Looks like a great product.
It's a clear attempt to head off a worrying trend--younger and younger kids wanting tablets and their parents obliging, combined with cheaper and cheaper quality tablets like the Nexus 7 and iPad Mini. There are 3 year olds who are playing iPad games right now. I know this is shocking for people who are 18-22 but when your friends start having kids, it's amazing. The kids are illiterate but figure out how to unlock it, launch the games they want, and play them. And sometimes even purchase.
This is about recapturing those kids. And also their parents--although parents are worried about kids breaking or scratching, that worry evaporates a little more with each passing month that tablets become more ubiquitous and accepted. This is Nintendo adopting more of the tablet form factor and lowering the cost of entry, and since young kids aren't supposed to use the 3D anyway no harm no foul (doesn't hurt that it's not a selling point).
They still face extreme barriers in terms of software pricing and the way the app market has disrupted it, as well as software variety issues... and I'd also add that even a kid can figure out that two cheap screens and a stylus ain't the same as one beautiful continuous screen with finger power, but I think it's a good move by Nintendo.
I expected to be quoted for crow or posterity after the reaction "what an ugly pile of shit" crowd calms down a little
