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Miyamotoo on 26 March 2017
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Mummelmann said:
Kai_Mao said:

It still has potential to have another decent year, even if its probably the last year of actual support from Nintendo for the 3DS. Why just drop it completely right away when the Switch is still in its infancy. PS3 and X360 got some support even when their successors came around. Funny that we used to criticize Nintendo of completely dropping support of their old consoles the year (or two years) they release new ones. And they said they will continue to support 3DS for this year. 

Well, the problem is that it could keep the Switch from gaining proper traction. If it was the go-to alternative for both home console and handheld more or less right away, it would have a much larger potential market. Then again; there's no guarantee that such a transition would be wholly favorable for Nintendo overall. But it makes me wonder about the whole merging libraries plan, as long as they keep the 3DS, they also keep dividing their developer efforts, and this leads to extended development cycles that plagued the 8th gen for them, and with the expectedly unimpressive 3rd party support and only being a home console extension for now, the Switch might suffer under this idea in 2017 and first half of 2018. If they want any hopes of attracting customers outside of the conventional loop, they need to hit the ground running, devices rarely, if ever, become trendy a year or more into the life cycle. On the other hand; I don't think the Switch will appeal to the mass market to any significant degree.

Long story short; it seems really poorly planned, which is worrying. They're still behaving like a company that doesn't understand the market and its various segments and demographics. We'll see how it pans out, but having the 3DS exist alongside the Switch defeats part of the purpose of having a hybrid console, at least for the handheld segment of the market.

PS: The 3DS is really on its last legs and has been nosediving yoy for some time, I don't know how you define a "decent year", but it could actually be a bad year for it and the payoff for killing it may be bigger than keeping it barely floating.

Switch is seeling great for now and people know that that 3DS is dying (its on its 6. year on market) and it will most likely die next year. They still mention 3DS because it can still sell decent this year too and has huge instal base, but it's very obvious that is dying and that biggest and most important games are coming to Switch, Zelda BotW, MK8 Deluxe, Splatoon 2, Mario Odyssey...and definitely there will some new huge Switch games at E3.

That's actually reason why they saying that Switch is home console on 1st place and successor to Wii U, because 3DS is still selling and Wii U is dead for quiet time now, but you will see how they change their PR talk next year when 3DS dies.