It's just incredible too see the turn around from 10 years ago when Wii U was bombing and gaming articles were making a big thing about phones dominating the portable gaming scene using the 3DS selling slower than the DS as proof that handheld consoles with going to be obsolete.
It just goes to once again show the bubble that many in the gaming media and message boards live in. Mario Kart, Pokemon, Animal Crossing and both Mario Platformers were 10 million plus sellers on the 3DS. The rest of the industry has companies spending hundreds of millions of dollars just to have 1 or 2 games that can get those types of numbers, meanwhile the 3DS had 9 games sell around that or over.
It's like Nintendo's in danger of being obsolete, even though they have literally some of the best selling games in the entire industry? It's like seriously, people don't pay attention to the actual data. Just like how when discussion the Switch successor many online worry it won't be backwards compatible, when there's not a single reason to worry when every other Nintendo system over the last 20 years had it, and the only reason the Switch didn't is because the system was a total reboot, combining both the handheld and home console division, something the Switch successor won't have to worry about.
It's always funny how so many in the gaming media and message boards act like Nintendo is this mysterious company that we can't predict what they might do and apparently is in danger of going bankrupt at any moment. When in reality, Nintendo has been a pretty easy to predict company that's literally the most finically stable in the entire industry.
That's kind of the ultimate irony that many of the decisions Nintendo has made the last 20 years that gamers complain about and use these reason as to why Nintendo was destined to go third party, are why Nintendo has managed to stay so profitable, while Microsoft and Sony's decision to please these same people with the highest graphics possible, are having to go more and more third party to keep doing that.