While the Nintendo 3DS has been a hotbed for great original games, it has entirely missed out on the indie game movement, which is ultimately what saved its chief competitor, PS Vita, in the market. Indie developers have focused entirely on Wii U as far as Nintendo systems are concerned, and a lot of this has owed itself to the 3DS’s eccentric architecture, and its hamstrung specs, both of which make porting of games to 3DS a big pain.
That is all now changing. With the New Nintendo 3DS, the specs problem has already been addressed, and Nintendo has also confirmed that the New Nintendo 3DS models will be getting support for Unity- and since Unity is the most popular engine used for indie game development, this should make New 3DS versions of indie games a whole lot more likely.
It would also be a good way to garner some New 3DS ‘exclusives’ over the older model quickly- a whole host of (indie) games that the older model simply will not play, making an upgrade that much more desirable.