The 3DS is just a cluster fuck for its first 7-8 months.
They thought Nintendogs would sell 20 million units to casuals again and they didn't need to do anything else. They did not see that they were about to get hit by a truck from their blind side either with mobile gaming.
The bigger third party games promised to Nintendo (Kingdom Hearts, Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, etc.) did come out but any idiot could've just called those companies and would've gotten the answer that none of those games were going to be ready for the launch window, it was obvious all those games were in the extreme early stages of development even by 2010 you would've known that.
Why did Nintendo knowing this not try to put together a better launch window? Because they thought consumers were stupid and would buy the thing for puppies (now *with* kittens! Oh WOW!) and a bunch of dumb AR 3D card games.
Nintendo bungled that launch, plain and simple.
3DS era is puncuated by the fact that it started basically right with the Japanese tsunami/earthquake disaster ... an omnious sign of things to come for Nintendo that generation.
From now on I imagine Nintendo will always launch major hardware with a big core IP that really is a must have game, they will never make the mistake of relying mostly on unreliable audience bases again. It's too risky and stupid. Get your core audience excited first, you cannot rely on those Wii Sports/Nintendogs/Brain Training/Wii Fit people.
