They could turn it into an iPod Touch sort of multimedia device for $150. People who don't want expensive gadgets would buy the 3DS for its variety of features, which already include playing music, art programs, messaging, a pedometer, photography, video recording, etc.

Wait, Nintendo could take 500 million losses yearly before dying? But Sony, who lost billions each year for the past 10 years or so doesn't even come close? LOL

Lets see reaction of Nintendo shareholders when they see Nintendo post a 5 billion loss like Sony did.

If I have time later, I'll post a line by line rebuttal to that article.  It's full of more fecal matter than a compost factory

Nintendo will win because they get us while we're young. I will always be a Nintendo fan just like I will always be a Disney fan. My kid will be a Nintendo fan because she's too young for an iPod, Kindle, etc. She has a 3DS and a DSi. Everything else she games on is mine. She's a Nintendo fan for life now, too.

Nintendo is Wii-deep in casualties.

Sony is at a point where it cannot take major losses anymore. Sony also has far more divisions but it cannot take 500-mill to 1 Billion in losses on its PlayStation brand for long. If Sony took losses on PlayStation Orbis/Vita as they did with PS3 then PlayStation will die. Sony would be unable to sustain such losses at this point in their lives.

Nintendo on the other hand has been consistently profitable ever since it entered the games industry. It has billions in reserve and could take Sony PS3 level hits for two generations. Nintendo could take 2012 fiscal year losses for about three generations. Sony on the other hand is not in that position another PS3 level loss would kill PlayStation as a console brand. Sony will need to likely drop the PlayStation hardware instead making PlayStation tablets, phones and smart TV's, computers. If Sony wanted to remain in the home industry they could license out the next PlayStation 2017 to a third party hardware manufacturer!

But if Sony takes PS3 level losses again, the PlayStation brand will have to change drastically or die!

Wasn't it 26 billion US dollars they have in their "war chest" at the beinging of the Gamecube era and that was nearly 10 years ago, I know they used some of their Wii profits to buy back a big chunk of their public stock a few years ago. (It caused a scare at the time because of that their profits shrunk for that year.) Sega was bleeding money for several years before they had to drop their hardware division. Atari limped on for about 11 years after the 1985 crash before they closed down. (Then sold their name to Infograms (Or what ever they were called before)). Nintendo has not been good with their generation changes since the end of the SNES, which they see a drop in their profits. And this just happened when the yen strength wasn't in their favor.

They sould see modest profits this year. I like to go with this alagory a lot lately but if Sony can be compared to GM, Nintendo can be comapared to Ford at the begining of aughts. When the recessesion started to hit the car industry Ford sold executive perks and the CEO took a pay cut (He cut his salery to $1 a year, though he still had his stock etc) and Ford was profitable so they where the only car company of the supposed "big three" who didn't take or need federal bailout money. (The big three "US" car makers use to be GM, Ford and Chrysler, but it really is two now since Chrysler hasn't been an American owned car company since the 90's when they were bought by Dimler then Fiat)

To put it in short all Nintendo needs to do is streamline their overhead, Sony has a lot of cuting and pasting to do because I don't think the Japanese government will bail them out like the US did with GM.

BLKPALADIN Nintendo's net worth was higher then 23 million but to my knowledge they only had 13-billion in reserve. Today I have heard that is above 18 billion, Nintendo could sustain massive losses PS3 style losses for two to three generations. Even once Nintendo runs out of its reserves the company has enough assets it could sell to keep it running another 2 generations of PS3 losses before the company would genuinely be dead.

Nintendo is not going anywhere. The company would not allow itself to take PS3 level losses more then a generation either. In fact it is doubtful they would be willing to take them even one generation. Even at their worst Nintendo has always been profitable till this last fiscal year!

The reason Nintendo took a loss was its choice to go for market share over profit margins. Nintendo has realized with Wii/DS that having a superior market share is far more lucrative in the long run then a smaller marketshare that is profitable. In other words they are adapting Sony and Microsoft's business model a tad. Though unlike Sony Nintendo is not going to take a billion to two billion dollar loss launching a new platform! A 500 million dollar loss is nothing and very reasonable!

Yeah I'm tired and I wasn't going to do research to jog my hazy memory. But yeah that sounds correct. As I continued to edit my orginal post, I added, this (the yen/price drop with the 3DS) just happened during their downswing that they seem to get at the end of each console gen. They are a healthy company and one of the only companies that I see that would survive the oft predicted contraction in the game-only console market. (Its coming the question is when)

And to add to the post above: That is why they are one of the few companies in the world that still give out dividens (gosh my spelling is normally bad....), I think Disney is another. They have 0 debt, cash on hand so they can afford to share the wealth with their stock holders.

My malware software refuses to let me look on the first page. So I shall say this:

No. Nintendo have enough money, IP's and knowledge to adapt. And record sales for the 3DS prove that there's still a market for handhelds.