Yea, that makes sense to me although I am not really sure loll. The Original 3ds launched at March but then the XL launched July-August and the 2ds launched in October so it really could be anyone's guess. I say the latest will be in August cause they could just want to wait for e3 and announce it with more games but I am not too sure

i think it makes sense to time the release to a game that will actually use the right nub thing. mh4 and ssb4 were perfect for this w/ the japanese launch, and i can see a 3d game like codename s.t.e.a.m. making use of it, too, plus xenoblade obviously.

leaning towards march, in other words.

I hope they announce that Paper Mario 5  that was on twitter on the ND as well!

I am predicting early-March, as well.  Nintendo was hoping to sell 12 million 3DS's before the end of the fiscal year (March 31st) and I know they are quite a bit short of that figure, right now.  Launching the New 3DS sometime in early March in North America might help Nintendo squeeze another million units sold before the end of the fiscal year.

added rodea, story of seasons and detective pikachu

I think it will get a Diddy Kong Racing, another Fire Emblem, maybe a New Super Mario Bros. 3 or Wario Land platformer, and hopefully a new Advance Wars (maybe eShop only).

And I think there will be an Amiibo Universe type central hub game coming next year too for both 3DS and Wii U.

So there's still quite a bit of software to go. I think New 3DS will stick around for a while as a budget platform for Nintendo because the Fusion handheld will likely be in the $200-$220 range, so having having New 3DS for cheap for a couple of years will ease that transition for Nintendo and give kids/parents a cheap way of accessing Amiibo toys.

We need a FE PoR+RD for the new 3DS, now that Fire EMblem is more popular than ever. They could try to popularise Advance Wars as well. Also, we miss 2D Metroid.

agree with this. basically they've done this before--only time they didn't was the gbc and that's because that was 12-year-old 8-bit technology. gba stuck around for another 3 yrs after ds was released in 2004, and it sold well well into 2006 (when ds took off big time with the ds lite). i see new 3ds as dropping a little in price in 2016 (when new handheld will be announced), maybe 149.99/169.99 for the topline sku (new 3ds xl) and 99.99/129.99 for the regular new 3ds with faceplates, with the 2ds possibly at 79.99/99.99. that's already happened with the new clear blue and red 2ds skus, so i definitely see that sticking.

seems most everyone agrees on a kind of hub amiibo title, prob. cross-platform with wii u. intrigued to see what comes out of that, i hope it's actually a decent game by itself, even if it does require amiibo to play.