One lingering problem that I see with the 3DS.

[greenmedic88]

Considering titles aimed at a younger audience were a significant portion of the DS library, this is not the problem for the 3DS.

As far as gaining a more sizable portion of the core gaming audience, the 3DS is already starting out well enough as far as 3rd party games go. Considering that SSFIV has been one of the best selling initial games on the platform, it's promising that there will be continued 3rd party support for core games.

3rd party second year releases as well as announced titles for 2013 will more or less set the tone for the remainder of the 3DS development cycle.

The two real potential problems with the 3DS as a platform are more related to the casual market transitioning to iOS devices, to include younger children who were a mainstay of the DS audience and accounted for a fairly significant portion of the overall player base (which all those "shovelware" titles were marketed for)..

The second problem is whether the 3DS as a platform will be able to distinguish itself as a platform suitable for games that don't port well, or at all to other platforms (particularly the PSV). Currently it has 3D effects (which have not played a major part of the game play of any 3DS title to date) as well as Street Pass integration, which provides decent social aspects to mobile gaming.

The problem with this is that Nintendo developed/published titles may end up making the majority of the exclusives, not that this is a problem for any Nintendo gamer, but there may not be many exclusive 3rd party titles that sell hardware.

Either way, it seems unlikely that the 3DS will take off like the DS until Nintendo drops the price significantly on the hardware and the library starts to resemble the DS library in size and scope. It won't happen in a year or even two, so any forecasts for impending doom of the platform are too premature.