@JasonPaul : I agree that Nintendo is not going anywhere, and I do not doubt that the 3DS will enjoy at least some measure of success.
My reason for optimism centers around the more intelligent approach Sony seems to be taking towards their development ecosystem.
PS3 assets are apparently quite compatible, and the development environment is supposedly quite similar. A traditional Sony problem for all their systems excepting the original PS1 ( for which they bought up British publisher Psygnosis, largely due to their development tools which they then shared with their licensed developers )is that they paid little to no attention to the wants or convenience of their developer community.
The other side, is its compatibility with the Playstation Suite - in other words, games and software for their Playstation branded Android devices will also work on NGP, and since PSuite will apparently be available to any handset maker that meets basics system requirements and runs Android 2.3 or later - I expect much of the mobile and indy development community to hop on board.
Plus it still plays your old PSP games... at least the ones available on PSN.
This should almost certainly result in a much stronger and enthusiastic 3rd party support base, much earlier in the product life cycle, with a wide variety of games and software.
The glut of both software and connectivity are the reasons I think the NGP can end up with the superior market share, not just hardware specs. You are absolutely correct to point out that superior specs do not necessarily translate to superior market position.
Of course Sony could still screw it up, with insane pricing or something - but the subtle hints seem to indicate they may have learned their lesson, at least in regards to how they treat their development ecosystem.