It's too bad we don't get mobile numbers as Japan still loves games.
I attempt to keep up and at least try the biggest Japanese mobile games when they come over to the West, and have an extensive 3DS collection, and I feel when going hands on with this stuff it's not too hard to understand what happened in Japan overall.
On the mobile front, major iOS/Android games are pretty regularly getting to the point where they resemble pick up and play games from the DS instead of incredibly dumbed down tap to win titles.
Puzzle & Dragons, Quiz RPG, Terra Battle, Monster Strike, and (judging by videos) White Cat Project all feel like things that could have been released on the DS and been well received there. I would actually go so far as to suggest that if these project released in 2008, they would have all been DS games and point to Pokemon Trozei, Puzzle Quest, or Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes as good examples of exactly that. Something like Terra Battle wouldn't feel especially out of place relative to a battle heavy but mechanically more deep game like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance or Advance Wars either.
The vast majority of these games also include the big boss fighting, monster collection, co-op, and/or RPG progression elements you see in popular handheld titles as well.
On the 3DS front, we now also have a system that's basically capable of doing whatever the PS2 could and sometimes more. Monster Hunter was originally a PS2 series; Smash, SMT4, and 3D Land could have easily been console titles of that era (or even later). We even have games that actually encapsulate the SNES RPG experience like Bravely Default, instead of the watered down handheld RPGs we sometimes get.
And all of this happens before I even start to cover the content that's notably unique to these kinds of platforms instead of the audiences they simply absorbed from other platforms.
Now, there are some niches that these platforms don't cover, but they're exactly that: niches. At some point if the vast majority of the gaming audience can get all or nearly all the experiences they want by having a smart device and a 3DS (or for some, only one or the other), then why buy anything else?
