I think they'd get away with it. I don't believe that the $250 price tag is nessecarily what slowed the 3DS's growth. Just a lack of killer apps at launch, and a pretty crappy launch model.

All hardware eventually gets more expensive over time anyway due to inflation.

The PS4's $399.99 is the equivalent to the PS1 launching at $299.99.

Are you seriously trying to imply that a 540p screen gaming tablet would be seen by anyone as a "superior product," because that's absolutely ridiculous. The gamepad was reflected because no one wants a device that big and bulky as a gaming controller. They both need two screens. There is no way to accurately replicate the two screens of an NX-like device on a singular tablet in a satisfying way. Saying that the NX only has a tablet because of the touch screen makes zero sense. That would mean that EVERY NX game would need to be played only on the gamepad, because there's no possible way to make that style of game playable on the TV without some major confessions. Every game would effectively be Kirby Rainbow Curse, making playing on the TV literally pointless. All because it had to be compatable with the tablet like NX. Not happening. Every game will be like Revalations, or Smash 4, or Hyrule Warriors, or all the countless other 3DS-Wii U games that use both screens with a similar layout, only far more efficient.

Screen could be 1280x720 (HD), some games like those with XB1 complexity could just run at 960x540. 99% of people wouldn't know any better, 99% of people who played Call of Duty (the most popular "HD" game from last gen) couldn't tell that it was running at a sub-720p resolution on their 50-inch 1080P displays. 

I'd bet most Vita owners aren't aware that a good chunk of their games run at sub native resolutions too. 

The remote play feature on the Vita though at least to me shows that PS4 graphics can look quite nice even on the Vita's 540p display. A lot of its depends on not using a display that's complete shit too. It the display is half way decent, most people won't know any better. 

Nintendo uses such terrible quality LCD displays though it's like from something out of your grandma's $99 portable Wal-Mart DVD player from 2003. 

Where are you getting 15X faster than the Vita estimate?

I am going to put it bluntly -> Even if Apple designed a CPU/GPU 100X faster than PS4/XB1's or what Intel/AMD can do on the desktop for PC gaming, it means squat because without a proper eco-system, 1st party support and anyone interested in any serious gaming on an Apple device, it's all just a marketing gimmick. I never once picked up my iPad and iPhone thinking OMG I want to engage in 2-3 hours of serious gaming. As far as gaming is concerned, those devices are good for little kids of casual adult gamers, that's it. 

As far as the NX goes, it's too hard to say what it will have but the key to the NX is gaining back 3rd party support and providing unique gaming experiences. Gaining 3rd party support first and foremost means allowing console developers to easily port XB1/PS4/PC games -- that automatically should rule out an ARM/A9/A10 style chip as it would be a total failure in this regard. Nintendo would be incredible stupid if they do not go with an x86 CPU and an AMD GPU (aka AMD APU) for the NX. Why? Because x86 guarantees that all future Nintendo consoles would have the greatest chance of being backwards compatible and having the x86 CPU+AMD GCN GPU provides the most seamless path for game companies to consider porting XB1/PS4/PC games directly to the NX. Furthermore, with its Asynchronous Compute Engines (ACEs), GCN architecture is easily the most future-proof architecture as far as graphics go for Nintendo. We have no clue how good the PowerVR graphics is for DX12/low-level API but we know from all the key developers working on games like Rise of the Tomb Raider, Uncharted 4, Gears of War Ultimate (PC), Ashes of Singularity, that Asynchronous Compute provides up to 30% or greater boost in performance. From this perspective, Apple's A9/A9X/A10 inside the NX shouldn't even be a part of the conversation. Further, there is no way Apple would sell its proprietary designed A9/A9X/A10 SOCs for cheap to Nintendo. Why would they when they can sell them for MASSIVE profit margins to Apple's customers? That's another reason why it's pointless to even contemplate the idea that Apple's SOC would find its way in the NX.

Either way, the graphics performance for budget desktop 2015 AMD GPU is so far ahead of A9/A9X, Apple isn't even on the map. Same for Nvidia:

GTX750Ti currently retails for $100 (which means this entire package can probably be purchased directly for $50-60 maximum!):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133531&cm_re=gtx750ti-_-14-133-531-_-Product

Since the NX is slated for 2016, this gives Nintendo even more room to cram a CPU+GPU combination that's as powerful as XB1/PS4 for an even lower cost than MS/Sony pay for AMD's APUs now. It's rumored that PS4 will soon get a price drop to $349 and by 2016, it's probably likely XB1 will drop to $299. If the NX can't even match the horsepower of XB1/PS4 graphically, Nintendo are really clueless about hardware design and they will get steamrolled as their NX console will end up as a stop-gap between PS4/XB1 and PS5/XB2. If Nintendo can't match the current consoles, they are doomed to fail because 3rd party developers will once again skip the NX.

A Vita is the same chip as the Apple A5X, which was 32 GFLOPS. The A9X is 450+ GFLOPS supposedly. It's probably even more powerful than that due to modern architectural changes. It also crushes the Vita for memory bandwidth. 

I'm talking about a portable device here too. The home brother companion or whatever can have a much higher roof due to not being restricted to 7-9 watts max. 

A portable that could run XB1 graphics and then seamlessly continue the game at home on the console/dock/whatever on the TV is an interesting hardware concept. 

I don't really have any delusions of grandeur of Nintendo becoming a third party powerhouse, but in this scenario I think they would at minimum get *a lot* of Japanese support, not just the OK support the 3DS gets, but there's a lot of Japanese games I think that would be on Nintendo portable if it actually had the horsepower to run said games -- talking about the Kingdom Hearts IIIs, Final Fantasy VII Remakes, Metal Gear Solid Vs, Resident Evil 7s of the world. 

Maybe that's why Square-Enix has commited to Dragon Quest XI on NX, because that's what the hardware concept is. It seems like with modern tech it would be possible. 

I will get my fingers ready for some high powered flicking and tapping games.

GFLOPS of different GPU architectures should never be compared directly. That tells us nothing about real world gaming performance.

GTX980Ti has 6.05 TFLOPS of single precision performance vs. 8.6 TFLOPS on the AMD Fury X. Despite the Fury X having 42% higher TFLOPS performance, it's slower than the 980Ti. Now you might say what about comparing TFLOPS from the same company? That also can produce highly erroneous results without digging into specific architectural details.

Nvidia GTX580 has 1.58 TFLOPS of single precision performance vs. 3.25 Tflops for the GTX680 and yet the 680 is only 35-40% faster, not 2X faster. 

Now that you understand that TFLOPs and GFLOPS cannot be directly compared without understanding if the comparison actually makes sense, your 450 GLFOPS vs. 32 GFLOPS figure isn't relevant to accurate assess that A9X is 14-15X faster in games than the A5X.

That's impossible because A9X or A10 are miles behind 8-core Jaguar 1.75Ghz and HD7790 in gaming performance. Have you seen Xbox 1's Ryse Son of Rome, Crysis 3, do you think an A9X 7-9 watt chip can run those games as well as the XB1? Not a chance. Apple's "console-like" performance is clearly in reference to PS3/Xbox 360, if it is to make sense. Otherwise, it's pure marketing BS. We haven't even seen the full potential of PS4/XB1's graphics capabilities and you will see yet another increase in graphics once games like Rise of the Tomb Raider and Uncharted 4 launch.

The Japanese console gaming market is dead. Nintendo needs to focus 95% of its efforts for the NX on the North America, Oceania and Europe. Also, having the attitude that Nintendo should just give up trying to lure back 3rd party support is a recipe for failure. There are specific reasons why 3rd parties abandoned Nintendo in the past (expensive/space limiting N64 cartridges), proprietary GameCube discs, underpowered Wii/Wii U consoles. 

When was the last time Nintendo made a console that was powerful + had hardware that was easy to code for + had conventional controllers gamers love? That was SNES! 

All Nintendo really needs to do is make a console more powerful than PS4, have traditional controls and market the SH*T out of it to 3rd parties to get them back with an X86 AMD APU. If Nintendo has its 1st party games and 3rd party support as good as XB1/PS4, with proper online support, do you know how well that console would sell? But Nintendo's management is too stupid to take the common sense approach and now EVEN IF the NX had hardware more powerful than PS4, the timing of the launch is all wrong for that console. It's going to compete against $299-349 current consoles with gigantic userbases. What does that mean? It means existing gamers who have friends on PS4/XB1 will have little reason to get it. They'll just wait until PS5/XB2 to get a new console. What Nintendo should have done is suffered through the Wii U cycle, made more games for it and waited until 2018-early 2019 to launch a very powerful NX console that could actually keep up with PS5/XB1.

It really seems Nintendo does not want to compete with MS/Sony's console's directly and is trying to carve out some niche market for its consoles. That tells me the NX is most likely yet another failure with some gimmicks or worse a portable console like you described which would be an automatic failure in today's market where casuals are playing on smartphones and tablets.

Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation, what is used to calculate inflation in the US, is not a good way to calculate what past consoles would cost today because videogame consoles are not heavily weighed on the CPI table.

Bill of materials is better way to calculate what a console should cost.  

The PS1 cost $299 at launch but less than 7 years later it was reduced to $49, I don't see the PS4 hitting the $65-75 price range in 2020 which would be the inflation equivalent in 2020.

You do realize the A5X (the Vita processor) and the A9X are the same architecture right? So yes you can compare those two directly. 

I wasn't saying running them at the exact same fidelity as the home console either, I said running them at a lowered resolution, like say 960x540 (1/4th the pixel draw) with a 50GB/sec memory bandwidth for the portable would be possible I think. You don't need a 1080P display for a 5-6 inch screen, PS4 games on Vita's 540p screen look very nice as is. 

I don't think Western developers are going to give a damn about Nintendo just because they release a me-too PS4 with zero userbase. They're going to need something else going for it, if it can handle their PS4/X1 engines but offer those games to the portable Nintendo fanbase (the one that has 5x more userbase than the piddly console), then sure I could see some interest from some Western devs too. 

I'm just not counting on some miracle here where Nintendo somehow becomes the darling of the third party circuit in the West.