Handhelds aren't dead. But they should be killed anyway.

Is Xbox Surface the dawn of a brave new era for handheld gaming - game-centric tablets?

Dedicated handhelds are dead. Vita was practically stillborn and 3DS is a pale imitation of its hotcakes predecessor. No-one wants them and the handheld as we know it will cease to exist within three years.

Or so the internet would have you believe. But then, if you believe everything you read on the internet, peanut butter gives you cancer, Robert Pattinson is gay and the Government’s reading your emails and it’s all a big conspiracy, maaan.

But while handhelds are doing okay, Sony and Nintendo need to realise 2012 is a different world and forge ahead with something truly innovative to stay relevant.

For Nintendo, a family-friendly tablet would clean up. I’ve heard of so many parents looking to buy their (spoiled brat) children tablets for Christmas, but who were uneasy at the thought of having a credit card registered on it and were concerned at what youngsters might be accessing.

But Barnes and Noble’s Nook HD tab has already demonstrated a workable solution. The device supports multiple accounts, with parental controls and even the ability to set time limits for how long it’s used and what (if any) apps can be bought on each account.

But what about the games? That’s easy. The old £40/$60 model has to go out the window. In its place, cheap, pick up and play fare with the option to buy extra levels.

I’m not suggesting New Super Mario Bros be sold for 99 cents. I’m suggesting one level be available for 99 cents, or two or three dollars tops, with the option to buy new ones for another 99 cents each, or an entire world for a fiver.

It would essentially mean one NSMB games’ worth of levels would be about double the price of a normal boxed release, with the flipside being you needn’t buy anything but the initial level for a pittance. Do the same for Mario Kart, Zelda, Layton, and others, and suddenly you have a host of cheap, pick-up-and-play titles providing a steady revenue stream at low development costs.

Use a custom UI Android OS, let it play videos and music and access the Android store, and suddenly you have a tablet able to compete with others on the market while appealing to a section of the market which has yet to be tapped – kids.

But it doesn’t just have to be for youngsters. The same exact kind of model can apply to games for older people. Brain Training/Age could be sold for $2/£1.20 for ten Sudoku grids, for example.

Market the thing as a tab for all the family, with multimedia functionality and the trusted Nintendo brands and the thing will sell itself. Heck, it’d probably be easier to market than the ‘THIS IS A 3DS, NOT A DS’ adverts would suggest.

Microsoft already has, according to rumours, started putting together a games tablet. The internet (see previous disclaimers) claims the PC bods are working on a top-secret 7 inch Xbox Surface tablet, with full Live capabilities, achievements, Xbox controller support and exclusive games.

You see, tablets are what people want. They’re in. Love or loathe the company, when Apple unveiled the iPad, everything changed.

Now 10 inch tablets sell in their millions, while the 7 inch market is a bloodbath of undercutting – Google and its Nexus 7 are going head to head with Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD and Apple’s iPad Mini. All three are different, yet excellent devices and are gaining huge momentum going into Christmas.

Some say games handhelds and tablets are different markets, but I’m not so sure. 

I'm not sure, with 3DS at £120-160, and Kindle/Nexus from £129-199 (the non-HD Kindle is £129), how many people really would choose 3DS instead. Sure it's got New Super Mario Bros, Mario Kart and Professor Layton, but I think many people will happily sacrifice dedicated games for the plethora of apps, big HD screens and multimedia.

Put it this way: I'm known as the techie of the office in work. A colleague asked me what she should buy her 8-year-old grandson for Christmas - a Kindle or a Nexus 7. 3DS didn't even come into it.

I realise I’m now the kind of blogger who would have said Nintendo and Sony need to make smartphones to survive a couple of years back, when that school of thought was all the rage. But look at it this way: if Sony had made PS Vita a phone – closer to the PlayStation Xperia phone, but with Vita specs/capabilities - sold it on contract and refreshed it once a year, I’m confident it would have outsold what the Vita has mustered by now.

It’s not that 3DS and Vita aren’t great – I love them both. It’s that the two companies are clinging to the past when they have everything at their disposal to carve out an inventive, innovative future with tablet devices. They won’t die if they don’t, but they’re missing out on the tablet bandwagon, and doubtless a lot of potential sales, too.

For some, tablet gaming is a bitter pill to swallow. For everyone else, there’s an app for that.

Is the little iPad really the next big thing?

Every inch an iPad. That’s the marketing spiel from the world’s greatest PR-come-tech company – but does Apple’s move to diminutive tablet mark a departure from the company’s once-decisive vision?

That’s how it seems. Many have been quick to lambast the 7.9 inch iPad Mini, with its £269 price tag, as being a move which goes against what the legendary Steve Jobs once believed. Anything smaller than 10”, he said, would be too small to be worthwhile and not really a tablet at all.

Fast forward a couple of years and not only is Apple unveiling a 7” tablet of its own, it’s also revealed a fourth iteration of iPad just seven months after the ‘Resolutionary’ iPad 3. It is, as the Twittersphere puts it, ‘powered by the tears of iPad 3 owners’.

All this comes at a time Amazon’s £159 Kindle and Google’s £199 Nexus 7 tabs make serious inroads into Apple’s territory, carving themselves a slice of the lower end of the market. 

Meanwhile, over in Microsoft land, the Windows boffs are bringing Surface tablets to the table – fully-capable Windows tablets with the flexibility of a PC (hello, SD card slots and USB), while a litany of Windows RT and 8-approved tab makers are prepping a range of tablets and touch-screen laptops.

With Android, too, the likes of Samsung continue to make excellent bits of kit while the Google OS grows better by the update.

Has the rest of the market backed Apple into a corner, forcing it to make desperate moves, to go against its own core beliefs?

Not a bit of it. The company is every inch in control of its own destiny. Whatever you make of the iPad mini u-turn, it’s a clever business move. 

Apple execs are not stupid. They know the lower-end tablets are cannibalizing iPad sales. Presented with a smaller, cheaper alternative, many have sidestepped saving up for a pricey Apple app slab and have plumped for one of the Android machines.

 iPad sales will be hit by smaller tablets. So they mayaswell be Apple tablets that eat into that market share. Don’t want a £400 10” tablet from Apple? Buy the 7”. The company is simply ensuring it has both ends of the market covered, in much the same way the iPhone 4/4S is the cheaper choice compared to iPhone 5.

The price? Yes, it is significantly £90-110 more expensive than its nearest competitors. But it’s got that shiny Apple logo on it. People buy millions more iPods than cheaper MP3 players and the same will be true, to a lesser extent, with tablets.

Apple is as sure of itself, as a company, as ever. The question is, has it done enough to stay top of the pile in an ever-bloodier battle for tech space? 

For now, almost certainly. But – as with the iPhone –  the market may soon demand the wheel be reinvented rather than repackaged.