Wii U desperately needs games that compel people to buy it in order to play them. If people can play Smash elsewhere, that hurts Wii U. They are pushing themselves out of the home console space with their own portable.

You're exaggerating the problem. Does Link Between Worlds hurt the Wii U because Zelda U will be made? Does Yoshi's Island hurt the Wii U because of Yarn Yoshi? Does Mario Kart 7 hurt the Wii U?

Realistically, Smash has a fanbase of about 10 million, give or take a couple mil. Many of them likely already own a Wii U. Many likely have no intention of buying a 3DS due to some aversion to handhelds. Many who own a 3DS will choose the Wii U version, anyway, and some will buy both.

Dont worry so much about Nintendo's business decisions. I promise everyone in charge of that company is far more capable of managing it than the the entirety of the VGChartz community. Worry instead about the awesome games you're going to get to play this year on both of your Nintendo platforms.

I would dearly love to believe that, but looking at their decisions over the last three years I'm not so sure...

I'm sure many of the individuals on this site could single-handedly manage a multi-million dollar company. The only qualification required to literally run Nintendo is that you must like playing video games.

You bet they will. One of the multitude of problems the Wii U has is convincing people it's worth buying a new system to play games that are already available on the cheaper and more popular 2/3DS. Releasing Smash on the 3DS will definitely eat away at Wii U sales and affect its ability to sell systems. (Of course it will still improve hardware sales a lot, but not as much as it could have.)

And don't be silly. We're on this forum to discuss sales and company performance. Burying our heads in the sand and childishly believing that Iwata and co. aren't doing an awful job of managing Nintendo is just wilful ignorance.

And a grasp of the current market, which Nintendo does not seem to have at all.

Claiming they're doing a terrible job would kind of be biting the hand that feeds me when I'm playing all of their games. It would also be incredibly presumptuous of me, since there's no way I could do a better job myself. And it could be a LOT worse. Compare them to any of the publishers going all-in on mobile or whining about 2-4 million sales for B-tier franchises.

The 3DS isn't hurting the Wii U. The Wii U is hurting the Wiii U. Abandoning their plans to profit by making games for their successful console and instead focusing solely on making games for their console no one cares about would only hurt Nintendo's bottom line.

Is that really a problem though? The sooner the gaming industry moves away from consoles and onto handhelds the better in my opinion.

The day gaming moves away from consoles and onto handhelds is the day I stop gaming.

The games seem significantly different, ex different controls, different maps, trophies etc. so I don't expect cross buy.