Hmm, midpoint: definitely. Timescale: 2009 will arrive with the DS still around. January 2010 I reckon will be seeing a situation like the GBA was a year ago with titles hitting the peak of the DS ability although I say the death rattle will not be as long and protracted as the GBAs.
The good as I see it:
The good thing as far as I see it is we are out of gimmick/tech demo territory for the most part:
the touch screen is used for sensible purposes rather than tacked on (think the ice in the first Castlevania)
3d is moving up in the world with some decent 3d titles consistently appearing, even from less well known devs.
RPGs (I do not know about most of you but they are a kind of sucess metric for me) are appearing in ever better outings (the situation was quite dire for the longest time, take a look at the What RPG threads in the archive if you need a refresher course)
Make a GBA game and port up is now restricted to film cash in titles for the most part (even them some of those do some interesting stuff which trickles back into "good" games).
Rom hacking has taken a forefront with large scale projects happening often including RPG titles (this sort of stuff still is rare on stuff like the PS1 despite it being largely the same techniques required), a slew of tools and a fair group of people possessing the abilities to do it.
Flash carts are now very much at the look at my fancy features stage and emulators are consistently able to play/hack games. Companies have taken the law suits approach rather than technological (for the most part) when it comes to this sort of thing.
Homebrew is great although emulation could still use some work in the fancy features/nigh on flawless department. For those still reading and without wifi can I suggest you get yourself sorted, the last 6 months have seen it come on leaps and bounds in terms of usefulness.
The bad:
Some devs seem to have realised just how close the early PS1, 64 and such are to the DS meaning a good chance of "remakes". It could go either way but experience with the SNES like GBA says it will at best be a rocky road.
Atlus seem to be twiddling their thumbs a bit: of course this could just be a website not updated but when what I regard as one of the foremost localisation teams of 3rd party titles does not appear to have much going on.....
Square Enix seems to have contracted remake fever. I am a great fan of their games but I can also leave them alone if they do not warrant my time. If by chance a person at S.E. is reading this rant among the millions of others a new Vagrant Story or dare I say it even a "remake" would probably cause me to forget all this.
With regard to the original poster:
Pokemon: spin offs not included I say perhaps a "remake" of an earlier title or a sequel in as much as yellow was a sequel to red. If we do see a true sequel I dare say it will be designed with the successor to the DS in mind or we will see a split version (see megaman 5 on the GBA and DS or perhaps more poignantly the Zelda TP title).
Mario: hard one. NSMB2 Is a possibility and there is little left to "port" (forgetting the possibility of a collection). New RPG, outside chance at best.
Zelda: not normally one for spinoffs a situation like pokemon will probably arise if it does at all. I would love to see a hack like the Zelda Parallel Worlds for link to the past (SNES) though (
http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/197/ ).
Normally I would wait until something like e3 but those do not seem to be that good anymore and things have to be pieced together.
A new bomberman, advance wars and kirby title seem to be coming up and there looks to be some potentially amazing titles appearing (
http://www.gamerevolution.com/release/view.php?system=ds ) so I doubt any of us will go long without something to do.
As usual I seem to have gone on for far longer than was warranted and I doubt I have covered anything new, sorry people.
