Nice article and goddamn at the interest for 3DS in US, wow. Here's a fun exercise, think back to the Game Boy, how much of the games did people actually play that wasnt Nintendo or Tetris(which was bundled anyway), what about GBC, Advance?? IMHO I actually think it has gotten better. Since GBA and up 3rd party games have been selling well for the most part on their portables, not sure whats going on with 3DS, but its still young

for once i completely agree with Oni
;)
remember the GB? 3rd party games were absolute GARBAGE, and most of them sold terribly,
the situation got better with the GBA and peaked with the DS
the 3DS its still building its library
i think it will never reach the DS levels of 3rd party success/support, but it should do great
the graph looks outdated
the 3DS is very popular right now in the US, Kingdom hearts just launched and did great FW
NSMB2 and the XL should boost the system popularity to new levels

There will definitely be a split as shovelware makers and small devs shift to making penny and dollar games on the iphone, while bigger brands see bigger investments with bigger releases on the 3DS.

Next generation, who knows.

I think this generation is definitely better in quality and quantity so far for Nintendo 3rd Part-wise.

I think that many people are dramatically over-estimating the potential long term growth of the gaming market on phones and tablets ...

The primary reason people buy a cellphone is as a communication device and as a result the majority of people who own these devices with a limited interest in them as gaming devices. Of those who do play videogames on them most are extremely casual gamers who are mostly interested in very simple games. This means that a small portion of smart phone users are looking for games similar to traditional handheld games on these devices. When you consider the multiple form factors (smart phone, small tablet and full sized tablet), the different operating systems (ios, Android, Blackberry, and Windows 8), the multiple generations of hardware 'in the wild' (probably 3 or 4 years of hardware to target), and different capabilities to target different price points ($100 phones for pay as you go to $800 phones for subsidized cellphone plans) the market that does exist is splintered across a pretty diverse series of platforms. Add to all of that the fact that there is (practically) no protection against software theft on these platforms, a market that shows little/no ability to support games that are sold for significantly more than $1 or $5, and that most successful products soon see multiple rip-offs that clone their gameplay to cash in on their success and you start to see a picture that is less damaging to existing handhelds.

Good for you, good parenting.  I know back then at least for me I didnt really care if a game was 3rd party or not. As long as it was good, however I know from what i saw, if you had a GB you had, Tetris, a mario, a pokemon, maybe a Zelda and thats about it. Im not trying to be faciteous but thats literally what most people played on their GBs back then.   As for Kmart thats exactly why those games sell. cheap entertainment to pacify your kids

Yeah 3DS is getting a nice stack(funny considering you have been complaining so much about no games coming to 3DS ;) ) but it anyone BUYING them, thats the question. 

back on topic, its interesting they mentioned COD on DS, those games suck, every subsequent release sold worse and worse, and no cant blame that on advertisement. The first one released when the series started to get real popular (MW1) and sold almost a mil. I think the last one sold 150,000? And the series gets popular year in year out? The only logical conclusion is people figured out they were not good games in general.

Castlevania, IMHO it was never that popular of a series anyway, there was only one entry that sold more than a mil (not counting multiplats) and that was SoTN. I think those DS games problem was A they seem to try to capture the magic of the PS1 game, which will never work because people will always compare them to that and they will like SoTN better and just keep playing that and B there are too many releases they dont give the games time to move units and people will just wait cause they know they are going to put another one out anyway. The games are good though. Dont know what this new one on 3DS will do

now that you mention it, when i had my GB pocket the only nintendo game i had was pokemon. i had battletoads, ninja turtles, yogi bear, an many others. with my game boy advance the same situation: i had all castlevania games, megaman battle network, dragon ball just to name some. and the only nintendo game was mario kart, and well golden sun.

but since the DS things changed, most of my games are fisrt party including in my 3ds.

see its the complete opposite for me (and some of my friends). I only had Nintendo games for GB/GBC, then GBA i started getting a bit more 3rd party games, BOF1& FF6, all 3 Sonic Advances, DS i actually more 3rd party than first, 3DS can go either way as I have only bought 3 games so far and two of those are Ninty, scratch that. I dont see myself buying a 3rd party 3DS game anytime soon. 

Now that's a bloody good read, mate!

Could this be what the great Keiji Inafune stressed us about back in 2010 (and he still does)? One can wonder...

Well, you have to be a numbskull to not see the change that's been going on in the indusrty.