I looked at the E3 lists?  I'll go check the news some more.  

The DS is still a monster with great games coming into 2011 and will be cheaper to boot.  Nintendo has created a tough market even for themselves.  With all this oil business and possible crazyness on the coast I wouldn't think Americans are gonna be the big spenders they normally are.  The 3DS is facing an uphill battle too.

It will certainly have a much stronger first two years due to the reduced competition.

However, unless Nintendo makes a new phenominon along the lines of Brain Training or Nintendogs it will be very hard to pass the DS' sales

The problem with following up a massively successful platform like the DS is it becomes harder to top it with your new platform. I think 3DS has a chance to top it but it'll be very difficult. Nintenedo will need a new hook that draws in more of the expanded audience to do so, like what Nintendogs and Brain Age did on DS. 3DS already has an outstanding library, but they really need that new phenomenon type of game to appeal to more expanded audience gamers. It should still get a ton of sales though regardless just from the sheer amount of quality titles. It's almost guaranteed 80-100 million sales.

yes 6-7 billion units sold maybe one for every person?

Yeah of course, no doubt.

When 3DS releases, will VGC have to make a new bar on the graph to represent it? 

I believe it is too soon to make a good estimation. But we can still try.

Let's look at the hardware first. What we know about the 3DS: glassless 3D; it's backward compatible with the DS line; it has a motion sensor and a gyro sensor. Unknowns: price; battery life(it was stated that they want it to be similar to the DSi's)

Comparing it to the DS it has more control methods, which could lead to some interesting game ideas. Being compatible with the DS I expect that this will help DS users move to the 3DS, especially those that only own a DS phat.

However, we must not forget that the most important part of a game-console, the games. Let's get the 3rd party games out of the way first. The 3DS has a lot of 3rd party games announced, much better than the DS had when it was launched.

While 3rd party support will move hardware, like all Nintendo platforms it's the 1st and 2nd party games that will truly push the system. So the announced games from Nintendo are:

Animal Crossing
Kid Icarus: Uprising
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (port/remake)
Mario Kart
nintendogs cats
Paper Mario
PilotWings Resort
Star Fox 64 3D (port/remake)
Steel Diver (new IP)

Before I start discussing about them, I'd like to mention that at the moment the 3DS is being downplayed for having a lot of ports. We do not have info for the majority of 3DS titles, about the ones we do know most of them are new games. Also people have forgotten that the GBA, DS and PSP were launched with ports of console games. In fact Nintendo released only 1 game when the DS was launched in North America: Super Mario 64 DS.

One more thing, none of these announced games from Nintendo are for the expanded audience. Before you all tell me that nintendogs cats is, Nintendogs and Brain Training were expanded audience games on the DS, on the 3DS these games are for the core audience. So Nintendo will need something new to get new gamers. However, I feel that I need to remind people that on the DS the expanded audience games were released a while after the hardware was released.

Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, and nintendogs cats are sequels to games that sold a lot on the DS. All three of these games have high chances of selling over 10 million units, and they will push hardware. The least is known about Mario Kart, from the images there will be racetracks from Wuhu Island. Animal Crossing will have the player take on the role of the town mayor, while nintendogs cats will have, besides the introduction of cats, the animals react to the players movement via the camera as new things compared to the first.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, Star Fox 64 3D, and Paper Mario will sell mostly to long time Nintendo fans. I think that they will push hardware but not on the scale of the three games above.

Kid Icarus: Uprising and PilotWings Resort can be considered new IPs, seeing as how long it has passed since the last games. It also means that I have no clue how much they will push hardware. PilotWings Resort is set in Wuhu Island, it would be interesting if you could import Miis from your Wii. More info is needed.

And finally Steel Diver, I don't think it will move hardware to be honest. It might pass a million units. I have to say that we do not know how many of the games announced will be released when the 3DS launches.

At the moment Nintendo seems to be trying to get DS users to upgrade and to steal some PSP owners from Sony, I expect that the big N is trying everything to get a Monster Hunter game on the 3DS.

All things considered I believe the 3DS can sell 16 million units in its first 12 months. I need more info to predict after that, it depends on what games Nintendo will bring.

The DS has set the bar pretty high so personally I think the 3DS might just fall short (presuming the DS gets to the 150 million mark, which I'm sure it will). It would be an epic achievement if it did outsell the DS though. If it does have a higher price then DS intially (look's like that will be a certainty) then the 3DS would have more room for price cuts which could help it's cause in the long-run. I suppose the number of redesigns could be a factor. 3DSi XL anyone?

Guys, you're making too much statements before anything is confirmed. We can't know if 3DS will be more successful than DS before its release and we don't know if Sony still intends to release a PSP successor to compete with Nintendo for one more generation.

Why don't we just be a little more patient to start making those statements?

I'd say the chances are slim, it would have to be one hell of a mainstream success to beat the DS.

3D won't do that, more power won't do that, industry support won't do that and all those combined wouldn't do that. The chance of it being more successful lies in the connectivity features, in my opinion. I have a feeling that if done right, the auto-connectivity could make 3DS what DS was in Japan, by lowering the the rate of penetration required to get to the point where the fact that people around you having a (3)DS dramatically increases the value of said console to you.