In the 80s you had to get long battery life because you were generally throwing the batteries away and shoving in new ones. Now with rechargeables you just plug in the cord and you can both play and recharge at the same time. It's not a big expensive hassle.
Do customers want more features/graphics or more battery life?
I’d argue that we’re deep into that territory with graphics and have been for at least a decade now. Yes newer games look better, but the different isn’t radical like it is when comparing ~2005 games to their ~2015 counterparts, and outside of high settings junkies most people would be perfectly happy with 2015-2020 graphics for the foreseeable future.
Battery life on the other hand is nowhere near the point of diminishing returns for many devices. If Apple released an iPhone that got a week of real world battery life for example, it’d be an instant hit. I’d personally love for gaming handhelds to have that kind of just so they never need to be plugged in while used and I rarely have to think about recharging.
Probably depends on the customers and the products. I'm not into gaming handhelds, but for my other battery-powered electronics, battery life is probably the most important characteristic. Charging things is a real hassle, and the less I have to do it, the better. Particularly when so many of these things don't have user-replaceable batteries.
But I know there are others who prioritize other aspects over battery life.
Charging stuff is very annoying if you are not just always home; I am on the go mostly and you'd be surprised how few places allow you to charge stuff. Also, there is a lot of improvement possible on all optimisation, but most people are; if it works somewhat, ship it. I can only hope now for a future where I can tell an AI 'here is a working app, optimise the crap out of it, thanks'.
