Nintendo stock just ended trading +5.48% after the Monster Hunter announcement.

[bdbdbd]

RolStoppable said:

Really? You honestly believe that the 3DS will stick around until a successor to Switch has been launched?

You have to remember that for the longest time the 3DS's most popular SKU has been XL which retails at $199. Switch isn't far off at $299 and comes with the added benefit of doubling as a home console. It's definitely not going to take a full generation until Switch can sell to 3DS consumers. It's already doing so now.

I do. The New 2DS XL is 149, and no doubt it will be the most popular model in the end. The reason for the N2DSXL is that Nintendo secures it's position on the low end, and I don't think Nintendo has problems to sell it for 99 if needed. Let's put it this way; if Nintendo was to fight for the low end handheld market (this is where they've been ever since the Gameboy), do you expect Nintendo to cut the price of the Switch by 50 to 70% in a case of potential disruptor? We already know analysts don't understand disruption the slightest, so such a move wouldn't be taken lightly by the investors.

Nintendo themselves don't need to support 3DS, as long as Nintendo is able to have new devs on board. On the mobile devices market, there are lots of devs that look to expand, but because the mobile market is best described as creative destruction, there's really not much room, and 3DS could be a platform for them to do so. I think Nintendo is interested in having lots of devs on board, but flooding the Switch with bad games isn't in their interest, because this would mean the bigger publishers would not make any money there. The reason for Wii's half-assed 3rd party support was the lack of money the publishers could make on Wii (compared to PS360).

New 3DS is more like Gameboy Color, an update to extend Gameboy's life. Even GB was considered dead, but the breakaway success of Pokemon breathed life into the device. Nintendo had no hurry to release a successor to Gameboy because there was no real competition, but when there were, GBA was killed in favour of DS, DS was killed in favour of 3DS, and now we're back in how things were 20 years ago with Nintendo not having a real competition in the handhelds. I don't see why 3DS could not have ten and beyond year life like the GB had in a similar situation competionwise.

Summa summarum: I fail to see a scenario where Nintendo could keep a hold on the low end handheld market while Switch is selling well. If you enjoyed Pokemon Go on mobile, I don't think it's likely that anyone would phase out 300 just on hardware to play more Pokemon.

Edit: Nintendo pursuing only the high end handheld/mobile would put them to a situation where Sony is at the moment with Playstation that they are destined to lose.