2DS demand should naturally have dropped after Christmas sice the 2DS is supposed to be bought by parents of younger children, who shop for games ystems considerably more during the holidays.

They also need a new handheld. But, can they launch both in the same year?

There`s still no hard eveidence to prove this. In addition, Nintendo recently denied that they were revealing new hardware at E3 (which is where they would reveal it), instead of giving the questionable PR line ``We have nothing to announce at this time``.

damn thats a hefty loss.

I have no idea what VGC is doing with the 3DS number.  There were obvious issues with it at the end of last year.  The ship/sold gap in Japan was larger than the overall gap WW, and that still doesn't seem to be fixed.  Now WW sales are ~520k higher than shipments.  Even with the paltry shipment in Japan this past quarter there are still 480k in the channel there.

Even if there are only 500k in the channel in the west, we are still looking at ~1.5m overtracked.

KIlling the 3DS as early as 2015 makes little sense. It could piss off fans (which is the worst thing they could do right now), dramatically increase R&D costs for this FY, and potentially eliminate their only reliable source of profit.

KIlling the Wii U as early as 2016 might seem like the logical move to avoid incurring further losses on the flagging hardware, but the prospective console could have even worse fortunes. It would have to compete against two highly popular consoles in their peaks; PS4 and Xbox One gamers won`t jump to buy a new Nintendo console consideing their last console and going to be too busy anyway, while Nintendo fans are going to be hesitant after a console that lasted only four years and wasn`t well supported. 

The PS4 and their "gaming division" ARE alright, but obviously Sony isn't and that has been said dozens of times (even in this thread even though it's about Nintendo's earnings).
Nintendo only has the gaming business and they have terrible Wii sales (expected though), terrible WiiU sales and bad 3DS sales (at least from what we can see judging the shipments of this quarter).

Pissing fans it's the last thing they should worry about now. R&D costs are already high (270m this quarter) and it's logical that's because new hardware must be ready.

And again with the Wii U, they had an 100m Wii userbase and now they are aiming at a 10m base by March 2015. 15m lifetime maybe. Anyone would risk those 15M in favor of the other 85m.

They are not selling, and keeping the low sales in favor of a conservative approach will harm them more than releasing new hardware. It's time for new and risky decisions.

We seem to be forgetting their Quality Of Life push. Could it be that all thosr R&D costs are due to the development of their QOL "console" being in the pipeline?

It will probably be a mix of console, mobile and wearable technology, and maybe that will be their attempt to replicate Wii's success, while letting WiiU linger around for several more years to come.