Smash Bros wouldn't have done a whole lot more for Wii U even if there was no 3DS version. People need to accept that no matter what, Wii U is going to be Nintendo's worst selling home console and if Nintendo's other big hitting franchises ( 2D Mario, 3D Mario, Mario Kart, Pikmin, Donkey  Kong) couldn't stop that then Smash Bros was extremely unlikely to do so either.

Would they though?  The WiiU is a write off at this point.  It's not going to be a smash hit success.

They've had incredible sales from the 3DS version of Smash.  Nintendo still get the same profit from the software sold.

good numbers... not amazing... Wii U needs to pick up everywhere... yes 3DS software monster

I don't disagree that having a 3DS version was a good move. My disagreement is with the timing. For instance, 3DS had a lacklustre first half this year, surely would've been a better time frame to release the game rather than 2 versions within the the space of 2 months. I wouldn't release them the same year tbh! NSMB was impacted similarly on the Wii U after its release on the 3DS. I find these decisions weird tbh.

It's impacted heavily in Japan that's for sure. Looking at Smash3DS vs MK7, it played out very similar to previous iterations while the Wii U smash vs MK8 looks to have broken that correlation. Timing is crucial...

well 3DS games are $20 cheaper than console games, so Nintendo has to sell much more 3DS games to get to the same level of profit.

Smash 3DS currently at 3.7m makes as much money as WiiU version at 2.5m.

I agree though, doing an additional handheld version is the right choice for Smash and honestly all current Nintendo games.

I get wat your saying about 3DS would need more than wiiu version for profiting but you made 1 Huge mistake^

     It wouldn't be a $20 difference, its much smaller than that. $20 difference is retail, not for Nintendo. I dont know exactly how much nintendo makes per game but if i were to guess (srry i couldn't find the chart that displays breakdown) i think its...

$24 for each $60 game (WiiU)

$16 for each $40 game (3DS) 

$8 difference each between the versions (or somewat close to that)

Also In Japan the prices are different than normal (where the difference is much bigger than everywhere else) Below shows how much each SSB is. Keep in mind they are more expensive than normal :) (this is a bonus)

3DS Version ¥5616 (normally ¥4900)

WiiU Version ¥7776

Actually he is right for 3DS as well, since its Japanese numbers are much better in Japan (relatively) than elsewhere

I was never talking about $20 being the difference in profit. That was obviously revenue.

Since we use a set percentage for profit though, it's enough to talk about revenue. 20% higher revenue = 20% higher profit, 20% less revenue = 20% less profit.

Your example was:

$24 for each $60 game (WiiU) (= 40% of the WiiU game revenue)

$16 for each $40 game (3DS) (= 40% of the 3DS game revenue)

$8 difference each between the versions (or somewat close to that) (= 40% of the difference between the WiiU and 3DS revenue)

Obviously I didn't take into account all the regional price differences, but that would be too much work, for not that much better results.

It's also considerably cheaper to develop games for 3DS compared to Wii U so 3DS games don't necessarily need to sell more than Wii U games to be profitable. For example let's say the average 3DS game costs $3 million to make while the average Wii U game costs $10 million, these are just random numbers by the way, I have no idea how much it costs to make games for 3DS/Wii U.

If Nintendo makes back $16 for 3DS games and $24 for Wii U games, they would need to sell 187,500 units of the 3DS game to break even and 417,000 units of the Wii U game to break even.

It's very possible that a 1 million selling 3DS is game is more profitable than a 1 million selling Wii U game despite making less back on each 3DS game because it has lower dev costs.

That's obviously true if it was a question of developing for WiiU OR 3DS. In this case they did both, obviously the 3DS version was a bit cheaper but you can't really tell how much each of the versions cost to make since a lot of the work from one version is also found in the other.

Besides, Smash is a big seller. Dev costs won't change the outcome dramatically.
bolded: Using your example, look what happens when a game is not only selling the amount to break even, but 1,000,000 as you said:

WiiU $24 * 1,000,000 units - $10m dev cost = $14m profit
3DS $16 * 1,000,000 units - $3m dev cost = $13m profit

The bigger the game, the less important are the dev costs.