Yeah, I get that but that was not the point. A redesign always helps sales but despite this the 3DS is down massively year over year. The redesign helping sales actually proves my point - there won't be a redesign next year, so there won't be something comparable to stop the downward trend in late 2015. 

I know that's how Nintendo makes money but they have a huge amount of expenses to cover (workforce, marketing, software development, etc.) and they can't cover these expenses without a healthy hardware business. Nintendo layed off dozens of employees in its european subsidiary this year and they'll have to continue to cut costs. I get the sell the hardware at a profit but I doubt that games like Pikmin, Bayonetta, Wonderful 101, etc. turn a profit with sales that low. Low hardware sales cause low software sales. That's why Nintendo has been in financial trouble the last 3 years and this is going to get worse in the future with hardware sales dropping further. Again, I'm not trying to be overly negative here but a company as big as Nintendo needs a certain level of revenue to cover its expenses and they can't lay off their development stuff to stop the money bleeding. I'm sure they'll be fine but Nintendo has had the tendency to overestimate the performance of its products lately, so they might have to release their next handheld sooner than they think right now to keep sales up. That's all I'm saying.

Sure dude.

 For a few weeks people here have been saying "eh whatever, the data says PS4 will be above next week so whatever take your obvious sort of win Wii U" and when it doesn't happen, they don't say anything and suddenly there's a new data trend for the next week. it's like saying "this is the lottery ticket that will make me win!" for 10 years and when you happen to be right and win after a hundred tickets, feel you were right all along.

These numbers are meh. I can't call them bad because it is super expected, and it's also a lost cause to keep paying attention to last year. I do hope the market gets better though, for everyone.

U said 3DS down massively YoY despite a redesign, my point is that the redesign released in the final quarter, u can't expect it to offset the massive decline from the first 3 quarters of the year. If it released in the first half of the year, u would have a point but currently all we know is that New 3DS stopped a 50% YoY decline and was flat over the holidays. We have to wait and see how sales are in the coming weeks to see if the redesign will have an extended effect or was it a temporary boost.

Nintendo is expected to post a healthy profit this fiscal year despite not having exceptionally strong hardware sales because of the things listed above. It's very likely they can keep posing profits from 3DS/Wii U for the next 2-3 years until they are ready for their next-gen hardware to release.

good numbers for Nintendo. Their combined sales for 3DS/N3DS and Wii U means they got most of Japan covered. People talking YoY need to remember that the tax increase also hurt all game sales there too. It affected everything.