-A headstart. Releasing early and getting a holiday season under its belt tends to work very well. With that, the PSV already has to play catch up.
-A good price. There's a lot of people who just don't see themselves paying over $200 for a portable. If the 3DS is priced below that, it should do better than the more expensive PSV.
-Portable franchises. There's an audience for "the console experience" on portables. There's a bigger audience for "bite sized games" that can be started and stopped at a moments notice. Certain RPG's, Pokemon, Mario Games (especially Mario Kart) really fill the niche.
-A gimmick. This is like a dirty word among the gaming community, but what's wrong with a feature that makes a product unique? 3D turned out to not be that gimmick (or maybe it wasn't enough to overcome the price barrier). Doing something extremely creative with Spot Pass or AR cards could be.....but then PSV has a variation of Spot Pass and AR, too.
-Positive buzz. It needs something to get people really talking. It needs some sort of worldwide phenomenon that kids will obsess over. Is Pokemon still that phenomenon? Can the Kid Icarus trading card AR game become that phenomenon?
I personally plan on buying a PSV but I have to wonder what the PSV will have to do to compete with the 3DS.
