Financial decline is not even a technical word used in economics alright. They are currently in some economic woes, yes, and that is truly because they did not reach the correct market for the 8th generation. They took a wrong direction with who they were targeting and that has cost them dearly. How ever, every company experiences financial woes, and if a company has not, it is just waiting to happen. Apple experienced a long hard point in history of bad sales and horrible public perception before Steve Jobs returned as CEO and led the company to record breaking sales. GM went through probably the worst financial woe they could go through, filing for bankruptcy and losing market share. However, they have grown since 2008 to become a profitable company, and a much more careful one at that as well. Nintendo wll experience this, and then experience growth. Thats how economics go. I personally do believe it is te social norm to have a negative view of Nintendo now a days. The view of the company is drastically different from the 80's. And that is partially their fault as well, they need to push for a new image in the west, or continue with their mass gaming direction, they just need to make it clear and effective.

^ this was funny!

Maybe because Nintendo is not a child in a bubble and there are things outside of Nintendo that matter. It's called for a reason market "share".
Also nobody cares about handhelds.

As far as I can see, there are two reasons.

A) Nintendo fans are ... passionate about Nintendo. They use words like "charm", "heart", and "whimsical". They have an emotional connection to Nintendo. This means that they will click on Nintendo themed content. Good, bad, ugly, it doesn't matter--if you write it, they will come. That equates to advertising dollars.

2) Nintendo finances are easy to understand. If their gaming product does poorly then they're in trouble. That's incredibly simple to comprehend and it's related to discussions most gamers can talk about semi-coherently--video-games. Microsoft and Sony finances deal with a lot of other stuff, most of which the average gamer is going to know little about. For example, I read a user comment in a Yahoo article not long ago that said, "the Xbox One will be better than the PS4 because Sony is just a TV company while Microsoft has been building computers for decades".

FTR I'm talking in general

The handheld market is shrinking rapidly and their 3DS will be lucky to break half the sales of the DS it replaces, combine that with the near-dead Arcade division and a home console that nobody actually cares about and you find yourself in a situation where the decent success of your handheld is eaten away and then some by your lacklustre home console, stack that up with the increased develoment costs for games and you have cooked yourself a tasty recipie for rapid decline.

My suggestion is heed Kowens posts, even if he is an xbox/microsoft fan, he at least knows what he is talking about.

Pretty sure I heard the same line 10 years ago

Nintendo went from being industry dominating with the Wii to being virtually irrelevant with the Wii U.

Look back to the launch of the PS3 and Sony's problems. You will see the exact same thing. Its not an anti-Nintendo thing, its news that you dont/shouldnt expect to be hearing. Going from record shattering highs to record shattering lows isnt the norm and serious problems are there for all to see. Its gonna be a big talking point when the competition is seemingly doing so well in comparison.

Oh well that settles it then, who cares about vastly different market conditions, sales performance and market positioning, someone said it 10 years ago and it didnt happen so Nintendo are saved.

are you honestly saying that's exclusive to Nintendo fans?