If they hypothetically embraced the handheld market, they wouldn't be making hardcore games for you and me. Just mass appeal and simple stuff...

Ignore the doom comments...

Just worry if they 3ds successor sells way less! Although, if that happens, it could still be a sufficiently profitable product, so Nintendo's handheld console buisness wouldn't cease...

Well japan alone assures that  Nintendo's handheld consoles lifetime sales , won't fall under 35m in the near future! It's a locked 20m there! :)

Great minds  think alike! ;) I also agree with Rol about zhuge... Rol had the guts to say what I didn't dare to say... :) Ryng <3

Zhuge  is a  very good amateur analyst , but that doesn't mean whatever he says is valid ...

People give him more weight to his words than he deserves! Which is dangerous if you think it!  Espousing and reproducing  even misguided standpoints  by him,  instead of recognizing the mistakes, charmed by the great and unique things ( sales, earning charts, market analysis  e.t.c ) he does!

Now to the anal-yst ! ( Bryan cashman-consulgamer)

It's unfair to jump into conclusions by comparisons that contain market anomalies... That paradigm of ps3/ps2 must be pointed out to the anal-yst article which I attached!

For him  playstation  should be dead because ps3 sold 70m less than ps2... However look PS4!

This anal-yst ( bryan cashman-consul gamer) wants to prove that Nintendo is doomed by using ds and wii vs 3ds and wii u comparison and mobile vs handheld revenue, yeah 1b devices, first need product, since phones can save you in an emergency  vs 3DS, an optional device for having fun, basically just Nintendo vs 100 companies... looooooool! Very objective anal-yst! 

Yeah, don't wait for the successor of 3ds and see if it sells better! Preconceive failure! I wish they sell more,  just to some people eat their words... Dogmatism and selective/monomer analysis just to make things look worse and incite negativity  infuriates me!

Everything is fine, Vita is deader! 70M sales!

I just dont see the appeal of dedicated handhelds anymore and its not because I play on mobiles. Nintendo completely killed my hype for their handhelds with awful hardware(the 3DS screens are worse than PSP and that came out in 2004), and Sony's software output is terrible.

Imo what they should do is pay Apple 1 birrion dorraz and get an exclusive place in the iOS store to sell their stuff. Maybe pay a bit more and create Nintendo/Playstation editions of iPhones with official controller grips for the phones. Now you get your traditional games, on devices that matter, with full exposure.

Its doing better well compared to its competitors and the situation it is in (smartphone boom)

Nintendo handheld games cost 30-50 dollars and are on a 199$  handheld console made by Nintendo... Mobile gaming is full of f2p or cheap games and a very crowed market! Apple takes the 40% of the revenue from the store purchases!

How much  beneficial l is what you said?

My comments on handheld gaming concern the whole market.

When you look at the handheld market as a whole its clear that it's no longer relevant anymore. PS Vita isn't worth even mentioning and 3DS performance over the last couple of years has been very weak.

I see a lot of people looking purely at one device or comparing one device to another single device. As I mentioned above, you need to look at the whole market.

An install base of 240m handheld consoles last gen dropping to less than 80 million with an ever sharper decline in software sales is not healthy at all. Especially when you consider that the decline has been accelerating rapidly in the last few years.

People can look at hardware sales for a single device all they want, but there is so much more to consider, especially when it comes to overll hardware & software sales, attach rates, average spend per user, number of active gamers, number of active publishers & games etc...

Personally I'd take a handheld over a mobile device any day. I'm not a huge fan of mobile gaming. But that doesn't mean I'm blind to the current state of handhelds in the market. 

Then you need to condition the market to buy your fiddy dorra games! Or chop it up to $10-15 and sell them in pieces. Also Nintendo fans will still be buying yo games, but the pool of potential customers is much bigga now. It's huge if you can get even 1% of the iOs market.

Firstly, it won't be  less than 80m... Have they stopped selling? Even if you believe that 3ds won't reach 70m, PS sales should cover the deficit for the aggregate sales surpassing 80m...

Secondly, one thing is sure, you wouldn't be saying all that staff if 3ds was gba's successor and if  it has never been a psp!  If comparisons with market anomalies are valid and indicative for you, I don't care! You can concede how unfair they are, though, eh?

For me is more like market normalization not death! However, I admit that I could be wrong ( I'm not dogmatic) ! What about you? You perconceive failure?

Let's wait for 3ds successor and its perfomance to see which view is right!

First point is a bit weird. Does it make a difference if the total install base is 75m or 85m? I'd understand if the number was close to 200m or 240m for example. But when we're talking about an install base that is 3x smaller than it was last gen then a couple million here or there doesn't mean anything of significance. 

Secondly, you're once again missing the point about looking at the overall market. As an example, lets use the dedicated camera market. As taking pictures became more popular and cheaper we see camera sales grow between 2003 and 2010. Similar to the DS and PSP where there was a huge market for dedicated handhelds as they provided the best solution for gaming on the go, were cheap, and had mass market appeal. After 2010 we see that the digital camera shipments begin to decline sharply. But of course we all know that camera use has skyrocketed since then thanks to smartphones. With 1.5 billion smartpone camera phones sold last year it dwarfs the dedicated camera market which is now niche. The most popular cameras on the market today are built into smartphones. It's a similar situation with handheld gaming where dedicated handhelds are no longer the biggest segment for handheld gaming. That also goes to the more than 1 billion smartphone gamers worldwide who play games on the go on their smartphones. Of course smartphones aren't the only reason for the decline of dedicated handhelds but it is the top reasons. 

At this point we've seen Sony publicly declare that there will not be another portable console from them, it's looking increasingly likely that no other major competitor will take their place and that Nintendo will have an entire dedicated market to themselves. And this market is now considerably smaller than it was before with many Western third party publishers already withdrawing support for dedicted handhelds. There is a reason why so many have left the world of handhelds, publishers and consumers alike.

In fact Nintendo haven't even confirmed anything about a new handheld just yet (assuming NX is home console and not portable/hybrid) and with 3DS sales declining fast it'll be a challenge for them to build up that userbase again on the next handheld device. Esp if third parties choose not to invest in that area. I would expect Nintendo to release a new handheld console, due to the popularity of them in Japan, but they may have a huge issue in regards to appealling to more than just a niche group of consumers outside of Japan. 

Now, and discussing your final point here, we have no idea what Nintendo can do. They are always great at surprising everyone with new innovative products and so a new handheld could really work for them as you say. But right now I'm not overly optomistic that the handheld market will grow in a considerable way next gen due to the reasons noted above + other reasons that will take a while to explain. I don't really see many Western publishers supporting the device either unless it links in some way to their home console, and that could be the saving grace for Nintendo there. 

I hope Nintendo are able to find a market with NX and other initiatives as they have really strong IP's and are able to make great games tailored to each system. 

I'm not dogmatic or rash either, I'm simply saying where handhelds fit in right now. Who knows what could happen next gen, like I said, i'm not optimistic but that doesn't mean that i'm right. As you say, I can be wrong. But I also have the right to an opinion as well and have formed mine after considering the overall state of the market. So I'm not sure why you're so hung up on trying to say I'm wrong. I can be wrong. But I'm not sure how you can say I am (like you said earlier) whilst also saying you can be wrong. Weird. 

Anyway, I could write more but have other things to do.