I'm looking at Nintendo's 3DS really sad 77k 3DS sales for this past month in the US ... man that's just not good, not with the New 3DS still being somewhat recently released. Maybe it is time for a more drastic design change?

Maybe they should just go balls to the wall with the hybrid concept. It would be unique and different from anything else on the market at least.

Slap a massive 43 wH battery into a design that's like a oversized DS/3DS meets a mini-laptop I guess. This is the battery that was in the 4th gen iPad, it's not terribly expensive, but it is big, so it ain't fitting into a 3DS XL size casing.

But now you can go with a 9-10 watt processor, lets say AMD/Nintendo can bump up a little to about 55 GFLOPS/watt (slightly better than the Carrizo). 550 GFLOPS on battery power, maybe say even 800 GFLOPS when plugged into the wall (home play).

Optional HDMI wireless receiver for the TV sold seperately, it can stream right to the television wirelessly.

Let iPhone games cover the need for low-market gamers, keep the N3DS around in stores for a few more years too. Even $299.99 I think is reasonable for a product that can function as both a portable and home console.

That's more than double the performance per watt of Carrizo, 819Gflops divided by 35 watts equals 23.4Gflops per watt.

The SOC alone would require 10 watts to produce 234Gflops of compute performance, you need to add the power required for memory to that too, along with the power needed for the screen, if it has rumble capacity, in-built memory storage or a card reader for memory storage, along with the disc/card reader to play the game or APPs.

The whole unified API and architecture, with transitional improvements to new models of hardware added to the NX family still makes the most sense, as it allows Nintendo to be flexible with their hardware choices for various different markets and put their software at the forefront, removing the barrier of development of games.

I think a Nintendo that provides mulitple options for how you can play their games is the best thing for everyone going forward. The platform should be Nintendo, not a specific piece of hardware, Nintendo may end up selling more hardware that way too, because that would give gamers more options for when and how they can play their games.

The least amount of hardware that Nintendo can get away with in the handheld, the lower the cost it will have. A small screen simply isn't going to show up the finer visual details and a handheld with the level of tech I mentioned before can basically do everything needed, just cut the resolution, and AA or reduce textures and geometry and the rest will fit.

The home console should be the more beastly machine, because it can justify it's higher costs, with the finer details being detectable on a larger screen and a higher level of fidelity to add that as a selling point..

I was assuming at 14nm, so 2x the GFLOPS per watt. 

I agree they should just make a bunch of different hardware variants. 

Though seeing what's happening to the Western handheld market is alarming. I can't help but wonder if they need to be more radical in their hardware approach. 

I think it's going to be very hard to compete with the PS4, they will be 20-25 million units behind even the XBox One. I'd be happy with the console you're describing, don't get me wrong I'd be first in line to buy it. 

Logically I just don't know how many people would be in line behind me. It would probably be selling to the same 10 million Nintendo fans that buy every Nintendo console, I think PS4 will domiante through 2019, a "me too" console that's 3 years late starting from 0 games whereas the PS4 has hundreds by then is likely not going to be that well accepted by non-Nintendo fans. 

Unlike a lot of Nintendo fans who have selective amnesia about things, I remember how badly Sony beat up on Nintendo with just a 1 year headstart with the PS2 over GameCube ... this would be far, far worse, even MS would be at least past 20 million install base by then, meaning the NX would be gaurunteed to be the distant no.3 console for a couple of years in the best case scenario.  

But I guess Nintendo has to try and see how it goes. Nothing else they can do at this point but to let it ride I guess. I think we just have to hope that they can stop the bleeding in the portable market, because if they can't then, they probably are going to have to embrace the idea of going third party. 

Completely agree, not to mention that developer kits would be identical or similar and tha NX will have same OS.

I guess what I'm getting at ok we've established the whole API/same architecture thing, which I've agreed with since the beginning.

But we still in the end boil down to basically the same thing ... a handheld like a DS and a console like a Wii U. I wonder if Nintendo isn't trying something bolder than that with a different type of hardware config that is non-traditional. They keep saying "new hardware concept". That's the "what if" I'm kinda wondering about, we're still assuming relatively traditional hardware variants here, I can't help but wonder if Nintendo is going in a direction bolder than that.

Guys, I think an important question is if they will abandon or not the 2 screens scheme.
Should them? why? why not?
DS/3DS BC would be affected?

How about a single screen, and you can turn it 90 degrees clockwise and put it on portrait aspect and work like the 2DS screen(that is a single screen)?
So you can play the 3DS games, the new games desingned for single screen, and also they can use it as a gimmick for new game ideas, or adapt some of them for screen orientation like the mobile app/games. Also, in the standing up format, you can play also the mobile games(if they were ported to 3DS sucessor).

The resolution dont need to be 720p.

I personally would abandon the dual screen. It eats up too much battery power, internal casing space that could be used for a larger battery, and adds needless cost. 

I agree what they could do is have a single large screen that can be re-positioned somehow vertically. The 6.2 inch Wii U screen that Nintendo uses can coincidentally (or not) match the screen size of an original 3DS perfectly when positioned vertically, so if they could have a screen 6.2 inches or larger, they can have 3DS games no problem that way, DS would be easy too. 

Maybe that would mean a swivel screen, maybe that means the top screen actually being able to detach and be repositioned vertically. 

This is literally what iOS does, the API being the same, arcitecture being identical, but running at different speeds and have different resolutions. However, I still find it laughable that you just trvialize these optimizations as "the way you turn of settings on a PC game". It isn't that simple. You still have to handle the different control schemes. You still have to handle the different outputs. You still have to redo textures and simplify animations, AI, etc to run just as well off of more limited resources. These are things you need to do going from an iPad game to an iPhone game, or going from a game optimized for iPhone 5 to one that can run off of iPhone 4. These aren't trivial things to do. Again, it is not that simple.

Wii was a new console with a new concpet. If the NX console plays only handheld games, then it's not a console that has a new concept. I'm pretty sure Nintendo's gonna want to innovate in some way. If they have to keep the handheld under their eyes with each game, then they can't innovate the way they want, because they will need to restrict the game so that it could be played on the handheld. Simply adding motion controls to the same gameplay won't be enough, a game cannot be centered around controls like that if the handheld is always under consideration.

That's what some people thought before when they saw Wii graphics, they thought it was okay. Then Wii U astounded people, Mario Kart 8 looks amazing, and is far more complex than Mario Kart Wii, it's these vast differences in power that allow them to do new things. The won't be able to do new things with Wii U + power. By the way, physics and AI is done mainly on the CPU, the GPU isn't very good at doing calculations like these. You said something that was off, 300 GFLOPS of what exactly? A 300 GFLOP CPU will not only be impossible on a handheld, it'll be also EXTREMELY unlikely on a console at a fair price. It'll have 3 times more GFLOPS than the PS4 CPU for example. GPGPU on a GPU will only do so much, it's the CPU that does most of the physics calculations. Don't expect physics calculations on a GPU from Nintendo. 

They weren't able to handle Wii U well because not only was HD new to them, the development for a multi-core processor and shaders was completely different fhan from Wii. 3DS awas also completely different to develop for compared to either Wii or DS. They're switching between the different architectures of 3DS and Wii U and that's causing problems, but if they could have the same dev environment, things would be easier. Don't forget that they've never developed for an HD console before, they're good with that now. IT's not that they can't handle developing for two systems, it's that the rocky start they had with the new stuff, caught them completely off guard. A 100% shared library isn't necessary.

Nintendo changes their minds sure, but this idea of consoles being different was quoted when they began integrating their development teams. Why would they suddenly change their minds now? As for the smartphone thing, they're still not going to be doing what people want them to do, you won't see a full Mario Kart or Zelda game there, not sure what that has to do with this.

The reason for having exclusive games is to get people to buy your products. If people want Splatoon, Mario Kart 8, etc, then they will buy a Wii U. If not, then they'll miss out on those games. They failed on Wii U, they simply need to try better next time. When talking about what makes business sense, you need to also take into their account their financials, and see the money coming in and out. Their Hardware makes more revenue than software, even now, and if the NX console sells less than Wii U while also being cheaper, not only do they end up making less money from hardware, but the supposed "increases in software" won't make up the losses. If they make a game playable on both devices, they cannot price it at a console price, $40 would be reasonable. A $40 Mario Kart 7 and a $60 Mario Kart 8 will make them more money than a Mario Kart 78 that sold the same amount at $40. They'd also be ignoring the double dippers, I'd say for example at least 2 million people have bought both Mario Kart 7 and 8. Nintendo will lose that for all their games. When talking about business sense, it needs to also make financial sense. Making less revenue on games isn't better business sense for any business that's doing their best to expand. 

The bolded is especially important. Each game will have to simplify AI, animations, physics for the handheld if it is to run on a handheld, that isn't something that's just "turned off", and isn't scalable as easily as people think. 

Well they did just release patents for an all digital console so we can't rule that out.

I honestly believe we will not see a huge gap between the console and handheld in terms of specs, I'm expecting the NX console to essentially be a Wii U 1.5 much like Wii was basically a Gamecube 1.5 while I expect the handheld to have a full generational leap over 3DS so something like this NX Handheld=3DS, Wii U/NX Console=Gamecube/Wii. Yes it will be weaker than the console variant but not 50x weaker like 3DS is compared to Wii U, maybe something like 1/2-1/3  as powerful as the console variant.

Sony/Microsoft spend 7-8 years on their first HD console before moving on to much more powerful hardware, I think it's naive to believe Nintendo wants to make a big jump after 4 years.