I'm enjoying the hell out of my 3ds right now. Gonna be interesting to see what the next gen has in store. Nintendo has got to innovate on their handhelds again IMO.

Handheld consoles made by Sony; probable. By Nintendo? No.

The only reason the LTD number for the 3DS and PSV in 2017 is so low is because of the PSV. The 3DS is not as big as the DS, but that was expected. If it manages to perform on the level of the GBA then it would be quite the success.

Phones are the latest tread right now. They out perform consoles and have a vast library of games. That won't always be the case. The era that smartphones do the most damage handheld consoles is right now, not the future. Yet the 3ds still clings onto a good market because enough people see the advantages so a handheld console. The comfort of the controls and the library of games.

Mobile cpu power is going to hit a wall soon and then handheld devices, both phone and console, will be almost on a par, cpu tech wise. Console will probably be underclocked for battery life because they're designed for playing games long periods of time. But the graphics will probably look close in many cases.

I can see handhelds making a comeback. Though there might be a market for a good Android powered handheld console in the future.

If I'm a parent, why should I pay even $120 for a handheld device and $40 for a game, when I can just hand my kid the family iPad and let them play Angry Birds?

And here's one thing that might be a shocker ... a lot of kids simply prefer tablets. The screen is larger, touching/reaching for things is the most intuitive thing for most kids so a touch only interface makes perfect sense to them. A tablet not only plays games but can only have video (cartoons) too easily loaded onto it. And quite frankly kids want to use what mommy/daddy is using, they see mommy using it, they want to use it too. They don't want the 3DS or Vita. 

I always see a huge row of kids around the iPad/Apple section in many stores, whereas the 3DS/Vita demo units have no one around them. At an airport I see dozens of kids happily playing away on their parents iPhone/iPad/Android tablet, and maybe one family of kids who have a 3DS. When I go to family outings, I'm always a little suprised that kids as young as 3 are already able to play on their mom/dad's phone or something. This is happening people, hardcore gamers just have stuck their head in the sand and tried to deny it, but now the truth is becoming irrevoicable. 

Angry Birds only came out in December of 2009 btw and iOS app store only opened in the summer of 2009. Maybe its coincidence but the traditional handheld market has declined every year since 2009, hitting a new low this year despite Nintendo throwing several huge titles at the market (including the biggest gun, Pokemon X/Y) and offering a new, cheaper model in the 2DS. 

Nintendo's made mistakes sure, but fact is its pretty damn hard to compete with a platform that offers hundreds, even thousands of FREE games. 

And the "b, bu, but buttons!" arguement doesn't fly anymore, Nintendo opened Pandora's box with the whole touch/motion button free interfaces, the fact is iOS/Android simply took that idea to its natural extreme and offers a price for games that no one can argue with. Nintendo has thrown plenty of high quality games at the 3DS (Mario, Kirby, Zelda, Animal Crossing, Pokemon, Brain Training, Nintendogs, Luigi's Mansion, Fire Emblem, Mario Kart ... and honestly the 3DS versions of these games in many cases are better than the DS equivalents). 

Because professional cameras went extinct after the mobile phone boom? Please, untill there are people willing to make money on a smaller install base, dedicated handhelds will exist.

If the Nintendo Fusion is an indicator then the answer to handheld consoles going extinct is both yes and no.

Well actually sales of the mid-size/pocket camera have basically gone down the toliet. The market for cameras now is high-end DSLRs for adults who want really high quality photos. 

But the handheld gaming market isn't quite like that, for starters, the handheld gaming market isn't mostly adults, it's largely kids, and kids need to go through mommy/daddy to get a handheld. The "high enthusiast" market for portable gaming isn't that strong, most older gamers don't bother with portable gaming at all, they want their 50-inch screen + Madden/COD/etc. If they get the itch to pass some time in between work/school/friends, a few minutes of Candy Crush gets the job done and adults hate having to carry around more devices than they have to. 

To be honest too I think we just assume because we're core gamers that kids must like what we like ... a lot of kids genuinely prefer tablet/phone gaming. They have access to a huge variety of games, once they get bored of one, they can download another, the touch interface is extremely intuitive to them, and if they want to play a "real" game ... that's what their XBox/Playstation/Wii sitting at home is for. 

The whole premise of your argument is false.

People buy Nintendo consoles to play Nintendo games and Nintendo games are not available on IOS/Android.

In past Nintendo had deal with machines like the one above which were cheap came with a lot of games for "free"

Did those machines prevent Nintendo consoles of selling well? No

Why? Nintendo software.

What is happening now is the same that happened with the GameCube and N64, Nintendo makes wrong hardware and software, consequently people stop buying their systems.

If New Super Mario 2 was launch tile and had the right production values the game would be much more successful and would move much more hardware. However Nintendo decided to create Mario 3D Land.

Notice that games like the new Pokémon and Animal Crossing not only sold well, but helped to move hardware as well. Why? Because Nintendo put a lot of effort into them unlike Nintendogs and NSM2.

If we look at the 3DS, compared to the DS, it is much more expensive to develop for it. This means that Nintendo cannot keep releasing games for it like they did with the DS (third parties cannot too). Less software means less hardware sold, especially because Nintendo did not increase the number of employees to be able to keep producing games as fast as they were in past. So even if a couple of games like Pokémon and AC can move hardware Nintendo cannot keep the momentum of the console due the lack of games.

The moment Nintendo realizes that they need to go back to the NES/Wii/GB/DS philosophy their will see their sales increasing again. They also need to realize that they need to increase the size and the number of their teams ASAP (hope that new building they made was for this reason).

When you use the samples of the stores. I can contradict you because every single cousins I have love their Wii's and DS's and think that tablets/smartphones games are crap. They love Mario, Kirby, Just Dance, Smash Bross, Mario Kart, etc. What those games have in common? They are not available on the iOS/Android. The funny thing this that both samples (yours and mine) are pointless, if you had studied statistics you would know that and not would use it on a discussion. You can "prove" wherever you want by using "samples" you see on your daily life.

Oddly, when you talk about the prince of 3DS and the price of its games you are essentially agreeing with me when I complained that both are above what they were supposed to be.

Angry Birds was released during the best DS moment of the year for the console, and, despite becoming a instant social phenomenon, it had no impact at all on the DS sales. Before AB many other games were released for smartphones, none of them prevented the DS of selling well.

There is a reason I talk about interface. It is because I've studied a lot about how to make games when I was at the college. Furthermore, my girlfriend (which is a designer) agrees with me about the 3DS hardware been full of pointless features (She has 2 DS's and 3DS). Notice that while you talk about buttons and screens, I talk about interface. This shows the difference in the level of abstraction I'm talking about. So when I say that the 3DS has usability issues it is because I know exactly what I am talk about, after all I've spent years of my life studding and coding games.

If I were a parent the last thing I would give to my sons would be a tablet. Tablets are expensive, games are horrible and their screens are easy to break. I would rather buy a Wii or DSi with a 2D Mario game which is much more cheap and almost industructible.

I really won't miss handheld consoles. I had a Sega Game Gear back in the day. Sure, it was fun, but, there's nothing like a BEAST gaming PC!

Pokémon & Resident Evil & Monsterr Hunter & Kid Icarus: Uprising & so fort, are way much more better on Handheld then Home Consoles, and I don't see people wanting Resident Evil on Home Consoles after playing Resident Evil: Revelations on the 3DS, which is still the definitive version.

I can't imagine playing such games as "Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memior" & Castlevania & 2D sprite graphic games & Platformer genre games & etc., without the 3DS.

We're at the point were both Handhelds & Home Consoles can't do the same for us, as each other.
Besides unless the 3DS stops selling around DS numbers, I just don't see Nintendo ever stopping their own Handheld, I mean they won't even release a new system to replace the Wii U this E3.