I think it’s more that the commodity smartphone technologies were used “laterally” to make a game console that can be played portability. Or, smartphones have been iterating on graphics chipsets since the 3DS was released, so it seems sensible to capitalize on them in a way that a smartphone wasn’t going to.
I think it worked really well for Nintendo too, as they’re very much still a toy company compared to Sony or Microsoft. The budgets for handheld games were likely going to be bigger compared to the DS and 3DS for the next decade, so it makes sense to start to look at them as the same as console game development.
I think it worked really well for Nintendo too, as they’re very much still a toy company compared to Sony or Microsoft. The budgets for handheld games were likely going to be bigger compared to the DS and 3DS for the next decade, so it makes sense to start to look at them as the same as console game development.