Scratch

iOS does have a few gems, (if you've never heard of Outwitters, do yourself a favor and seek it out immediately) but IAP is slowly corrupting the "system" to death. (Outwitters is F2P, and the IAP are for character packs. However, those IAP were actually worth it.  )

I once tried a game called "Morphs". A sort of Pokemon-y game for iOS, basically. Well guess what? After your 'mon- sorry- morph gets knocked out, you have to wait a whole two (REAL!!!) hours before it's recharged. The system doesn't even let you leave the town you're in, and there's only one town, until your morph is at least 25% charged. There are ways to speed up the process. You could buy a potion with "bux"! You start the game with three bux, and the rest must be purchased through IAP. OR, you could buy bundles of three potions for 99 cents each. (Sorry brits!    But that's basically a whole dollar, so just convert it to Euros.  ) The game has dozens of levels, (repetitively slapped together) and, combined with an un-engaging combat system, you've got yourself pretty much a good representative of most iOS games on the market today.

Handheld wins hands down. 

You can say games designed for handheld consoles are better all you want, but you'll never get over the fact that "casual" gamers, who can play games in the same smartphone they use for calling, texting and browsing, are a much larger group than "actual gamers" who own powerful handheld consoles created solely for the purpose of playing modern games. These casual gamers see video games merely as something waste your free time in, and Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja do that just as well as the latest Mario game.

What's the big difference then? Apps are readily available for pretty much any phone released in the last 3 years, or so, while handheld games are designed specifically for a powerful console. Pretty much everyone owns a smartphone nowadays, so apps have a much bigger market than handheld games.

If you want to develop games and make money out of it, your best bet is to make an Android or iOS game, aim it at casuals, and sell it for a buck in the respective app store. It's much easier to get into this market than in the console game market, and you have a larger audience. c:

Right now I'd have to say I like handheld games, because I don't have any iThing. And it's cool because I still have this REALLY old gameboy that probably belongs in a museum. It plays 8-bit music when you turn it on, and it has 8 games including Pong, Racer, and Tank. The pixel's on the screen (all 300 of them) are huge, but it's so classic, I still play it today. Did I mention it's see-through, so you can see all the wires and things? Oh, and half of the back is broken off, and sometimes, the buttons don't respond.