@Impulsivity: Interesting question. But i don't think they would make any more money by going 3rd party, since they make profit on hardware too and 3rd party royalties.
The problem with the assertion is, that it's completely based on assumption that
a) People buy games only because they buy the hardware
b) Nintendos games would lose their appeal
Because we are seeing hardware peaks when new games come out, "a" can't be the case, but it's the excact opposite, people buy the hardware because of the games available.
Now, "b" can be the case, and you could say this happened in the 5th gen, but judging by Nintendos current performance, nothing indicates this would happen in the foreseeable future.
As for "phones taking over mobile gaming", this happened about a decade ago, if we look at the sales of gaming capable mobile phones and the sales of handheld games consoles.
You had a strange view on "crappy hardware".
It's no wonder why Gameboy beat Game Gear, all you have to do is to take a look in the battery life. Nintendo wasn't behind at all with the Gameboy, they made a portable gaming machine that was possible with the tech of the time.
Wii seems to be having 1/8 of the failure rate PS3 has and Sony is copying the Wiis controller.
N64 had low failure rate compared to competition and the system was designed so that everything in a game would be made with the engine. And again, the controller was copied.
DS has touchscreen, while PSP relies on the old control method, DS has good battery life and PSP:s portability suffers from disc based media.
Ei Kiinasti.
Eikä Japanisti.
Vaan pannaan jalalla koreasti.
Nintendo games sell only on Nintendo system.
