Look at their Q3 operating profit and their full year operating profit projection. You'll notice it's lower. Since Q1+Q2 (combined) were also a net profit, that means they expect to lose a good amount of money in Q4 of this year. Mind you those are all Nintendo's own numbers. 

Resumption of Wii U hardware production is likely the only logical culprit here. 

Damn, after 2+ years on the market that's pretty sad.

PS3 took a loss the whole entire last generation, that's sad.

Moderated,

-Mr Khan

Lol Nobody is talking about PlayStation. Why would you immediately attack it?

Simply for contrast. Don't destroy something and believe that everything else is so impervious. Ya know what, just forget I said anything. Nintendo is sad, I'll just accept that. Yeah, like there's any logic there.

For the WiiU? Sure get rid of the gamepad second screen as a necessity. I don't think any sane individual think it was, in the end, a good idea to force it into the system. Talking about at this point is just pissing into a yellow ocean. But the system is stuck with it. What they can, and likely will, do is to cut down on the legacy silicon and production. Making the WiiU only a WiiU, that will cost cut a lot.

For the 3DS? A large portion of the library of its games is made considerably better or at all playable by the second screen. Just making a larger screen is not necessarily efficient in space allocation (nor would it make much sense in how it would have to be allocated without looking clunky and distracting) and would force in the use of menus that have entirely been streamlined out by the clamshell design. Another point of issue is that for a mobile platform like the 3DS is and its successor will be, there are advantage that the clamshell brings for a gaming system that a phone or tablet doesn't particularly need but finds itself usually gaining anyway (keyboards and control interfaces for the mobile sector being the needed accessory for maximum functionality). There's also simply a matter of raw physical space on the system. To fit the controls laterally without a clamshell would require a width akin to the Vita which is still longer than even the 3DSXL and the 3DSXL is already bulky. You could drop the second screen but then the internal wouldn't really line up without a ton of deadspace on the center of the lower clam, and the over all design would look strange.

The 3DS isn't actually losing that much to the dual screens, its the 3D that's the real throttle. You could make the 4DS with two symmetric top-bottom screens, and its effectively work as one longer, larger screen while incorporating the clamshell, saving the refined dual-screen functionality, and still provide people with HD visuals. There's also, a point of irrelevance on a 5" screen past which its completely pointless to raise the PPI and resolution. So long as the 4DS isn't glued to two inches from your screen or reading fine text there is no gain in exceeding 720p.

LOL  No what's sad is you having to bring up PS3 in order to deflect on the OP and derail the thread out of sensitivity from my post.

Moderated,

-Mr Khan

This is speculation at this point. Given that a year has pass (almost), surely the cost of manufacturing has gone down. If not, then this is not good news for nintendo's short term prospects.

I kinda do wonder if the 3DS would've sold better as the "DS2" with no 3D screen and a cheaper price point from day 1. Or maybe they could've offered a 3D screen, but just as an optional revision.

That said there's obviously many changes in the portable realm that are hurting Nintendo. $39.99 portable games in this day and age seems very archaic to many people.

The price of the games isn't a problem as variety is offered from the eShop where small and big can be found and had, and Nintendo is adding more and more of their own "minor" or even F2P titles. People are obviously willing to pay for big games (particularly when that price point can be used to leverage "quality") and the price point attached, hell even ATLUS gets away with their tax against several tens of thousands of buyers in the west.

The biggest issue is that the 3DS is old, its not "shiny" compared to all the changes that have come from the mobile rapid evolution, and its shackled by the WiiU eating up developer time. It lacks a lot of modern functionality, as well, which would be somewhat expected to be had on a mobile platform. Some of these things are actually remedied on the N3DS with the system becoming much more convenient to use as more than just a game hub.

I don't know what Nintendo will do with their 3D work, but they'd gone a long way to completely scrap what is now rather impressive head-tracking software, lol.