I don't know why you're bringing up the quality of games. Sure, you people who visit a "hardcore" MMO forum care about the quality of your handheld gaming experiences, but the majority of people don't. My darling Mother who spent literally hundreds of hours playing Brain Age and Nintendogs on her DS isn't buying a 3DS; she's happy gaming on her iPad and her iPhone. To these people, smartphones games are "good enough", and these are the people that made the DS the huge success that it was.
Instead of saying "Nintendo makes awesome games! People will love them!", look at the sales data. The 3ds is down in sales in the US year on year for 8 months running. It showed very little growth in sales over the past 12 months worldwide according to the data released by Nintendo today during its end of year financial report (it sold 450,000 more units this year than last). It failed to meet Nintendo's original sales targets, and then it failed to meet their revised sales targets. Whichever way you look at it, the 3ds is underperforming sales wise.
So, what is causing the poor sales performance? Lack of games, maybe? Well, outside of Pokemon, all the major Nintendo handheld IPs are already represented on the 3ds. NSMB2, Mario Kart, Nintendogs, Brain Age, and Animal Crossing already have 3ds versions, so it can't be a lack of games.
So, if it's not a lack of quality software, what is causing 3ds sales to underperform? The growing popularity of smartphones and tablets is the obvious answer.
Hell, there isn't even an iOS game of the quality of Brain Training or Professor Layton. People will still buy those games on 3DS/DS.
Actually, the 3ds versions of Nintendogs and Brain Training haven't sold anywhere as well as their DS counterparts. Brain Training 1 & 2 sold 35 million copies combined on the DS; the 3ds version hasn't even sold a million copies. Nintendogs sold 30 million copies on the DS; it's managed 4 million on the 3ds.
But you have to consider, will people be satisfied by those 20-40 decent games on an app store for a device they already own(no additional hardware purchase/expense) or will they be spending $$ on additional hardware to play mobile games? A lot of people have already decided to make due with their phone/tablet, and I can't see those numbers doing anything but increasing. I don't think it will happen real soon, but I could easily see portable gaming devices going the way of standalone GPS units in cars. Why buy one when you get roughly the same functionality out of a device you already own?
Pretty much. Outside of the small niche of handheld gamers that hate touch controls, smartphones and tablets will be good enough for the vast majority of handheld gamers. It'll probably take a few years for handheld sales to completely die down, though.
