I gotta say, your statement makes a whole lotta sense. It's always hard to tell how well a product will do when all you hear is the ravings of the fan boys.

It'll be very interesting to see how well this does. I'm willing to bet though, that the game attachment rate for Vita (TV) will be atrocious. Why would people wanna play handheld games (that tries to mimic home console games) on the TV when you've got Xbox360 and PS3 (and soon to be released X1 and PS4)?Like I said somewhere else, this is a poor man's console - for those that can't afford a "real" home console and "real" home console games.

Nintendo's hardware is generally on a 5 year cycle.  I think the Wii was the exception at 6.  3DS is 3 now no?  Or going to be.  So Nintendo has a successor in the works already.

I'm a huge Nintendo fanboy. The thought of teaming up with Sony in order to conquer a goal is, quite naturally, disturbing to me. However, if Sony is my companies rival, then Apple is the blackhole that is trying to destroy everything. If Apple takes out Nintendo and Sony in handheld and replaces them with $.99 games everywhere and kills off the ACTUAL handheld game industry, then what is to stop them from doing that to the stationary consoles too? For this reason alone I hope that Vita... (I can't believe I'm saying this...) sells...

well...there I said it!

In response to this, Nintendo's handheld lifespans vary and do not follow the same pattern as home consoles. The original GameBoy hardware was out 1989 to 2001 before the Advance replaced it, yet DS launched in late 2004, before 3DS launched in 2011. There's quite a bit of variation there, though obviously looking at launch dates doesn't tell the full story: whether or not the hardware continues to sell strongly past the launch of a successor system also informs you as to the length of that systems life span.

In response to the thread, I can't see that happening, and I think including Vita TV unit sales as "portable" sales is nonsense. Sony have taken some of Vita's aspects (the non-portable aspects) and created a micro-console. Vita as a handheld system has not yet gained, and does not appear to be able to gain, any mass market traction, and as I have said, I do not count Vita TV as a portable console, even if it is an extension/version of the Vita hardware. 3DS is tracking behind DS, and although I believe the combination of 2DS and Pokemon will give the system a strong boost, I do not see that being strong enough to match the runaway success of DS. At absolute best I see 3DS hitting 120 million, if Nintendo keep it as their primary system beyond 2016, but given how turbulent the entire industry is (particularly the portable sector), I think Nintendo will need another handheld before 2017. I'd peg 3DS at a certainty to get to 100 million, though.

I'm not somebody who buys the myth that convergent devices, and in this case smartphones, tablets etc have ruined the market for games dedicated consoles and in particular portables, but I also don't see enough evidence that Sony and Nintendo anticipated how much of a challenge iOS and Android represent as platforms and how much those platforms have disrupted the industry. The Vita and 3DS launched as yesterday's vision of the future, even though both are great systems in their own right. All three manufacturers need to work harder to continue to grow the market for gaming prioritised hardware (can we really say "gaming dedicated" any more?), and I think it's particularly true Nintendo and Sony need to work harder if they want portable consoles to remain a viable or growing business into the next decade. 

Given Sony are experimenting with Vita TV, I think they are preparing to give up on the portable sector, and given Nintendo's struggles and lack of direction with Wii U, I think Nintendo will be seriously rethinking what kind of hardware they launch post-3DS and Wii U.

While I highly doubt 3DS+Vita can hit 200million lifetime combined sales, that would still be a reduction of the handheld market from last gen (DS+PSP are around 230 I believe). My guess is the 3DS (with 2DS and Nintendo pulling out all the stops) will settle somewere right around 100-110 Million and PSVita (including VITA.TV and what ever else they are able to do to entice buyers) will get somewhere around 30-40 Million.

my vision of 230 to 150 means the dedicated handheld market would have shrunk to roughly 65% of what it was last gen.

or your goal of a drop from 230 to 200 means it would have only shrunk to 87% of what it was last gen. Still a lot better but would be the first major decline in handheld gaming gen over gen I believe (Gameboy numbers being over GBA numbers on this site is a little misleading as Gameboy includes the original in 1989 all the way to GameBoy Color which kept selling a little after GBA's release in 2001)

ONE OF US...ONE OF US...

Seriously though, I agree, and as a Vita owner feel the same way about the 3DS. I don't want mobile to be the end all be all for handheld gaming; touch doesn't work well for the kind of games I like, and I prefer having buttons and such.

touch screens work with inventory perfectly, other than that maybe maps and such but as controls go... Buttons for life lol

It's already huge.

Have you not seen iPhone and Android sales? Have you not seen developers acknowledging that growth and shifting resources to those devices?