Reuters: Nintendo Faces End Of Era After 3DS Flop

[Asriel]

Investors in Japan are placing a lot of money into mobile gaming right now--that's the direction they want Nintendo to move in, and because Nintendo aren't moving in that direction, they won't invest in them. These are the investors who inflated Nintendo's value by jumping on during the Wii/DS explosion, and haven't really followed what the company do--any informed person would know Nintendo will not put their IP onto iOS or Android, yet that is exactly what these investors want.

Nintendo have announced enough titles and features to appeal to the traditional gaming audience--a highly profitable audience that numbers (in the least) at the tens of millions--and 3DS is bound to pick up steam on the back of all the effort Nintendo are putting into it. There's no sign as of yet of the next Brain Training or Nintendogs, but that doesn't mean it won't come. Mario Kart, Animal Crossing and (if it gets a worldwide release) Friend Collection are excellent mass-market titles and Nintendo have plenty of system sellers coming in the next 15 months. Whether or not they hit their sales targets is up in the air now, it depends on how high Christmas sales go for 3DS and whether or not high momentum can be maintained.

If I had the money, I'd invest in Nintendo now. I think this is the start of 3DS's big fightback, and it couldn't have come sooner. The burgeoning mobile market doesn't mean the traditional portable market will die off--if smartphones and tablets bring in hundreds of millions of new gamers globally in the years to come, why can't a few tens of millions of these make the transition to traditional handheld devices? If the content, pricing and marketing is right, that's what will start to happen--or at least I think that's what Iwata and co believe will happen. Right now the battle is for the traditional market, and Nintendo have pulled out some big guns just when it looked like Vita had it in the bag.