I think the handhelds have become hardcore gaming machines, by that I mean that in the past they were seen as far more casual than a home console but that is no longer true because the casuals have moved to tablets or cell phones.
3DS lost the Nintendogs, Brain Age crowd the DS had, those 2 titles combined sold over 50 million units IIRC.
Nowadays the 3DS is bought mainly by people who like Nintendo games and RPGs.
You also see this in how bad minigame collections are selling.

Sony lost similar amounts during the early years of the PS3. People are so quick to forget that. Even with the recent success of the PS3 Sony is still in the negatives. 

Opening explanations by the President 
at the press conference regarding full-year financial forecast
and dividend forecast modifications

As for advertising expenses, and research and development expense forecasts, we made revisions to increase them by eight billion yen and 15 billion yen respectively from their forecasts made at the beginning of this fiscal year. We expect advertising expenses to increase due to the effect of the expenses incurred in foreign currencies to be converted into Japanese yen by using weaker yen rates. The estimated increase of research and development expenses is based on reflecting our ongoing enhancement of the development structure, and new research and development activities. These increases contributed to lowered estimated profit forecasts.

Sony lost much more than 240 million dollars.
And Nintendo lost over 500 million dollars 2 fiscal years ago IIRC. This is their second loss since they have been in the videogame business.

I still think they should make a profit this year. Mario Kart and Smash Bros should singlehandedly sell millions of consoles, and with a better install base there software will sell better.

But it would be a miracle to reach N64 level.

Lets see:

Nintendo has not meet any of their projections in the new gen (February 2011 for them) and have revisied down almost each quarter.

Nintendo has not made any money this gen (operating income wise) they made a slight profilt after Yen boosting last year to the tune of 5 million dollars.

The Strong yen only provided a small boost of 10 billion yen from -35 billion (operating loss) to -25 billion (net loss)

3DS has peaked
Wii U not even going to mention

like many have said the importance of 3rd parties are starting to make their present known. I was mocked by a user just hours ago from mentioning the lack of 3rd party sales on the 3DS despite the 11 million userbase, thank you Nintendo for proving me right!

Brain Age from 20 million to 26k (plus bad in Europe and Japan) but cellphones are not having an effect.

Now lets look at the upcoming quarter.

Nintendo expects 13.5 million 3DS for March 2014.

The system so far this year in Japan, even with a new Kirby is down 40% (3DS's main market)

In the UK, the last two weeks have shown little to no 3DS software and despite pokemon and the 2DS, they struggled to get it positive y/y (only +4%)

US, lack of NPD information and generally slow 1Q means i dont see them matching whatever they had last year.

so that 13.5 number will probably be in Jeopardy also.

That's rough. We knew they wouldn't meet their target, but seeing it on paper makes the reality sink in even harder. The problem with Nintendo is that they make two systems at a time and games for those systems. There is little room for error, whereas Sony and Microsoft can bleed cash for years and be fine since their gaming departments are part of much larger corporations. Nintendo simply cannot sell a system at a loss and that was probably the number one mistake of the Wii U (among many). Because of that factor, another pricecut, and even the first one, simply add to their losses, and software sales is not offsetting these losses. They need to bundle Mario Kart 8 from day one. Otherwise that game and Smash won't have enough impact. I don't know about a model without the gamepad. If they can produce it and sell it (not at a loss) for $200, then it's worth a try. There aren't many other options at this point.

ISN'T SONY GOING BANKRUPT

Wow, this is a big deal. Not because the loss is so big (Nintendo could post losses like this for the next 50 years and still be around) but because this a year Nintendo should be raking it in. 3DS should be in its peak for revenue and Wii U is in year 2. But Wii U bombed this year and it's dragging the business down. For better or worse, I expect big changes. I only hope they are for the better.

As far as Iwata goes, I think he's done a fairly good job. But he's failed on a couple fronts, the single biggest one being sitting on cash. They should have purchased several AAA studios - or started them - 3 years ago and had them focus on HD software development. They have also missed on the trend of the industry right now somewhat, messing up the Wii U design a little (though the tablet idea had its heart in the right place). The botched Wii U launch, between design, lack of preparation, lack of software, poor software choice, terrible marketing... is a major error. Nintendo needs the US to be a major market, and it really seems like they should have pumped some money into NoA, allowing it to pick up some studios, do better marketing, buy some exclusives or other initiatives to battle Sony and MS in this market.