Nintendo should hedge their bets and do both for now. As I see it there are 3 possible outcomes: 1) Dedicated gaming hardware/software sales decline 2) Dedica

Nintendo should hedge their bets and do both for now. As I see it there are 3 possible outcomes: 1) Dedicated gaming hardware/software sales decline 2) Dedicated gaming hardware/software sales remain flat 3) Dedicated gaming hardware/software sales increase #3 is very unlikely. Most people just don't want to charge and carry around multiple devices if they don't absolutely have to. For those who do chances are they might also have a SmartPhone. Sell them Mario for $39.99 and $9.99 on iOS. They'll buy it. Don't do straight ports. Make unique touch-centric iOS games. #2 isn't good enough. Nintendo just launched a new platform. Sales should be increasing (dramatically) not staying flat. Developers probably aren't going to flock to a fledgling platform just because it has Nintendo's name on it. (GameCube, N64) #1 is the most likely and Nintendo doesn't have a SmartPhone. They wouldn't have released the 3DS if they had one in the pipeline. They're probably several years away and no matter what they do it will likely not be able to compete with Apple, Samsung, HTC, etc so it will have a small installed base. The same problem the PSP phone has today. They also have an OS problem. They would have to use Android, probably heavily customized, and launch their own Android market app because you can't put Google's Android Market on a device targeted at kids. Then what? It's not a great portable gaming machine and it's not a great SmartPhone. Doomed to fail. Doesn't hurt that Apple would probably throw a small fortune at Nintendo to develop exclusively for iOS. Apple and Nintendo share a lot of the same values. Seems like a perfect fit to me.