it also does feature "superior" hardware (as you facetiously quoted, implying it was hyperbole). Nintendo dropped the 3DS price because they realized not only that the "sell" of the handheld wasn't enough to justify its price (N64-quality visuals in 3D – neat-o), but also that it would look like a paperweight when compared to the Vita... which it would have been at $250 each.

Andre Segers, GameXplain editor-in-chief:

Yes, it's only $80 more – nearly a third more than the cost of the 3DS, which is only $20 less than the gap between the original DS and the PSP, and we all know how that turned out. I stand by my comment of it being a "vast" difference, as the shockwaves caused by the 3DS's sudden and drastic price cut of the same amount demonstrates. To put things into perspective, that's only slightly less than the cost of the Wii at launch relative to the primary 360 SKU, and of course the Wii was widely recognized as being the least expensive option by far. Though the numbers themselves were higher (a $150 comparative savings), so was the medium, and $80 is a significant difference in the handheld market.

And I apologize if I was unclear, but you misinterpreted my "superior" comment. I placed it in quotes because that's how Sony wants it to be seen – it is undoubtedly more powerful than the 3DS from a technological perspective, and no hyperbole was implied in that context. But as a general gaming platform? That has yet to be determined. And if history has proven anything, it's that technological superiority matters little in the sales race for first.

Also, if you want to talk hyperbole, I suggest you replay the N64, as the 3DS is well beyond anything that system was capable of (again, not like that particularly matters).

You be the judge.

Parjanya Holtz, TotalPlayStation senior editor:

Nothing the 3DS is offering, or is planning to offer down the line, has me interested in the system even the slightest. Contrary to what Sony is doing with the Vita, which is a whole lot, the 3DS is hardly a revolutionary step up from the DS. Sure, the 3D is kind of cool, and the graphical improvements are nice, but what else is there that should get me excited? As has been said many times in this discussion, it's certainly not the games on offer.

The two things the Vita has going for it are its already impressive-looking software lineup that goes hand-in-hand with the indie trump card, and the potentially brilliant PS3/PS4 connectivity. If Sony turns out to actually be willing to support this feature in a proportion that matches the hype it generated, then we may very well see console gaming moving in quite the exciting new direction – one that an additional $80 will certainly be worth.

Marc N. Kleinhenz, gaming ronin:

Hey – I thought Pac Man Versus was quite the excellent experience, but I don’t think it represented “quite the exciting new direction.”

We shall see...

Previous roundtables:

3DS Woes? Cutting prices – and pride.

All-star Wii 2 Discussion Wii who? Wii U!

Nintendo in the Third Dimension… and Beyond! Our first (official) week with the 3DS, headaches and all.

The Day the Music Died Rock-n-roll legends never die – they just fade away. Or something like that.

3DS Announcement Edition The gang's all here – in threeeee deeeeeees!

Xbox Li$e GameXplain, TotalPlayStation, and IGN join forces to take on the high cost of (online) gaming.

BioShock: Infinite To walk among the giants in the clouds…

Marc N. Kleinhenz has covered the gaming industry for a dozen publications, including Gamasutra and TotalPlayStation, where he was features editor. He also co-hosts the Airship Travelogues podcast for Nintendojo.