That post only gets us back to the beginning where you refuse to acknowledge that software sells hardware. Therefore your belief is that IPs do not matter, so people will stop to buy Mario because Apple has a pop-up joystick on their iPhones.

An handled is supposed to be simple, inutitive, portable and affordable. It should be designed for pick-up and play games, not for in-depth 3D games.

The true only innovation of 3DS over the original DS and supposed selling point was 3D. Needless to say, it was quite a failure, it didn't do much for the more "hardcore" gamer (who still prefers better graphics and higher resolution), it had a bad impact on children, or to be more precise, on parents, and most importantly it came with an high cost. Nintendo sacrificed convenince, intuitivness and portability for a very weak feature. Basically 3DS was designed as an immersive console to played on couch while staying still (for not losing the 3D effect) on a quite room; it is a portable home console more than a proper handled.

Plus, since they were too focused (or too cocky) on 3D, they didn't care to upgrade the rest of the system's layout, which was getting old. Their choice to stay with a 2 screen layout and a small resistive touch-screen can be questioned since a smartphone layout (a single capacitive touch screen) is easily more intuitive.

At last, if they wanted to compete with smartphones they should have made their consoles less reliant on phisical distributions, in order to lower prices. I think the main problem of 3DS right now is the fact games are percieved as too expansive by parents. I can easily see this when I see my cousin and her kids on holidays. Kids still love to play on dedicated handleds, it's thier parents who prefer to buy them teblets, in order to spend less on games later.

Shouldn't the 2DS have done better then though? Seems like most people overwhemingly chose to buy the more expensive 3DS XL when if they chose any 3DS at all. 

I've found kids prefer the iPad over a 3DS. Maybe it's the larger, much more vibrant display but they just seem to like it more, when ever my nephews come over they fight over the iPad mini, not the 3DS. 

Sarcasm, right? I can never tell with your posts :P.

If true though, Wii U shouldn't be selling like shit. It's library is pretty damn solid.

Which sales trends are the opposite?

And since you didn't notice, I already said that Nintendo needs to stop messing up the hardware; it should be obvious to everyone that "software sells hardware" cannot apply to any piece of hardware, because otherwise one would have to believe that the Virtual Boy could have been successful.

Apple can do as they please, because as long as Nintendo delivers a compelling product on the whole, Nintendo is here to stay. If Nintendo were to die, it will be by their own hands.

Well, the people who do own PS4s and X1s think that they have great software, so that's that.

Smartphone gaming doesn't sell hardware.

As for Nintendo's smartphone games, in several threads you have clearly demonstrated that you not only do not understand their strategy, but also refuse to understand it. Different people tried to explain it to you, but you don't want to believe that it is a move to increase the sales of Nintendo hardware. Iwata likened smartphones to TVs, so the reason why Nintendo is doing stuff for smartphones is because marketing on TV won't have the same effect in the future. The sole reason why Nintendo is making game apps is because that is going to increase the chances for a download tremendously (compared to a generic information app). If the goal is to make people aware of dedicated Nintendo hardware (and it clearly is), then it has to be done in the most efficient manner. An added effect is that the new Nintendo Network will extend to smart devices and PCs, so it will be easier to move people to Nintendo's new platform than it ever was via the TV. You look at this as Nintendo throwing in the towel, but it's actually the complete opposite; they are more serious about selling hardware than ever before, so they are getting with the times and reach out to people by making use of the devices that have become the most important ones in an average person's life.

But you really believe that Nintendo's plan is to accept that their handheld business is going to be killed off for good, so they'll move their development efforts to smartphones as "their" future handheld platform. Like I said, you've clearly demonstrated that you don't want to accept Nintendo's actual strategy, so it's impossible to have any good discussion about this topic. Therefore our exchange ends with this post because anything else would be a complete waste of time.

You really are an idiot. You got it completely the wrong way around.

If Nintendo just wanted to make smartphone games for profit, then they wouldn't need DeNA. Nintendo cooperates with DeNA because of their upcoming unified account system and continued maintenance of their smartphone apps. Do you think that's going to be for high score lists? No, Nintendo wants to make high quality smartphone games that make users come back preferably every day because that way they can feed them with any kind of news they want.

And of course nobody is going to buy dedicated Nintendo hardware to play smartphone games. That's why Nintendo's games for dedicated hardware will continue to stay separate from smartphone games. Think of it this way: There has been successful Angry Birds and Minecraft merchandise. Why? Because kids liked the games, so they wanted more from that IP. That's certainly going to work with Nintendo IPs and Nintendo hardware too. Or parents could say: "No, not even for Christmas. No Nintendo for you, you little brat!"

Yes, you really are an idiot.

Yeah sure kids will play property X/Y/Z on iPhone and then buy a completely seperate $300 platform with $60 games on it. Just like we're seeing a huge bump in Sonic and Rayman console sales due to those properties being on iOS/Android and at least Sonic is fairly popular at that. Maybe it happens but there are serious doubts about that. 

The only thing there isn't a doubt about is that Nintendo stands to make a lot of money from smartphone games.