I sense that scrypt mining as it stands now is not going to be too profitable in the near future, with all the asic hype and cost of energy always rising.
If the price of LTC/altcoins don't rise with the difficulty, there will have to be big changes to the market, maybe devs will change their coins to n-scrypt or whatever else to minimize asic mining driving up difficulty like crazy.
This is where I see Mint coming to age. I see a bright future for Mint, if we can be patient and do our part to spread the word.