New 3ds/xl will release  in the west in 2015!so 4 years since original 3ds released and three years since 3ds xl released there!In comparison,the more successful original dsi and dsi xl had two year and one year respectively and then 3DS came...!

Oh that was my mistake. Somehow missed the 3DS part. My apologies to all, i wasn't trying to troll.

OT: The 3DS was fairly quite until after the summer, with pokemon and smash coming out. I'm not sure why we needed another version of the 3DS so soon though.

The 3DS is doing great. 2013 will just be its peak year, unless the New 3DS stirs things up next year in the rest of the world. People trying to compare the 3DS to the DS are setting themselves up for failure. The DS is the highest selling handheld of all time, so obviously anything that comes after will seem lackluster.

Considering the 3DS is now competing with the booming mobile market consisting of phones and tablets, it's doing extremely well for itself. In fact, it's doing on par with other Nintendo handhelds like the GameBoy. Just not the DS, clearly.

Nobody is comparing it to DS, the OP is comparing 2014 sales to 2013 sales. YOY, 3DS is showing a very large drop, 2013-14.4 million vs 2014-9.5ish million. That's down about 35% YoY which is pretty significant.

I know, I'm just referring to people that have been comparing them and citing that as a reason why even though the 3DS isn't doing as well, as a handheld in 2014 it did pretty good. 

There really just wasn't as huge of software this year. We had Smash, Bravely Default, Kirby, Pokemon, etc. but 2013 had Fire Emblem, Luigi's Mansion, Animal Crossing, Zelda, Shin Megami Tensei, Pokemon, DK, etc. Which is really hard to beat. I think the software in 2013 really pushed it as far as possible and they could only go down from there, which is natural after a peak year.

In the west, the announcement of the N3DS has a lot of costumers waiting for the new model instead of buying the old ones. It needed an international release. But in general all consoles sales are mediocre, the only exception is the PS4. The 3DS is not over yet, there is still space for more games: 2D Metroid, Advance Wars, another Fire Emblem (now that the franchise is popular), another Professor Layton, a good Pokemon spinoff, the arrival of Youkai Watch to the west, all of the GC/Wii ports possible with the N3DS...

Yes especially with the New 3DS. It nearly (and probably will) sold more than the PS Vita did this year, in Japan. 

None of the above. Mobile is, and will continue, to eat handheld's lunch. I expect next gen to be even worse.

I think people are really overstating the effect of the New 3DS announcement. Sales in the west were down by a pretty solid margin all year, even in the months before the announcement.

The OP even states that it was expected for 3DS to be down this year considering the excellent lineup 2013 had. Being down by about 5 million or roughly 35% is pretty drastic tho. If 3DS were down 15-20% then this discussion likely wouldn't be happening right now since that is an acceptable YoY drop for a device that has peaked.

Overall I believe Smash being delayed, causing a 4 month drought alongside a long overdue price cut that never came caused the YoY drop to be worse than it should have been. Smash Bros in August alongside a price cut (2DS-$99, 3DS-$129, XL-$149) would likely have caused the drop to not be so severe, perhaps 15-20% instead of 35%.