Quote Originally Posted by Leo_A View Post
It really feels like the N64/GCN years to me, except this time it's the handheld business and the threat that is troubling Nintendo's once secure position is the multipurpose smartphone. They're still succeeding and still making money and the 3DS is anything but a failure, but the downward trend this generation that has made the 3DS market seem on the soft side and the rise of the smartphone casts a troubling future over this once cash cow for Nintendo.

They're going to have to work much harder here than they've perhaps ever had to if they want to not only maintain their presence, but regain lost ground. It's only going to get harder since people aren't abandoning their phones, they're only getting more attached to them. If they're not careful, they're going to be in the same position there as they've faced with the Wii U in the console marketplace.
For the most part I agree with you but I don't think that the 3DS is in a position where they would consider giving up handheld gaming all together. Compare that to Sony with the Vita. The only place that sells well is in it's homeland of Japan. Sony would have to be either really crazy or really stupid to launch another handheld system to a worldwide market. Nintendo isn't at that point yet.

But yes they will have to work extremely hard on the NX. They are first going to have to do away with the useless gimmicks. Then they will have to do 1000% better in communicating why gamers should buy the system and why third party developers should develop for it. The price obviously needs to be affordable and they are are going to have to realize that people, in general, no longer buy consoles "just" to play games. I know the Wii U is capable of doing more than just gaming but they really need to take a cue from Microsoft with some of their media hub features. It's really weird that a console in 2015 can't play dvd's, let alone blurays.

I always(and still do) felt that Nintendo going handheld only was a Plan B in case their console division completely dies. They still have other options(going third party, selling the company, etc) but at this point their future is pretty much riding on the success or failure of the NX.