Trajectory doesn't really mean anything, beyond that Nintendo hasn't had the chip advances available to them in the past that they do today nor was their handheld market ever threatened this much in the past. 

I believe Nintendo too ... NX is going to be something different, probably a new form factor of a device, not simply just DS3/3DS-2 with better graphics. 

It means almost everything. Nintendo can't release a handheld with hardware that doesn't exist yet, or that would cost $299.

Except chips that powerful do exist and have for some time and are already in devices for under $300. The Nvidia Tegra X1 is in their Shield console and sold at a large profit for $200, the Apple A9X which is probably even more powerful is estimated to cost $35 a pop. 

Nintendo doesn't need a fat profit margin on their hardware nor do they need to use a 2K resolution screen or something crazy on their model. It's very feasible.

Beyond that, even at $250 lets say ... what is a better value ... spending $300+$200 on a Wii U + 3DS XL ($500, so cheap right?) or getting a hybrid device that can play ALL the games on the go and on the TV for half the price and perhaps run Android apps and do other things too. 

Spending a bit more on the hardware so that it's powerful enough to be a competent console as well as a portable wouldn't be such a bad play for Nintendo, the value proposition destroys the failed model they're using now. 

Do not. I already know how you see hardware.

The majority of Nintendo fans don't even buy both machines. GBA owners were unwilling to buy a GameCube even at $99, 80% of them. It's basically the same ratio for the Wii U to 3DS. Most people if they are willing to buy a Nintendo hardware only buy one, and the one is the portable, unless Nintendo has some kind of ground breaking controller hook. 

You may not like it, but them's the facts. Nintendo's own fan base does not have much interest in buying different systems to essentially play the same 10-15 franchises. 

Except chips that powerful do exist and have for some time and are already in devices for under $300. The Nvidia Tegra X1 is in their Shield console and sold at a large profit for $200, the Apple A9X which is probably even more powerful is estimated to cost $35 a pop. 

Nintendo doesn't need a fat profit margin on their hardware nor do they need to use a 2K resolution screen or something crazy on their model. It's very feasible.

Beyond that, even at $250 lets say ... what is a better value ... spending $300+$200 on a Wii U + 3DS XL ($500, so cheap right?) or getting a hybrid device that can play ALL the games on the go and on the TV for half the price and perhaps run Android apps and do other things too. 

Spending a bit more on the hardware so that it's powerful enough to be a competent console as well as a portable wouldn't be such a bad play for Nintendo, the value proposition destroys the failed model they're using now. 

NVidia Shield uses the Tegra 4, not the X1, which only has around 1/4th of the GPU power of an X1: https://shield.nvidia.com/store/portable

Also, we don't know if there is a large profit margin (or any profit at all; really - it may as well be sold at loss and recover the costs trough software sales on it). Besides, since NVidia is making their own chips they don't have to buy them from third parties, reducing it's cost naturally. The 35$ cost of the A9X also is just the pure production cost, without any development, shipping and is calculated from a theoretical 100% yield rate, which never occours. You can easely more than double that price if you include all the other costs, too.

High processing power on a mobile device always comes at a cost of battery life. The NVidida Shield does have good battery life and power, but that's due to it's weight of almost 600 gramm, 3x what a traditional handheld console weights (even the 3DS XL models only weight around half as much) to accomodate the necessary batteries. It is thus necessary to strike some balance here, high-end mobile chips just draw too much power. The 8-10Watts of consumption for Tegra K1 and X1 are too high for handhelds unless making something of the size of the 3DS XL the new base model and an even bigger model the mainline version to accomodate for the necessary batteries to keep the handheld running, which would make them rather clunky and heavy.

250$ is a price at which a competent handheld can be produced, but in no way will it be more powerful than a Wii U. Just for camparision, the Snapdragon 820, currently the highest model in the whole line, comes with a Adreno 530 as it's graphics chip. As explained, this chip would already be too powerhungry for a handheld console and certainly also too expensive to meet the projected 250$ pricetag. But while the ARM CPU part of the Snapdragon 820 possibly beats the CPU of the Wii U (only possibly because it's only a dualcore marketed as a quadcore due to ARMs big.LITTLE concept with 2 high-power cores and 2 low consumption cores alternating depending on the running tasks), the Adreno 530 is less powerful than the graphics chip on the Wii U. Sure, it says 588GFlops against the 320GFlops of the Wii U, but those of the Adreno are only in half precision, meaning you need to cut the number at least to half, making less than 300GFlops. Thus, while an ARM based Handheld device could be a sucessor of the 3DS, it would actually be weaker than a Wii U and thus unsuitable to replace that one, too. And while it is very much possible to create more powerful hardware around ARM CPUs, it would make the chips much more expensive and again, more consuming, too much for handheld devices.

@Topic: The "News" ain't news for those who where even just casually watching the market in Japan. Wii U was sold out on Amazon Japan since early January, followed one month later by a huge drop in sales of Wii U consoles simply because it's heavely supply constrained. The situation is already getting much better since then, though it has not yet returned to normal.

And damn, how could we get from that topic to the discussion above?

NVidia Shield uses the Tegra 4, not the X1, which only has around 1/4th of the GPU power of an X1: https://shield.nvidia.com/store/portable

Also, we don't know if there is a large profit margin (or any profit at all; really - it may as well be sold at loss and recover the costs trough software sales on it). Besides, since NVidia is making their own chips they don't have to buy them from third parties, reducing it's cost naturally. The 35$ cost of the A9X also is just the pure production cost, without any development, shipping and is calculated from a theoretical 100% yield rate, which never occours. You can easely more than double that price if you include all the other costs, too.

High processing power on a mobile device always comes at a cost of battery life. The NVidida Shield does have good battery life and power, but that's due to it's weight of almost 600 gramm, 3x what a traditional handheld console weights (even the 3DS XL models only weight around half as much) to accomodate the necessary batteries. It is thus necessary to strike some balance here, high-end mobile chips just draw too much power. The 8-10Watts of consumption for Tegra K1 and X1 are too high for handhelds unless making something of the size of the 3DS XL the new base model and an even bigger model the mainline version to accomodate for the necessary batteries to keep the handheld running, which would make them rather clunky and heavy.

250$ is a price at which a competent handheld can be produced, but in no way will it be more powerful than a Wii U. Just for camparision, the Snapdragon 820, currently the highest model in the whole line, comes with a Adreno 530 as it's graphics chip. As explained, this chip would already be too powerhungry for a handheld console and certainly also too expensive to meet the projected 250$ pricetag. But while the ARM CPU part of the Snapdragon 820 possibly beats the CPU of the Wii U (only possibly because it's only a dualcore marketed as a quadcore due to ARMs big.LITTLE concept with 2 high-power cores and 2 low consumption cores alternating depending on the running tasks), the Adreno 530 is less powerful than the graphics chip on the Wii U. Sure, it says 588GFlops against the 320GFlops of the Wii U, but those of the Adreno are only in half precision, meaning you need to cut the number at least to half, making less than 300GFlops. Thus, while an ARM based Handheld device could be a sucessor of the 3DS, it would actually be weaker than a Wii U and thus unsuitable to replace that one, too. And while it is very much possible to create more powerful hardware around ARM CPUs, it would make the chips much more expensive and again, more consuming, too much for handheld devices.

And damn, how could we get from that topic to the discussion above?

Super gameboy is a snes cartridge with basically ALL of the gameboy's hardware inside and port for gameboy's cartridges. How is that anything like the discussed subject?

It was a means to play handheld software on a home console platform. (I.E unified software). Granted its not the exact concept, but it did offer improved visuals in the form of a colour pallette on monochrome software.

The fact that you can't envision this type of device is more closed thinking/lack of imagination rather than named up by any technical issues.

The Vita came out over 4 years ago and is a generation ahead of Nintendo's current portable. Mobile technology has progressed immensely since then.

Yes Nintendo are traditionally conservative on specs on their handheld. But that doesn't mean they have to our will be this time.

However as demonstrated by the super Gameboy in the 90s or far more clearly by the mobile market now with such a varied range of specs and settings, there is nothing stopping Nintendo putting out a less powerful handheld that runs less visually impressive versions and a closer to ps4 spec home console. Then having the game run at the appropriate setting.

The main argument really is Nintendo are not able to support 2 separate platforms fully. This has been epitomised by this current gen.

Yes Nintendo handled the HD transition better than many, but they also did it 6-7 years later so should have handled it a lot better than they did.