the GBA was only there for 4 years.

It's been 5 years since the 3DS, and even with Vita, they can't matche the GBA numbers.

There is your decline. Boom, drop the mic.

Real numbers, yeah! Thanks ^^

OP seems to completely ignore the 240M previous generation and only focus on older and smaller generations. Yes, if you sell 10M in 2014, 20M in 2015 and then 10M in 2016, you have a decline. Saying "Look, it sells just as much as in 2014, so no decline!" is just wrong and shows a really bad and partial reading of sales numbers.

According to the internet all Nintendo consoles that are popular are flukes...

There have been a decline.. Thats a fact..
But Nintendo are still very strong in handheld gamer space.. must stronger than any analytic (and most VG users) predicted back in 2011..

Why these wild guesses? Nintendo doesn't hide the numbers:

I was going to post that... His comparison outright flawed and misleading, it simply makes things to seem far worse than they really are.

GB from 1998 is only GBC.

if anyone was wondering, GBC sold 64.5m and GB 54.1m...

it's more rational to separate them than combine them, since gba came after nine years and got its own vast brand new game library...

As I aforesaid, the fact that Nintendo combined their is sales but I can fathom why they did it...

By the way, you can see in these data why I'm reiterating myself  by citing that fat ds didn't affected gba sales almost at all and why by extend the argument of gba being replaced in its 3rd year is misguided... Look how much gba sold in 2004 and 2005! DS lite in 2006 harmed it.

Hi Superchunk!

I think the NS will still see diminishing sales, given that the in-between nature of the iteration may prove to be a hard sale to console gamers, although not so much for handheld gamers. That isn't to say it won't be successful (I imagine it will, relative to the WiiU), but I think expectations need to be tempered. 

Having said that, their portable sales segment, especially software, has traditionally done gangbusters, so its logical for them to move that direction. I think one major factor is that since they're merging essentially console hardware with a portable frame, it may cause some issues with development costs, since handheld games should traditionally be seen as being cheaper/easier to develop for.

I do think, though, that while we're arguing the NS vs. DS vs. other consoles, it'll be fun to see how fast the Nintendo Classic sells.. I think that system, and future iterations, may overtake Nintendo's traditional console segment, if they can flesh the design out more and make it the new sub-$100 console of choice (and its fully possible - I worked on an idea about 3 years ago that was basically a Nintendo Classic... The design can be fleshed out and built into its own virtual console library if Nintendo decided to go that route (and they should - banking on their prior success can work if they do it on the cheap).

Which 4 years did GBA sell 80m?

It sold 66m* between 2002-2005

74m* hh consoles were sold 2012-2015

*Excluding DS

Why "2012-2015" instead of "2011-2016"?

And the previous generation (2005-2011?) sold something like 240M. Sure, 240M to 75M isn't a decline :D

I've made a rough assumption to simplify analysis.

66M in 4 years is more than 16M/year. Since 2013 that the hh market doesn't do that. And now it's 2 consoles combined. Moreover, this year will do less than a half of those +16M. Can't you see the decline? Can't you see the evaporation of the market?