When I wrote a year ago that the 3DS could be in trouble, I learned a couple of things:

1. Nintendo fans are passionate. Really, really passionate.

2. Saying any forthcoming product from a company with a 10-million-man army of fans could be in trouble will result in people calling you lots of names. Lots and lots of names.

Still, I’m glad I wrote it, because I tend to think that, with this week’s news of the device’s price dropping from 9 to 9, I was largely right. My thinking went as follows: The 3DS was built with the same business model that the DS and the Game Boy employed before them, centered on dedicated hardware and the sales of expensive game titles. It’s a model that, with the arrival of smartphones, tablets, app marketplaces and multiscreen gaming, has become a bit antiquated.

Now, don’t get me wrong: There are tens of millions of people who will buy the 3DS. There are probably that many core Nintendo fans. But what we’re seeing more and more of is that the casual fan — who drove the DS into the 150 million unit territory — is increasingly spending his or her discretionary dollars on other devices.

The biggest vulnerability is with young kids, who are increasingly putting tablets, smartphones and other multitouch, multipurpose devices on their shopping lists. While it’s too early to say how many have tablets, smartphone ownership is already at 33 percent for the 15–24 age group in the U.S. That number will only grow.

But it’s not just kids. The gaming industry itself sees a tablet-filled future. EA, which just acquired multiscreen casual-gaming giant PopCap, has said its biggest growth is coming from the iPad and that tablets are where it sees the future.

Is the 3DS the device to lead Nintendo into another decade of growth and profitability?  As I said before, probably not. What will? It’s unclear, but if Nintendo wants to repeat the success of the DS, it will need to once again completely reinvent handheld gaming, offering a leap forward as big as it did with its dual-screen, touchscreen gaming device. It will also need to acknowedge the new reality where tablets and smartphones are evolving at rates faster than anticipated even a few years ago. Gaming on these devices will only grow.

I’m looking forward to whatever that new innovation or breakthrough is beyond the 3DS, because Nintendo has reinvented itself many times in its life and will almost certainly at some point lead the gaming innovation cycle once again.

For more on the future of handheld gaming, see my weekly update at GigaOM Pro (subscription required).

Image courtesy of flickr user redoxcun

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• The last generation? Why the 3DS may be the last of its kind
• 5 Connected Consumer Companies That Ruled 2010
• Connected Consumer 2011: Rise of the Virtual Video Operator

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Be on the lookout for a Battlefield: Bad Company 2 update sometime this week, probably by Wednesday. Most of the changes affect the multi-portion of the game, something that I’ve participated in for, oh, 18 seconds before dying, cursing, then never playing again. True story!

It was only a few days ago that Crytek and EA showed off Crysis 2 to the world’s gaming press—and CrunchGear. It looks crazy, yes, and that finely tuned opinion—”it looks crazy”—is based on the Xbox 360 version. But if we believe Crytek’s business development boss, then the game runs even better on the PS3 than it does the Xbox 360. The games may look identical, or extraordinarily close to it, but the Xbox 360 is being pushed far harder than the PS3. You probably already knew that, yes.

The bossman, Carl Jones, told ComputerAndVideoGames.com:

At the moment, we’re getting slightly more performance from PS3 compared to 360. I’m very confident that products using CryEngine 3 are going to come out as the best looking, or at least in the top three, on every platform.

Unless the PS3 version, I don’t know, also washes your laundry, I doubt you’re going to see a huge difference between the two console version of the games. Unlike Final Fantasy XIII, where the Xbox 360 version looks like a 2007 YouTube video compared to the PS3 version.

Not that any of this matters, since we all know the PC version will be the best! There’s a reason I burned a hole in my bank account for the ATI Radeon 5970!

Actually, there isn’t; I just wanted the damn thing for no particular reason.

You’ll recall that the two bigwigs at Infinity Ward, Jason West and Vince Zampella, left the studio a few months back under, well, insane circumstances. It’s basically he said, she said, only involving lawsuits, hired goons, and Activision, the least popular video game publisher according to a recent GameFaqs poll. Yes, I just cited a GameFaqs poll. West and Zampella didn’t like the way Activision were treating them, and Activision alleges that the two were looking to leave Infinity Ward and perhaps start up a new studio under the watchful eye (and with the gigantic bank account) of EA. Funnily enough, West and Zampella have done just that, forming a new development studio called Respawn Entertainment. Wonder how Dice, makers of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, feels about all of this?

The new studio will remain independent of EA, creating games under the auspices of EA Partners.

Zampella called it a ” fresh start for Jason and me. For the past decade we led a great development team and poured our hearts into creating an epic game franchise. We’re very proud of what we built—and proud that so many millions of fans enjoyed those games. Today we hope to do it all over again—open a new studio, hire a great team, and create brand new games with a new partner, EA.”

The duo worked for EA in the past, creating Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for the PC. It was basically a better (and harder) version of the PS2’s Medal of Honor: Frontline. The Allied Assault version of the D-Day level is pretty much the hardest level I’ve ever played, ever.

Here’s a handy chart! (I don’t know how this thumbnail nonsense works.)