Five or six years ago, I remember reading proclamations from various gaming sites about how the battle for our pockets had just begun. The Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP were due for release, and many pundits correctly predicted that handheld gaming would evolve beyond the limited realm of children and younger teens and expand to the adult population. At the time, as someone on the brink of adulthood and a big fan of handhelds, I was delighted to see that both Nintendo and Sony were stepping up with deeper content.

At first, my mornings were spent deciding whether I wanted to take my DS or my PSP to play on the school bus, but eventually I started drifting more towards the DS. Games like Another Code, Hotel Dusk, Mario Kart, and Pokémon proved too large or too compelling when compared with the PSP’s earlier offerings like GTA: Liberty City Stories. It appeared that Nintendo was yet again the winner for people’s pockets.

What nobody predicted would have an impact on the handheld console war was the rise of the smartphone.

After picking up an iPhone 3G, my DS and PSP were relegated to home use. I barely played them on the go simply because I couldn’t carry them. Of course, I could’ve worn my ridiculous-looking cargo pants with hundreds of pockets. In the winter I could’ve let my hands go cold so that my PSP could go in my coat’s glove pocket. Ultimately, though, carrying the two around became a pain in the arse. By the end of 2008, neither system travelled with me, and both gathered dust save for the occassional high profile release.

All that changed once the concept of the “man bag” became socially acceptable. While women have enjoyed the convenience of carrying a bag of stuff around for as long as anyone can remember (and, as such, could carry their handheld safely), for many men the concept of a bag was pointless and too effeminate. This changed after we started getting more portable gadgets than pockets. And while I don’t like to play into the gender stereotype of men always wanting the newest gadgets to play with, it’s hard to deny the correlation.

Is this thing really meant to go in our pocket?

As portable tech adoption has grown and Apple’s iDevices have made owning technology fashionable, the amount of stuff the average person wants to carry has made small-to-medium-sized bags relatively genderless. When I commute, my small messenger bag typically contains my iPad, either my DSi or PSP Go, and sometimes my lunch. In my pockets, I generally carry my wallet, keys, and iPhone.

The big three’s reactions to this paradigm shift were all completely different. Microsoft has tried to eat into the smartphone pie with Windows Phone 7, while Sony tried (and failed) to reclaim the pocket space with the PSP Go. The release of the DSi XL shows that Nintendo caught on earlier. They realized that size isn’t as important as it once was and enjoyed the rewards of yet another successful DS iteration.

With the next generation of handhelds, keeping the device in your pocket isn’t key to victory. Downsizing the system until it’s the size of a GameBoy Micro does no one any favors. People want large, sharp screens and don’t care too much about the size. The NGP’s bulky frame and protruding analog sticks isn’t pocket friendly, but it does slip rather nicely into a bag. Similarly, I expect the second generation 3DS to not be a Lite version. An XL one which increases the size of the device’s 3D screen is surely more appealing than shrinking it.

If you're waiting for the 3DS Lite, I think you'll be disappointed...

Functions such as “Spot Pass” and “Street Pass” on the 3DS, and “Near” and “LiveArea” on the NGP will be promoted as features to use when the device is sleeping in your bag. The fact that both devices will use a physical storage medium instead of going solely digital suggests that neither Sony or Nintendo are hugely concerned about us being unable to carry a few games.

I disagree with the people who say that Nintendo and Sony have “got it wrong”, and that smartphones will gobble up all of their sales. The battle for our pockets has already shifted from gaming to mobile OS, where neither the 3DS or NGP will compete. The next battle for handheld gaming is deciding what sits next to, or replaces, your tablet.

You can get in touch with Chris on Twitter, or browse his criminally underused personal site, Been There, Played That!