Personally I usually think it's stupid to remake games that are just a year old, or even from the previous generation unless there is some justification, but I welcome remakes and ports of ('deserving') games that are older than the previous gen. So, if they're going to bring true remakes of GC/GBA games and older to 3DS, I'm all for it.

@ Iwata, I wonder how he plans to boost profits to a whopping $800m starting next year...

EDIT: I'm calling Super Mario Sunshine 3D by the way.

New handheld or QoL. Remember it says in the OP  "in fiscal year ending March 2017", that's two years.

Probably both I think. New handheld and the first QoL products will launch between spring 2016 and holiday 2016, to be able to come close to hitting those types of profit margins. 

I also am starting to think looking at that profit forecast that the speculation of a Nintendo handheld variant launching spring-ish (2016) followed by the home variant (November 2016) is possible. They will need a huge surge in sales to come close to that target. 

I'm fine with this, clearly they are ramping up game development for thier next handheld which is probably releasing sometime next year. This year's lineup is pretty decent anyway.

January-Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy Plus

February-Majora's Mask 3D, Monster Hunter 4, Pokemon Shuffle

March-Codename STEAM, Fossil Fighters Frontier, Mario vs Donkey Kong: Tipping Star, Story of Seasons

April-Xenoblade Chronicles 3D, Etrain Mystery Dungeon

May-Puzzled & Dragons Z/Super Mario Edition

Beyond that, some localization are likely in the second half of the year, such as Devil Survivor 2: Break Record, Bravely Second, Final Fantasy Explorers, Youkai Watch, maybe finally getting one of the Dragon Quest titles. Fire Emblem could release in the second half of the year and an expansion/sequel to Pokemon X/Y is very likely along with a few more remakes and eShop titles. Looks like a pretty solid lineup to me considering a successor is probably coming next year.

There's this QoL indeed, but I don't see how that's going to bring in such a profit. It seems like a niche and cheap thing, unless it's actually very expensive and their plan is to sell it to every hospital in the world. There could be some kind of hardware coming up, but I wouldn't have thought it would arrive that soon, just a year after 3DS's latest remodel and long before WiiU's successor which I definitely don't see coming next year.

800 million is not so much when you consider that this year they will make like 600 million.

Me too. :)

This "cheap software for 3DS, remakes of past games for 3DS and ports of smartphone titles" are meaning that they prepare their big guns for next handheld console.

Not sure where you're getting that number from. 

Nintendo's forecast for this fiscal year (ending March 2015) is $254 million in profit, the bulk of that coming from a favorable currency flucuations (yen/dollar), also all the Wii U's they sold for most of this fiscal year where pure profit because they were manufactured for the previous fiscal year (Nintendo simply couldn't sell them then, and took a book loss on their manufaturing last fiscal year). That's a bit of an anamoly that won't happen again. 

We'll the thing about QoL so far is that we really know nothing about it, they have only showed one of many products they are planning so we can't really make any reasonable predictions of success until we have a better idea of what type of products they introduce.

I've been saying it for a while.

Nintendo Fusion Handheld - spring/summer 2016 launch (Japan first)

Nintendo Fusion Home Version - November 2016 launch

That will be what Nintendo banks on to drive profit for FY March 2017.

They are also IMO "hoarding" their big guns for this product launch -- Animal Crossing and Mario Galaxy 3 will be for this new platform, I'd bet money on it.