Nintendo was never doomed

[DélioPT]

Wyrdness said:

DélioPT said:

So you think it's ok for the 3DS to outsell GBA's 67m by taking more time?
I'm sorry, but we really won't agree on this.
3DS took more time to reach that number... waay more time. Why? As you said: "today's era had competition and mobile " And this was my main point.

3DS taking more years (7, right?) to reach the same numbers that GBA pulled in 4 years, is not a good sign. 
Even if one day 3DS manages to outsell the GBA it will be because it didn't have to compete with 2 new devices like the GBA had in 2005.

Maybe Nintendo marketed DS as a 3rd pillar because if that message resonated with gamers, they would be selling not one but two devices to people.
Which would mean that people would spend more money (on their 2 devices), thus raising revenue/profits.

Yeah because it still reached that number within a reasonable time and in the context of its own gen, lets look at your point here it took longer to get to the mark, so? It still got there anyway and the portable market as a whole still increased over the GBA era during the mobile era this gen, that's an improvement. Fact is taking longer doesn't matter because the 3DS and its gen lasted much longer than the GBA did.

GBA had a monopoly, it was vastly cheap hardware because it wasn't that cutting edge as no one was forcing Nintendo to take risks in the market and the consumers only had one option for portables under these conditions it was bound to sell faster, 3DS on the other hand has had competition that forced better hardware so harder pricing choices to make as well as battle it for consumers and support and the mobile market. GBA didn't compete with any device it was dropped for the DS because as a competitive platform it was weak, the second the PSP was coming it got dropped because it's a device designed for an era that had a monopoly not one where the is competent competition.

Except Nintendo have been selling 2 devices for decades now and you know how that has ended with one device dropping out because supporting more than one platform sucks up too many resources to give both equal support, even Sony couldn't do it, having 2 devices drained revenue via the struggling platform out of the 2 platforms for both companies.

Of course it matters how long it takes to reach a certain goal, when comparing two consoles.
And when you speal of context and speak about expanding the market, you can't, at the same time, ignore that during GBA's era it was basically one console generation (Wonderswan was only out in Japan, i think) and 3DS' generation there were two consoles on the market.
By default, 3DS' generation would attract more consumers (more diversity).

But let's look at context.
What's ironic is that, despite needing more time to achieve it's 67m figure, 3DS managed to outsell GBA in Japan, by, give or take, 6m (Vita only put up a fight in Japan).
You speak of cheap HW, but with the exception of US (GBA was 99$ here) it was priced at 149 or 14.900 in Europe and Japan, respectively.
3DS, after the price cut, was 170 everywhere (i think).
Not a big difference in price, was there?

Looking beyond the 67m figure - where 3DS sits at - if GBA didn't have to fight DS and PSP we could be talking about how GBA reached the 100m mark instead of 81+m units.
A number that 3DS will/would never reach despite not having competition - excluding Japan.

Not to forget that if 3DS' replacement had come out 4-5 after 3DS launched, like it happened with GBA, it's numbers would have been lower than they are now.

So, no matter hwo you look at it, 3DS performed worse, with the exception of Japan.

I said two consoles, but i was speaking about handhelds, which would mean 3 consoles on the market.
If Nintendo could pull off selling 3 systems to people (and support them well) it would have been great for them as they would increase their revenue and most likely, profits.
We all know that was more of a dream than anything else...