http://gamasutra.com/view/news/180524/Nintendos_core_handheld_market_is_stable.php#.UJKOdYaz4po

This is an excellent article to read. It shows the sales of the GBA, DS, and 3DS together, and shows how the DS was really a perfect storm of sorts that hit the market at the perfect time in the perfect way, and cannot be replicated again. While Nintendo lost those non-gamers who didn't have that much of a real interest in gaming, they've actually grown their core user base of real gamers over the years.

Or... is this all spin? How do you guys feel about this? (Please disregard his comment about the Vita, I felt it was out of place too).

I haven't read it fully but it looks to be a lot better done than most video game journalism/analysis. I'm sick of hearing smartphone gaming is the future, hand held systems will be extinct, graphs comparing revenue while ignoring system life cycles, etc.  Sure smartphone gaming might eventually have a major impact on dedicated hand held sales (perhaps in 10 or so years but not anytime soon) but I believe Nintendo will definitely release a successor to the 3DS. Hopefully, it will be more of a game changer like the DS was when it released.

Well 3ds is surviving on pure Nintendo time tested IPs and is an attractive price. If anybody can survive the growing gaming phone/tablets trend, its them.

Vita offcourse doesnt have Nintendos luxuries.

Great article.

The key passage is this:

"Nintendo's core market is still intact, and that they are still growing their market. The explosive growth of gaming on mobile platforms could mostly be additive to the overall market, without threatening Nintendo."

I've always thought the doom and gloom from industry analysts vis-a-vis smart devices and dedicated handhelds was out of touch with reality. It's nice to see some data supporting that.

Nintendo has perfect games for portable consoles and it's why they do so good in the handheld market. People will always rush out to buy Mario and Pokemon so this isn't going to change. The 3DS will continue to be successful and as soon as a mainline pokemon gets released it will explode. The mobile market isn't effecting Nintendo at all. And as far as the Vita, it's not that it can't compete, they just need to make it more compelling to the handheld market instead of targeting the console market.

I find most analysis of the video game market rather shallow, and it seems most people fail to consider that people can own multiple devices that play video games; and play games on each of these devices.

(Roughly) 40% of people who play games on a console (Wii, DS, PS3, PSP, or XBox 360), tablet, or PC play games on 2 or more types of these devices; this is up from (roughly) 30% in 2009. I could be wrong but I suspect that by 2016 60% of people who play videogames will play on multiple kinds of devices.

In my opinion, what tablets and smartphones have done is really brought to the forefront people who were playing flash and simple puzzle games; and it has not really impacted the "bread and butter" of any existing platforms. The handheld gaming system has probably seen the greatest impact being that the GBA and Nintendo DS were full of these kinds of games, but I still notice these games being made for the system; and they're now moving to being digitally distributed at low cost (often in a cross platform fashion with the tablets and smartphones).

Now that was a great post

Just wait for MS to take control of the mobile market and then dedicated handhelds will become obsolete.

That is going to be a long wait.  Let me know when they achieve a 10% market share of the mobile market.