Touch has been proven to not work for any "real" game. That is why gamepads were invented.
The problem, when we are talking about handhelds, is one problem alone:
Smartphones.
No casual gamer wants to pay to buy a dedicated gaming handheld, when your smartphone does gaming, calls, media, work, and so much more. The absolute and final proof to this, was the massive reception Pokemon Go had. Because now, Nintendo has both markets: The true gamers, and the casuals who never bothered to "waste" money on a console, but still like and remember Pokemon.
A handheld gaming system such as the Vita or the 3DS, is optional and limited in its functions. Very limited. On the other hand, a smartphone is not only something you need, but it also runs circles around the 3DS and Vita in regards to functionality.
Hence why Nintendo will probably adopt the Android system.
At the end of the day, both Nintendo and Sony have to adopt iOS / Android and make games for those OS's. Making specific gaming systems has long lost it's "profitableness", simply because no one wants to carry around a Nintendo 3DS when they can have Pokemon Moon/Sun and Zelda on their phone.
Nintendo and Sony will try to fight this with every ounce of strength they have. But in the end, they both will become Software publishers, rather than hardware makers. Mark my words.
Portable gaming consoles were beaten the second they invented smartphones and tablets.
There is one final reason people do not usually point out, as to why handhelds are a losing battle, that to me is very obvious:
Whether we like it or not, someone playing a Nintendo 3DS on the street, will be seen as a nerd/child-like person by the masses. This is a problem that remains in many countries, mine included.
Playing on a SMARTPHONE, isn't. Everyone plays on their smartphones.
True words, honest facts!
At the end of the day people just want simplicity, and it logically makes sense to combine the 2 together, we have the hardware power and software knowledge. The funny thing is that this doesn't just apply to smartphones/handhelds, it also applies to gaming consoles and PCs. When you step back and look at the facts, such as how games are developed and tested on PCs, it really hits you. I mean why buy a gaming console which would usually have a dumbed down version of the game (whether it's graphics or computing power) when you can play the game the way it was originally developed, on a PC? I used to play everything on console, then one day my friend showed a comparison picture of the graphical difference for Skyrim PS3vsPC, and i was dumbfounded and if that wasn't enough he later showed me the MODS for the game, my jaw dropped. I ended up building my PC the next month, it wasn't hard, nor was it expensive, it was a mediocre build at best but still looked better than the PS3. I later saved up for a good graphics card and by the time the PS4 was out, i was like on PS6 in terms of raw power. Take a look at the Xbox S (Scorpio project), they mentioned it having 6 teraflops of processing power, my 4 year old graphics card has 5, so put that in perspective.
When you sit and really think about it, the big companies like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo make their profit from selling consumers old hardware so you can play their "exclusives" on them. But if we as consumers stopped feeding them our money, those 3 companies would step out of the hardware scene real quick and switch over to the software aspect of the gaming industry. I also cannot believe that they're making people pay monthly/trimonthly JUST TO PLAY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE...and people are falling for it, l
l. Not to mention that "cross-platform" wouldn't need to be a thing, or the fact that our money would actually REACH the developers since there isn't a middle man, which would mean more games from the developers.....but hey what do I know, let's continue to feed the giants.
Money maker for... Who?
Just because your coworker has a microtraction addiction problem doesn't mean that most people do. In fact, free-to-play games get 90% of their profit from "whales" like your coworker who spend obscene amounts of money for something of little value. Most gamers will spend little to no money in a free game. And the game becomes unpopular really fast. Remember Candy Crush? Nobody's playing that shit anymore. The two biggest free-to-play companies (King and someone else) are not doing so hot themselves.
Manufacturers are fighting tooth and nail against each other, with Samsung being the only one that is making any notable profit.
Game developers only make profit on free-to-play games, and even then they are fighting to keep people interested in their games. Games that cost more than even $5 are pretty much dead.
So despite Nintendo not making any profit on hardware nor making any profit on games, Android is a "money maker." riiight.
And that's aside from the fact that the result would be a monstrosity which will be complete garbage after two years. It will have obsolete hardware in one year, online gaming would be a hacking nightmare in six months, and Nintendo will lose control of the platform in one month. How's the Oyua doing? Attaching a name brand to it would not solve it's problems.
Back to the smartphone gaming.
For those who are doubting iOS/Android as money makers for games, here's
a poll of a F2P game called Kingdom Hearts Unchained that I've been playing recently on my phone. The poll shows how much money people have dumped into the game, i took the
low average sum and came out with $69k, FROM ONLY the 680 people that voted. This doesn't include the people in the other parts of the world, nor the 1 million people that downloaded this game. The game's objective is super simple with "luck" as a big factor of the game, and graphics consists of a CG crappy drawn backgrounds with 2D figures that have minor/simple animations, oh and there's also a "story". If you take the $69 and divide it by the people that voted (680), you get $101.5, so it's like 680 people paid $101.50 for their copy of the game.....So please check your facts before stating that Android/iOS is not a money maker for games. Does the game make it's money from shitty 'micro-transactions' that most of us hate, YES 100%, am I suggesting/condoning that our future gaming should be mobile with micro-transactions on games like as LoZ or Super Mario, HELL NO, I would puke. But when you look at KHUx there's no way to hack it and play for free, everything is saved on their servers. So maybe we can take that idea and have Nintendo servers check our legitimacy of our copy of the game, and if we check out fine, we'd be able to save our games (like on our Mii or something).