Nintendo prints money, and is no more or less doomed longterm than Sony or Microsoft's gaming divisions.

Apple is threatening Nintendo. I can't look it up right now, but I think iPhone has overtaken the PSP as the #2 mobile gaming device.

Longterm, we might see a Nintendo phone as a third pillar. I think it's inevitable, because we'll never see Nintendo license out their games on other platforms again.

Jack Slater wrote:

What was the last time? That Zelda game on CDi?

Yes, the CD-i games. Before that, Nintendo also licensed Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. on a variety of platforms before the Famicom/NES entered various markets. They also allowed Hudson to produce a Super Mario game for the PC-88.

I don't think Nintenphone would simply be a 3DS with a phone feature. Things like that have been tried before, like the N-Gage. And the N-Gage was terrible as a phone. Not to mention, a DS/3DS is a little too unwieldy to be a phone. More likely, it would harken back to the more simple GameBoy design with a D-pad and 2-4 buttons. Nintendo DOES love touch screens though. Maybe a phone with a single touch-screen and then a game controller panel that slides out, like the slide-out keyboards?

Nintendo is not older than electricity, and no, I'm not using some lame semantic debate about how lightning is electricity.

Nintendo was founded in 1889. Edison successfully tested his first light bulb in 1879. By 1882, he had opened his first power generating station, providing electricity to 59 customers in lower Manhattan.

And let's not forget that Nintendo survived its own worst enemy: Nintendo. When their aggressive business practices from the 80s came back to haunt them and console developers left in droves for the greener pastures of the PlayStation, Nintendo managed to endure.

Nintendo is however, without a doubt, the oldest video game company.

Other oldest ones I could find:

Sega, founded 1940
Williams, founded 1943
Sony, founded 1946
Bandai, founded 1950
Taito, founded 1953
Namco, founded 1955

Like Nintendo, all of them started off in other entertainment-related industries.

Most of the names we know today, from your Irem and Banpresto to your Sunsoft and Hudson to your Capcom and SNK, were founded in the 1970s and 1980s.

Tecmo and Konami started off in the late 60s.

Is Nintendo vunerable? Yes. As of December 2010, the Wii has sold over 34 million units more than its closest competitor, the XBox 360, but the increasingly noticeable lag in hardware and online capabilities, have started to sour public perception of the system. Publishers have already seemingly abandoned the system. And after a great holiday game blitz, the Wii's future library is looking bleak. We may get Skyward Sword before Christmas 2011, but between January 2011 and June 2011, only four games of note are currently scheduled for release: Lost In Shadow, which came out in January, De Blob 2 and Mario Sports Mix, which both came out in February, and The Conduit 2, due out in April. And then, nothing, as far as we know. Not good!

And the iPhone and iPad are eating into the portable market. So Nintendo could quickly find itself losing in the console market and the portable market. But even if that were to happen, Nintendo is flush with cash, and when they're backed into a corner, they always seem to find their way safely out. So even though a day may come when Nintendo is once again losing the console wars and losing the portable wars for the first time ever, we are unlikely to see Nintendo-free days within Michael Pachter's lifetime.

I seriously doubt there are 300 million active Farmville players. Just 300 million people who added the app.