As far as I can see, Nintendo never said the virtual boy was a successor to the Gameboy. From what the internet suggests, there are only vague references to some people thinking it was planned to be a spiritual successor, but, in reality, Nintendo only greenlighted the project because they wanted to be a trailblazer and be seen as an innovator. No development resources were taken away from the Gameboy. It wasn't announced as a next generation portable console. They even pushed the console to the market early because they wanted to concentrate on the N64.

There is literally no reason to think of the VB as a successor to the GB. Key developers never worked on the console (e.g. shigeru Miyamoto). The console was rushed and quickly dropped by Nintendo. They never marketed it as a successor. And it's painfully obvious it is not portable like a Gameboy is. 

Yes Atlantis was meant to be the direct Game Boy successor (Game Boy 2 basically) ... even by 94 Yamauchi was dissatisfied with Game Boy as sales had dropped off a lot. 

If Atlantis wasn't a hardware fuck up and was ready to release as Nintendo wanted it, I have doubts Virtual Boy would ever have been released, they released it only because Atlantis was no where to be seen and N64 was behind schedule too but they needed something to inject a secondary revenue stream, Yamauchi ordered Yokoi to basically give him something and VB was it. 

Otherwise really how was that supposed to work .... Atlantis launch in 1995 + Virtual Boy launch in 1995 + N64 launch in 1996 would have been clearly too much hardware, even Sega wouldn't have done that. This is the 90s when the industry was definitely more centered towards children, launching 3 different systems in a span of like 8 months would have been complete madness. 

It was an insane idea, but it was made by the Game Boy creator and had the "Boy" moniker in the name, so Nintendo was hoping it would be at least a suitable sales booster for them because the Game Boy wasn't cutting it anymore. 

The basic fundamental point is that Nintendo didn't intend for the Game Boy to have a 10 year product cycle, it was a series of weird events that happened that caused it. They did want to end the Game Boy by 94/95 and were not happy with its sales by that point. ARM, working on the successor chip overpromised on the performance and couldn't deliver a workable finalized chip that worked for Nintendo's needs. Atlantis was supposed to be a really powerful (for that time), 32-bit chip that was going to be more powerful than the console SNES but also have a very long battery life. 

Then Nintendo just sorta shelved the project and had to focus more on the N64 and then Pokemon happens and that changes the entire equation, but if Nintendo got what they really originally wanted probably you're looking at Atlantis (Game Boy 2) in 1995 and then N64 launch in 1996. Virtual Boy probably never comes out in that scenario. Game Boy sales had slumped to about 4.16 million for the entire fiscal year 1995-96 so it was definitely fading hard by that point, it's not unreasonable to see why Yamauchi wanted something else to sell, but he was crazy to think the Virtual Boy was the ticket. It's actually interesting that the Game Boy was not like a monster success in Japan prior to about 1997, it had done well but definitely not on level with the Famicom or Super Famicom. 

It's actually a bit of a shame they rushed the VB concept like this, I remember going to Blockbuster Video to rent it when it launched, and it was OK but they really needed to have color graphics and probably that would have meant delaying the concept until maybe 8-9 years later. Yokoi from my understanding did not want to release the product as it was heavily compromised but Yamauchi was hell bent on having to have some kind of new system in 1995 no matter what. N64 and Atlantis both weren't going to make 1995, so Virtual Boy got crapped out basically on a rushed schedule. I regret not buying one though, I remember Blockbuster clearing them out for like $30-$50 a pop, but I was all fixated on the N64 back then and the idea that this would be a cool collectable and interesting piece of gaming history didn't really occur to me. 

I see it differently. If you have a very successful product why don't you sell it for as many years as possible if there's no pressure from competitor? If all things were equal I would agree, obviously, if you sell a very big amount of systems in a shorter time, then you are the winner. However, circumstances in specific time periods are different (economy, competitors etc.). Therefore, we can never compare the last 7 years with say the years from 2005 to 2011. Pure numbers are only for geeks like us. Companies only care about profits. If they can sell just one super-duper luxury console that costs $1 billion to develop but they can sell it for $10 billion, they couldn't care less that it will be the worst selling console of all time. However, geeks like us are mainly focused on the pure numbers and records (and that's good). If it takes 6 or 10 years to break a record doesn't matter. Record is record!

If that's the metric though, DS wipes the floor with anyone, Nintendo could have easily sold that for an extra 2-3 years ... now it would've hurt the 3DS to do so

and that makes it a dumb move probably, but they could have hit 175+ million with the DS, the PS2 or Switch frankly would never be able to touch that. 

I don't think Nintendo really cares that much about end cycle LTD, it's a nice to have but not a must have. The fact that the DS was so close to the PS2 and Nintendo still nixed production and support for it tells you they really don't care about this stuff. I mean if it was even a passing fancy of a priority, there was no reason to not at least stuff the retail channel with a couple more million DS' and take the record then. 

Making a sports analogy if you told me one basketball player 1 scored 15,000 career points in 10 seasons played, while player 2 scored 17,5000 points in 15 seasons played ... IMO player 1 is the better scorer even if player 2 has more overall points scored in their career. 

The PS2 hit 150 million after 10 years + 11 months so almost 11 years basically ... the DS hit 150 million in just a bit over 7 years. IMO PS2 is a phony king in that regard. 

I mean, for all we know the market was saturated with DSs (just like it happened to Endgame in just a few weeks of colossal box office numbers). Both it and the PS2 had successors released after a similar timeframe.

Besides, who are we really to tell people when they should have bought a PS2 instead for it to"'count"?

PS2 was nowhere close to DS sales in the equivaent time frame. DS had sold 150 million units by its 7th birthday (roughly), the PS2 was at 120 million at 7 years.

Nintendo simply discontinued the DS because they wanted to force people to buy 3DS systems. 

If they really wanted to they could have kept the DS for like $89.99 for several more years and gotten to 175 million. 

In my view if you can't hit 150 million in a 7 year normal product cycle, you're not the legit king, you're just a paper champ because DS did it so it is possible. 

And here the old saying goes: "this is not a sprint but a marathon"

Is it really a marathon when you're dragging a corpse past the finish line and everyone else has left the track because the actual race ended a few hours ago and it's 2 AM? lol.

Everyone and their grandma knows Nintendo could've had that record, they simply didn't want it. Shit, really you could sell the DSi even today for $59.99 a pop especially in developing countries and it would probably move 800k-900k units a year since legitimately the DS library is not available on the Switch at all. 

Nintendo simply isn't interested in milking hardware forever. 

To me you shouldn't need all these stupid qualifiers to get the record like "oh no! You can't announce the successor!!!" like gimme a break. If you need a successor to not be announced by like year 7 to keep selling and then you need like 10 years on store shelves, it just sort of becomes ridiculous.

The only system that legitimately had a case for being an actual market factor after year 7/8 was the Game Boy because of the Pokemon craze which is a one off kind of event. 

Dragging a corpse ? When after your 7th year that you are saying, PS2 sold 16M for 2 consecutive years and after that had 2 years with sales of around 7-8M ?

So then DS was a corpse in 2011 when it sold 9M.

It's a bit funny that I as a Nintendo-guy have to defend the PS2 but so be it: at bold:

1. True, as I myself already said, neither Nintendo nor any other company cares about how many products they sell, they solely care about profit (and logically you need to sell a big amount of your main product to make big profits). DS is a handheld and PS2 is a home console, two different markets, so from Nintendo's perspective, if they would have broken the PS2 record with the DS, people just would say: "so what?" But if the GameCube instead would have had a chance to break the PS2 record, I'm pretty sure Nintendo would have gone for it. It would have been a true victory in the same market. Everybody would have recognized it.

2. I agree again, no console manufacturer is milking anything to death. Every product goes through a lifecycle of release-growth-peak-decline-end of life cycle. Like living beings, ultimately, every product has to die! However, this cycle looks very different from product to product and from generation to generation. The PS2 had a very slow decline and was still profitable in its (very) late years because 1. the product was still kinda popular, 2. the product became (very) cheap and 3. the failure of the start of the PS3 (too expensive). With the DS on the other hand, Nintendo panicked because of the PS Vita and wanted to counter it with the 3DS and to kill off an old console or handheld as soon as the successor is available is a Nintendo tradition, so far they always did that. (However, I think it will change with the successor of the Switch - the old Switch will still be on the market for quite some time).

3. I don't get your logic with the 10 years on the shelves. If a product is successful and there's still demand for it, it's a good thing that that product is still available after 10 years. I can't imagine that any console will be 10 years on the market without a successor announced but once the Switch 2 is on the market but the old Switch is still selling for many years - what's your problem with that? Even if in the unlikely case that after 10 years still no Switch 2 is announced but the Switch 1 is still profitable for Nintendo why is that a problem as long as still enough games in quality and quantity come out? Nintendo games are about fun, gameplay and innovations. Sure, Zelda, Mario and Co. would look better on Switch 2 but ultimately, it doesn't matter. These games are nothing lesser just because they look a bit downgraded. Artificial intelligence is the one innovation that truly brings games to a whole new level but Nintendo is far far away from using it, certainly not with the Switch 2, whenever it releases.