My main argument against this logic is that games have a certain nature ascribed to them, such as portability or social elements, that can be lost between changing outright the target system from a handheld to a console. For example, the strengths of the MH series are in part co-operative play on the fly through internet (which a console CAN do) and on the fly co-operative play with friends in person, in the moment (which you really can't do with a console). (Much the same reason we don't see CoDs on a handheld, because those games and the like are built on spectacle and spectacle demands hardware. They are a console brand.)
Players/gamers/people also have largely disparate preferences between consoles and handhelds as, while they serve the ends of playing games, one is a huge black brick and the other is a smaller, more mobile brick.
So you're not only moving your audience across branding (and, in theory, risking losing based on brand specific offerings), you're also forcing your audience across possible preference of the physical form and mobility (or lack thereof). Given the rise of mobile, moblity seems to be much more sought after by the gaming public.
Sure, but I'm talking about moving Vita/PS3 games to NX/PS4, which is a pretty straightforward fit to the previous platforms unless the NX doesn't have any handheld version.
You're moving the "PlayStation Audience" on Vita to NX, but like, where else do they go in this scenario?
I guess they could technically be entering the workforce, and given work culture in Japan, end up no longer using traditional game platforms at all, but that's just a continuation of the same dedicated device user evaporation we've been seeing for ages.
Again, I'm open to the argument that we just see a whole ton of people disappear from dedicated devices when we go from like 3-5+ dedicated platforms to two, and thus the franchises disappear as well.
Are 3DS/Wii U/NX not seen as viable in Japan? Normally suggesting the Wii U is a viable alternative would be preposterous, but the Wii U has still sold 150% as much as the PS4 there.
3DS is aging, but still alive and still selling better than PS4. NX isn't out yet, but I suspect it's close enough that beginning development right now is not unreasonable if you want to heavily invest in the platform. I'm assuming Nintendo isn't hitting some particular demographic that these third parties want: which demographic is that?
It's not that Square Enix can't make games for these platforms so much as the type of games they make are historically production value driven as one of their major selling points. It's also harder to sell overseas for the volume they'd want on handhelds.
Like this is less of a problem for Nier 2 or Star Ocean V, but to sell in the West, mainline Final Fantasy needs to be a huge production value console game that can't easily be ported to a handheld, whereas if there are no PS4s in Japan, it's going to do really poorly domestically. As such, they shove a bunch of other games on the platform hoping to prop it up and enable the big titles.
