How can you lose what does not exist?

There's plenty of devs that would accept money, the Darksiders guys, Factor 5, Silicon Knights, etc. all expressed interest in working with Nintendo. 

They probably could have snagged Mr. Ancel (Rayman, Beyond Good & Evil) from Ubi Soft if they really wanted to. 

I'm finding it painfully difficult to disagree with most of what you said. It pains me because now it feels like there's so much lost potential. Imagine if they had LBP, Retro and Rare doing their own things along with the occasional bigger Nintendo IP projects, etc., oh man, I almost want to cry now lol

Do it, and post pictures.

I`m sure if Nintendo starts throwing money around, devs will come. But that`s not how you make a deal.
They have to be the right for the franchise you want to make. See TT Games for example.
And isn`t Factor 5 dead?

I think Ancel would be a great man for Nintendo. But where would you put them: EAD? Retro?
And who knows if there were contacts or not?

Maybe because the market is also bigger?

If you don't see how they've distanced themselves from the west, look again at the OP and look also at the amount of titles developed by american and european developers for them in the past... then tell me what have they had to replace all of that.

For some reason, that doesn't seem to be true when it comes to japanese developers. Look rather at the % of western development if you will. It has been decreasing sharply. With or without a "move away from hardware" strategy (which I doubt they have), they have been desinvesting from the West in comparison with Japan (the percentage doesn't lie).

PS4 selling well is not a good message once everybody knows that. But if you'd tell me half of its sales were from female gamers that buy the console on Monday mornings, that would be very interesting on itself regardless of why or how or any other details you would add. I couldn't care less if they bought it because of Killzone or Watch Dogs. And, if I saw people focusing on that too much, I would think it was because they didn't want for us to realize that PS4 was a console for girls and what is happening on Monday mornings.

People can raise issues with whatever they want. But sometimes they are rather pulling the wool over our eyes than anything else.

I got that you find the details to be more important than the message (so you came up with an example where it was the case). But I find it the other way around (hence in my example the message is far more important) and, believe me, I really don't care about those details of who is responsible for the situation (Iwata, Miyamoto or any other guy I've never met and can't even pronounce the name). I only care about the situation itself: Nintendo is closing up on itself and its native market and both are declining. That is relevant for me as a gamer, not what is happening with the human resources of a company I neither own nor work at.

If I'm unemployed and I don't have companies rushing in to my feet that means I shouldn't get a job? Maybe not. Maybe I should think what is good for myself (and getting a job is a must) and go look for it, fight for it if necessary... rather than thinking if the world is not rushing at me maybe I shouldn't care about the world. I strongly believe Nintendo should care about american and european devs, should go look for good investment opportunities and fight for them if necessary. They've got plenty of resources to enter in any "war" they want. They just don't want to move a finger.

You talk as if Nintendo wasn't a worldwide company. There is no such thing as 12k miles away. You also ignore the evolution in communication. Telepresence and internet are surely much more improved and accessible than in the N64 era. And if Nintendo has problems with the English language (which is not a problem at all for any western company with a 10th or even a 100th of their revenue) they're the only ones to blame. You can come up with all the excuses in the world, but they are just that (excuses). When they admit they don't understand the western markets and at the same time they remove power and independence from the ones that do (Nintendo of America), it's all said.

Good article.