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Soundwave on 06 June 2017
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potato_hamster said:
Flilix said:

A new handheld would be a complete failure. The Switch is like a handheld but with better games and more ways to play.

The only thing that would make people buy this handheld rather than a Switch, are the games and the price (but I think that Nintendo will release a Switch without the dock and maybe also without HD rumble, which will be a lot cheaper).

The Switch is still too big and has too terrible of a battery life to be a truly portable system, and as you said, the price is a big challenge. The dock and HD rumble are two of the cheapest parts of the Switch, so that wouldn't make a big difference in price.  If Nintendo a made new portable console, they can ditch the joycons, make the unit smaller, increase the battery life,  lower their production costs, and thus lower the price.  All they need to do is keep their core portable franchises as portable exclusives and tens of millions of people will buy it. If they make it incompatible with Switch cartridges, they can sell millions more copies of games as their fans would undoubtedly double dip (as people are claiming this is Nintendo's reason for not annoucing a Switch version of Pokemon Sun/Moon at this time). Nintendo has a habit of encouraging their fans to double dip, and their fans have a habit of obliging. That's a big cash cow that I don't think Nintendo is willing to abandon.

Look, I'm not saying Nintendo should do this. I think Nintendo should make a more portable Switch and call it a day. However, this is Nintendo we're talking about. Nintendo isn't known for doing the obvious, and you cannot rule out any possibilities. It would be very Nintendo for Nintendo to launch a 3DS successor that is incompatible with the Switch, and it shouldn't come as a surprise to you if they do.

Switch is fine as a portable. 

2DS/3DS is for 9-year-olds who want something more than tablet games. Which is fine. It's a small sub-set market that Nintendo can make a few bucks off of.