No he's right, how much bigger is world population now that in the 80's, and yet Zelda TP sold less than Zelda 1

Because there isn't any reason, people are assuming becuase they are both portable and both can play games in some fashion, that Apple is challenging Nintendo, not to mention Nintendo is always doomed

3DS is not retreating upmarket. 3DS is an attempt to disrupt the HD consoles (PS3 in particular) by offering glasses-free 3D when the PS3 needs glasses, and by taking back all the third parties.

This theory about a portable disrupting a home console is quite outlandish...

orly, how come?

No, TP sold 700k more than the first Zelda and is still selling. Population growth is about as usless in this discussion as userbase growth. Zelda is more popular now than it was in 8 and 16 bit eras.

Being the last novelty, it's likely that 3DS will "steal" some sales to every other device, but people wanting a home console, whatever it be, won't buy a portable instead. And 3D isn't the main selling point of PS3, it's just another one, but the vast majority of its buyers still has a 2D TV. Then there is the fact that 3DS uses anyway a stereoscopic 3D system, so SW houses can easily develop games for it that will be portable to whatever else stereoscopic 3D system. Then there is the fact that 3DS's 3D is single-user only, this point is closely related to it not being able to replace a home console. And finally, glasses-free 3D may make 3D TVs with glasses look clumsier and so it can damage some TVs sales, but while Sony currently pushes glasses for 3D TV, PS3 is totally agnostic about it, it uses a stereoscopic 3D system, but it doesn't include a display, you can plug it to whatever 2D or stereoscopic 3D TV, with or without glasses, you want.

However, these points have been discussed countless times before...

The 3DS is not disrupting the HD consoles, though. Its purpose is to disrupt 3D gaming on home consoles (not the consoles as a whole) by making 3D easy to use (glasses-free) and cheap  (no need for an expensive TV). There are indicators that 3D gaming can be disrupted, for instance the positioning of 3D gaming as a service for only the most avid gamers and the resulting overshooting of, say, 95% of the market.

Disruption's got a lot to do with putting existing technology in a new context of use. For instance the HDD's in an iPod classic aren't really useful when put into a computer but in an iPod they get a new context of use (although this is probably a bad example ) The iPod itself disrupted portable CD players by putting "old" technology in a new context of use. 

The 3DS can't disrupt home consoles in general (because home consoles are not dependent on 3D gaming to sell) but it can disrupt 3D gaming by introducing it to the masses and making it cheap and easy to use. This is in no way illogical, even though handhelds and home consoles are in slightly different markets. As mentioned earlier the iPod disrupted portable CD players but it wasn't a portable CD player itself. This means the 3DS can't disrupt "HD consoles" in general but it can disrupt 3D gaming on the HD consoles.

Surely the 3DS as a whole is more of a blue ocean than a disruptive product. 3D movie playback for instance is not targeted at people who are being "overshot" by handheld gaming (handheld gaming is already pretty easy and since Brain Training not even our grandmothers are really overshot by it ) but it is clearly something to get distant customers to buy the product - typical for a late step in Blue Ocean strategy.

What always strikes me as special is that disrupting 3D gaming - if successful - will prevent Sony from moving upmarket in the home console business. That's rare considering disruptors usually get increasingly successful because the incumbents move upmarket which leaves a bigger slice of the market open for the disruptor (because of an increase of overshot customers). On the other hand this could be a genius move by Nintendo as Sony is currently in a weak position - they lost more than 3 billion dollars during the PS3 era and won't be able to keep that up so they have to focus on profitability right now. Nintendo on the other hand is in a great position financially, they were able to get a lot of 3rd parties to develop for the 3DS (and they will be able to pull this of for the next home consoles, too. I more and more get the feeling that all you need to to gain 3rd party support is a platform that does what the developers want it to do) and they increased their portfolio of multi-million sellers by a huge amount.

While a lot of people keep focusing on declining Wii sales they forget to think about the future. Nintendo could easily lose billions of dollars with their next home console without getting into trouble - and they won't because they are the disruptor, they have the better business model - while Sony will have to cut back on production costs because they need to stay profitable after years of posting a loss. This is most likely going to result in Nintendo dramatically catching up to the competition in terms of hardware power (just like with the 3DS!) which will be part of their plan to move upmarket against a Sony that is being attacked from all sides while still being weakened by their PS3 losses.

So while the 3DS is not going to disrupt HD consoles it is going to be a threat for Sony because it stops them from retreating upmarket with the PS3.

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=115907

I made a thread specifically about this. Malstrom grouping together Americas and Japan is misleading, but if he's using VGChartz numbers I guess it's okay for me to do the same.

I still see it possibly disrupting more the 3D TV business, not the console one. BTW, PS3 became affordable last year and next year it will start approaching popular price, retreating upmarket isn't needed anymore. I'm also sure that Sony doesn't really believe that 3D with glasses could become more than a high end tecnophile niche, waiting for more practical 3D techs to emerge and become affordable. Overshooting isn't a risk as 3D is within current GPU capabilities, it doesn't require expensive HW add-ons on the console side, the problem is only on the display part, glasses-free tech is still viable and affordable only on portables and for single users only, but, as I wrote, consoles are agnostic about display tech, as long as it's stereoscopic, they can use whatever stereoscopic 3D displays users plug them in. As consoles offer a so wide degree of freedom, they don't risk disruption from this side, again the arguments taken indicate more a possible disruption of 3D TV with glasses only. A deserved disruption, I'd add, the fact that many people are willing to use glasses to watch a small subset of the movies they normally watch at the cinema, and obviously for a very limited time, shouldn't have made TV producers believe that it meant that they would have been willing to use them also on home TVs and for more extended times. BTW LG, not Sony, is currently heavily advertising its latest 3D with glasses models and the ads are appalling: to begin with, obviously the ad can't adequately show the tech on 2D TVs,  then, when they show the family with those horribly nerdy glasses, they could just have added a caption like "family of dorks".