What makes the 3DS unique outside of the 3D screen? 

It's a DS with slightly better than PSP graphics otherwise. 

What makes the 3DS unique outside of the 3D screen? 

It's a DS with slightly better than PSP graphics otherwise. 

What makes the 3DS unique outside of the 3D screen? 

It's a DS with slightly better than PSP graphics otherwise. 

The consumer will decide.

If the Wii U is still selling under Nintendo's internal expectations even after Mario Kart is released, then I think Nintendo will start to abandon the idea and try to just get out of the generation treading water.

The best way to do that might plausibly be to simply re-position the machine as a budget "Wii 2", and cut your losses otherwise.

If by spring 2014 the system is still missing sales targets ... Nintendo probably has to do something drastic.

I'm actually not convinced Mario Kart is the be-all/end-all for Wii U. NSMB Wii sold 30+ million on the original Wii too ... it hasn't been able to do much for the Wii U. The problem isn't Mario. 

The problem is people don't like the console concept to begin with and I think Nintendo can throw all the Mario in the world at the problem, but it won't solve the root of the issue -- this isn't like the Wii where people loved the idea of motion gaming for a few years anyway. No one aside from Nintendo's most ardent cheerleaders give much of a hoot about "asymeteric gaming", not even Nintendo's own design teams that barely utilize the function. 

The fact is it's kind of a silly idea to begin with. Unlike the DS dual screens, you can't really functionally look at what's on the game pad screen and the TV screen at the same time. You have to stop and look down and it effectively breaks the flow of the game. The game applications for a feature like this are just extremely limited. 

Pac-Man VS. was a sales dud on the GameCube ten years ago ... making a console basically based around that idea 10 years later was always asking for trouble. 

Don't think they won't. When you include a peripheral in every box and allow devs to trust that it will be in every unit you can't just take it. It's like Vita TV, without the touchscreen and rear touch, a lot of games won't be compatible (first part titles may be patched), but in this case they are lowering the price to US$100 and turning it on a home console, so it may be worthy the trade-off. So, you just do it if the trade-off is a good thing.

Actually, after seeing so much hardware gens, I don't think that being unique helps. The box with decent specs, balanced price and good games always wins. It's more like balancing how much power you can put in a good price point and gathering games (first or third party).

Why?

Why?

Why?