Will 3DS outsell the GBA?

[peachbuggy]

After a fair amount of thought i voted no but i think it's going to be very close! It really depends on if Nintendo meets their latest FY projections and where the next pokemon goes. I think Nintendo will gradually divert all their resources to the switch but are holding on to the 3ds for just a little longer, trying to eke all the sales out of it for as long as it can. Although, doubtless Nintendo will have their market analysts watching 3ds family performance very carefully. In the long term it would be a disastrous business policy, keeping the 3ds alive for too long. It could seriously affect the long term growth of the switch, which realistically should be Nintendo's long term priority. They really won't want to have two competing consoles out there on the marketplace. Imo it would be foolish not to have the next iteration of mainline pokemon on the Switch, at least in some capacity but the last thing Nintendo would want would to be any cannibalisation of any of its products, especially by 2 of their own competing in their own marketplaces.

So, for that reason i predict:- E3 this year a brief snippet of mainline pokemon shown for Switch but left shrouded in mystery. Stars actually announced for this year for 3ds. Later on in the year, revealing that Pokemon stars will be a split release for both consoles, the switch version being obvs. better graphically and with more features but the ability to "communicate" between the 2 systems. The Nintendo market analysts will then monitor the market trends and plot strategy from there but i believe the most likely outcome will be for Nintendo to quietly drop the 3ds line sometime in 2018/early 2019, to narrowly miss their prediction of 6m 3ds up to March '18 by perhaps 1/2m. So LTD sales would be about 71.5, then with dwindling support the following years would be something like, 3.5m, 2m, 1m, 0.5m (the last year of any meaningful sales), so ending up just shy of 80m. Of course if Nintendo decide to support it for a little longer, it could do it but i very much doubt they would risk the future of the Switch in doing so.