Touchscreens were absolutely not commonplace in mass market devices. There were absolutely a thing that existed, but they were associated to productivity devices and corporate things trying to look modern and fancy. I’d argue with no Nintendo DS you get no iPhone.

Nintendo’s pitch for the DS was that it wasn’t a Gameboy. The Advance was the Gameboy. This was the adult system for adults that used a touchscreen and you could hold it sideways and read it like a book. And they had Brain Age/Brain Training, based on some quack’s later disproved theories but that sounded and felt healthy and meant for older people who liked to do sudoku. Also, you want to do sudoku? You can do it here! There’s a pen and everything.

That “blue ocean” strategy on the DS and the absolutely insane success of it was the template for the Wii two years later. And it worked both times. They weren’t even shy about it, they are on the record a bunch explaining how they wanted to sell boring, grey DSs to people and then get them to buy games and become gamers instead. That ended up being what made Apple the biggest company in the universe, and it’s blow by blow the strategy Nintendo came up with. They are just too budget minded, so they attached that to a cheap console instead of an expensive mobile phone.