You're wrong . I knew it was gonna be huge, especially thanks to joint launch+bundle with MH4G. Japan are more hardcore about their handhelds than the west.

Again, let's wait to see the legs this will have, there's no denying FW sales are hardly indicating of lifetime sales.

You can keep expecting it to be another HH but you'll be dissapointed, your better off believing WiiU>PS4 lifetime WW. Thats 1000x more likely.

Well, i underestimated you! I agree we have to wait a couple months for it overall, but here are a few things to keep notice of reguarding N3DS.

~N3DS LL completely sold out first 2-3 days, the by far more popular of the 2 sku's

~N3DS currently reporting to sold out in the past day or 2.

~N3DS LL 2nd week wont be as much (lke it potentially could have been Ex: SSB3DS) due to many stores still not having their shipments in yet.

~N3DS/LL has one of the highest launches of all HW revisions/upgrades of all time in Japan

I would love to see it, being that the 3DS is my favorite system ever, but I do not think it will happen. It's at about 45M now, the New 3DS is not enough to push it to 100M. It would need AT LEAST the following: Generation 7 of Pokemon, the successor to release in late 2018 the earliest, and a surprisingly strong lineup from now on.

Yet the DS had direct competition and still blew way past 100 million. The 3DS going above 100 million is inevitable.

3DS has competition, but it has no "diect" competitor. There is a difference, unless you consider your legs a direct competitor to an automobile. Nintendo essentially has a monopoly on handheld gaming, again.

The power of the handheld doesn't define the handheld.  The exclusives do.  If the New 3DS has a lot of retail exclusives that don't play on the regular 3DS, then it's a new handheld.

So far, it has 1 port exclusive, it launched in japan with 0 N3DS exclusives and none for at least 3 months will be releasing. Its definitely not goingto have a ton of exclusives, we kno a couple games releasing and all but XC will be compatible with 3ds.

Eh, the actual userbase for every console is smaller than the sales numbers. I know people who've bought multiple PS2s,  PSP versions, multiple DS versions, multiple 360s, multiple Vitas. I know people who've owned a Wii and then picked up one or two used Wiis as well to experiment on, that's two fewer Wiis actually in homes right there. (and these examples are not all the same person) Also electronics fail and get rebought or thrown away. The only thing we can do is track the money that changes hands at the counter.

Keeping the 3DS selling isn't really all about userbase. It's about continued sales revenue, continued interest, continued shelf space, and just the notion that in general people are still willing to spend money on the system's games. And with the new 3DS it's also about extending new opportunities to developers because this version is more powerful with added buttons, so the more it sells the more those features will be used.

When it comes to userbase one metric could be online accounts. End of October last year MS had sold ~79.5m 360s and reported 48m Live accounts. Not every active owner would sign up for the free account when prompted but I'm sure a significant majority have. (I don't know anyone who hasn't.)

It won't. It'll end with 70m-90m, somewhere in between. Quite good if you ask me for a dedicated handheld console considering the current climate.