RolStoppable said:
Definition of bias:
1. A preference or inclination, especially one that inhibits impartial judgment.
2. An unfair act or policy stemming from prejudice.
The fall of Square-Enix has much to do with this. On one day the company suddenly decided that what it was successfully doing for two decades wasn't going to work anymore, so their output changed. The JRPGs the company became known for were pushed to the side in order to pursue the new things. Meanwhile, smaller companies like Atlus and Gust kept putting out their JRPGS and saw stable or increasing sales. Not only was there no evidence for Square-Enix to justify their change, but there was plenty of evidence that disproved the reason for their change. Apparently the company woke up from their delusions that classic JRPGs have no market anymore, but only after years of bad financials. The executives in charge stubbornly stuck to their course, unwilling to accept all evidence that showed they were wrong. It has to be seen what comes out of this, but admitting that there was a real problem these past few years is probably the most positive news about Square-Enix since the seventh generation started.
Another example of bias is the industry-wide belief that entire genres do not sell anymore. Survival horror is one prominent example, challenging games like Dark Souls are another. Such decisions aren't made based on actual data, but very narrow-minded views of the video games market. And everytime a game succeeds, it's written off as an anomaly to uphold the narrative that the executives in charge know what they are doing and can keep doing what they are doing.
Then there's the notion that singleplayer-only games are not viable anymore. For people on VGC, this is an absolutely mindboggling statement, because it's so easy to point out numerous million-selling singleplayer games of the last few years. But once again, despite obvious evidence to the contrary, the majority of the video game industry sticks to their guns. A biased perception of the market is clouding their judgment, so the nonsense doesn't stop, but rather gets worse. The hivemind of the industry dictates that there can only ever be one thing that is the future and until that bubble bursts, there won't be a serious re-evalution of the way the companies are doing business.
Biased decisions are a very real thing in the video game industry. They happen all the time.
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The difference between the question in the thread title and the examples in the OP is that, unlike those examples, there's an actual basis for third-parties to avoid Nintendo.
They have a history (albeit one that, depending on your perspective, is in the past) of being a bad partner, their tendency to make radical changes to their hardware makes them an unreliable platform, and from a purely financial perspective their platforms offer less potential return for third-parties.
I believe in honesty, civility, generosity, practicality, and impartiality.
