mario and pokemon 3ds, one any other year...

-A headstart. Releasing early and getting a holiday season under its belt tends to work very well. With that, the PSV already has to play catch up.

-A good price. There's a lot of people who just don't see themselves paying over $200 for a portable. If the 3DS is priced below that, it should do better than the more expensive PSV.

-Portable franchises. There's an audience for "the console experience" on portables. There's a bigger audience for "bite sized games" that can be started and stopped at a moments notice. Certain RPG's, Pokemon, Mario Games (especially Mario Kart) really fill the niche.

-A gimmick. This is like a dirty word among the gaming community, but what's wrong with a feature that makes a product unique? 3D turned out to not be that gimmick (or maybe it wasn't enough to overcome the price barrier). Doing something extremely creative with Spot Pass or AR cards could be.....but then PSV has a variation of Spot Pass and AR, too.

-Positive buzz. It needs something to get people really talking. It needs some sort of worldwide phenomenon that kids will obsess over. Is Pokemon still that phenomenon? Can the Kid Icarus trading card AR game become that phenomenon?

I personally plan on buying a PSV but I have to wonder what the PSV will have to do to compete with the 3DS.

be a nintendo handheld.

As I just posted in another thread: The 3DS needs to let its users communicate. Nintendo is so scared that somebody is going to use their devices to kidnap a child that they don't want to let anybody talk or send direct friend requests or messages or pics or anything. As much as I love playing my 3DS, it is often times, a lonely experience (I don't know anybody else that owns one). Playing online with somebody that I will never meet again or can't even talk to doesn't exactly alleviate the situation, either.

Fix this, Nintendo. Fix this as soon as possible.

Shovelware. With some more of that, combined with currently announced support, the 3DS should win.

You beat me to it. Monster Hunter is all it needs to beat Vita. At least in Japan.
Everywhere else it needs Pokemon(though this will really help in Japan as well).

Maybe a new Dragon Quest (DQXI maybe) for Japan. Like DQ9 is for DS in Japan.
I agree Monster Hunter can help 3DS for that too.

it needs pokemon and/or a 2d mario. thats like 30m+

it would be a shock if it needed anything

a bit off topic but i don't watch much telly so miss adverts but i was watching the football and saw a new 3DS ad here in the UK,they have really changed it from earlier explaining everything about it as in old/new games,games you expect and games you don't expect,hardly mentioning the 3D,talking about new power/gen and right at the end saying this is not the DS this is the 3DS £149,good new thorough advert

thats funny because in this new advert i saw they mentioned it has good online abilites,i assumed this meant communication aswell