Nintendo's core business has always been their handhelds. The 3DS is old, it's clearly declining and it needs to be replaced. Getting a new revenue stream up and running in the handheld sector has to take priority over their dire state in the home console division. In their home market of Japan a handheld has the potential to succeed. A home console no longer does. Everything points in that direction.
Look, if Nintendo can't make a successful handheld, they're done as a hardware maker. It's that simple. On the other hand if they make a poor console but their handheld succeeds, they'll be fine. That's why the handheld needs to come first, that's why it needs to be the focus.
Are you talking about now? Because go back to Wii era, nes, SNES and it was a different story. There were more consoles, and I feel they outside of GBA,DS they made more long term profits from console?
Is there evidence to back up this claim? I guess in the past 2 generations it feels like their handheld was more successful.
But they have always been known for their home console, at least that's how I remember them anyway.
Their if they can ship both this fall then awesome, but if they have to space it out, I would while the iron is hot, strike on home console for fall.
Mainly because if they are bringing a decent amount of Wii u's library over, it would make more sense to have them out on the platform they are being played on mostly on Wii U.
And if they were able to cross play between Wii u and NX home console, that would do nothing but benfit them in currating a better online community of new and existing players for games like Splatoon, Mario Maker, Smash, MARIO KART.
How many people play 3DS currently competitively online? Maybe monster hunter, and smash.
It would be stupid after the hard work games like Splatoon, MARIO MAKER, smash have done to bring together a thriving community, to just have it die until next year, and even then that's too long of a wait.
Their home console is what needs to grow the most, Nintendo has no competition in the handheld market, and mobile will help them pad out the launch of NX handheld in spring.
So it make more sense to jump on the more failing platform. The 3DS isn't the device that get's trashed on internet talks, articles and what not.
So why should that be the thing they put out first? Unless they are going to co-release both of them at the same time.