3DS will never outsell PSP.

iOS/Android have done too much damage for that it would seem (poor Vita too, lol). 

Western devs have never supported Nintendo? Tell that to the DS. The software environment between the two consoles is drastically different as is the general volume of game production. The DS was rich with all sorts of developers (no one was going to skip out on that install base.)

And, as I said, they have been burdened with the WiiU. They have barely even maintained the formula you are quoting because they had, in the past, been churning out far more products for their handhelds than they have been now because of the struggles of the WiiU taking up their dev times and, as well, their struggles with taking up HD.

Yes, tablets have changed things. Nintendo was short sighted. No I don't agree with your western point no matter how many times you repeat it.

The 3DS has been in need of a price-cut, one that every predecessor had received by this time but the cost of platform has made it unattractive to Nintendo. We're seeing this in the teetering sales, as well, as late adopters are now not even adopters because the price hasn't changed.

Eh it seemed to me that most Western support for the DS was shovelware crap. 

There were a few decent games and Take 2 even attempted a Grand Theft Auto game, but I don't think it sold to their expectations. 

DS was largely driven by Japanese IP -- Mario, Brain Training, Nintendogs, Mario Kart, Professor Layton, Animal Crossing, Pokemon, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, etc. 

Western devs are making tons of portable games they're just all for the iOS/Android. Minecraft, Angry Birds, Candy Crush, Plants Vs. Zombies, are all break out hits from Western devs. 

The average customer never heard of the New 3DS so it does not impact sales. The numbers only show that there are not enough games, especially 3rd party and that the mobile console market is dying slowly but steadily.

Why buy a 3DS if a smart phone is cheaper, has much higher resolution and more processing power and most games are free or cost less than a third of the 3DS game price? There is no future for mobile gaming consoles!

And the new golden age of JRPGs also only happens on smartphones right now.

psp was actually a beast back then

A lot of the software for the DS was shovelware crap but there was, simply, a consatnt stream of numerous titles (not all of them crap). The system was simply FULL of games, and Nintendo was also streaming out constantly good games. Nintendo is still producing a stream of costantly good games but that stream has been cleaved in two, and we see both ends of the spectrum struggling because of it. There's just so little western aligned coming out at all.

Take 2 did do a GTA game but that had other issues like being fundamentally broken, and not balanced.

And I agree that the DS was largely driven by Japanese IP. Now take that list and tell me how many of those major titles have come out on the 3DS. A new Final Fantasy? Not yet. A new Dragon Quest? Nope. Resident Evil? Nope. There's more than a few IPs that are outright missing this generation for some reason or other.

Those "western developers" aren't developers. Almost all of those games, sans Minecraft, can be made in GameMaker by someone with rudimentary understanding of programming. They may be break-out hits but they are also one-hit wonders in a flooded and cancerous market which is spiraling out of control... a fact that even Apple has gone ahead and admitted as a whole for the entire app market. There's no security in that market because there's no quality control nor is there any sort of legal control on definitions of "free" that undercut every product on the market with rip-offs.

I agree that the handheld market has shrunk, though, don't get me wrong.

Handheld market was so ridiculously different back then. 

Nintendo DS sold 518k(!!!!) in August 2008, that would be more than the PS4 + XB1 + Wii U + 3DS + Vita combined this August (lol). 

Of course this is not the only explanation for the sales decline, but I always saw 3DS as a very Japan centric handheld.

There hasn't been a lot of games recently released in the west to make me change my mind about this.

The New 3DS announcement could not have come at a stranger time IMO-  they are about to release a potential 3DS system seller with Smaah Bros and are getting close to the holiday sales season but they announce a new version that will surely cause many potential 3DS purchasers to hesitate or put off all together getting a 3DS until the "New 3DS" is available at an unspecified time in the future.....

.....unless they think they have pretty well tapped the existing market and now need to sell multiple 3DS s to its existing ownership base