I will always have a soft spot for Nintendo. But that will remain as memory and wont transform into purchase decision. Nintendo's first party games don't appeal me.

PS3?  It had a pretty rocky start, not as bad as the WiiU of course.

Nope.

Only lessons I can think of are:

Don't try to appeal to non gamers one gen and then go for the hardcore the next? 

and...

If you do decide to appeal to the hardcore, don't make good games, just make em 1080p?

OK, so that's no losses going forward. Plus, I think it was mentioned very early on that the purchase of one game per console would cover any difference.

Bring back the Gamecube.

i think as wiiu is finally turning a profit and mk8 proved that gamers will buy there products hopefully it can just trail along. unfortunately nintendo hasnt been seen as 'cool' since n64 days and people are sheep and follow the crowd. for me it needed proper fifa gta 5 and cod to really encourage ppl to buy it( i know it had fifa 13 and cod) but fifa was bad port

lol.

But seriously, i'd say

1) Fuck third parties (as in, the big, multiplat publishers). They don't want you, don't bother trying to get them, fighting for them is a fool's errand. Make a device that's easy to program for and try to siphon what you can from mobile/indie development to round out the library.

2) Make it day-one profitable; any hardware that could get in the way of that (like the gamepad) isn't worth pursuing.

3) Integrate it with the handheld development environment to maximize library, both first and third party.

4) (Something they did right this gen and should continue) more third party partnerships with Nintendo IP to help diversify brand exposure. Just don't think that they're going to attract the mainline franchises because of that. Fund more orphaned third party games, as long as you think they can turn a profit or at least break even.

[Disclaimer]After reading the forums for quite some time I've finally taken the plunge and made an account. This is my first post [/Disclaimer]

I don't expect Nintendo to do a "stop, drop and roll" in the homeconsole business either. While still possible they'll either go with the earlier than anticipated release of a new console rather than bringing the current one to the slaughterhouse and be done with it. It would be pulling a Sega and alienate much support from long time fans. Bringing something to the table now with comparable HW powers to the PS4 and XBOne would also not garanty ports for 4rd parties. It would cost a lot of money to develop and build in a hurry and still be considerably behind the rest sales wise.

They are much more likely to speed up the release cycle of the next generation. In the mean while they'll try to reduce cost and maximize sales numbers by hovering around break even to sale as many consoles as they can to "stay relevant"and not bomb financially.

Considering this last part: It's a general misconception among the public that the Wii U itself is turning a profit. I had a source hangy for this but I lost it somewhere. It is a bit confusing but because of low demand they made more Wii U's than they sold and a lot of them. The costs of production were already spend and made it into the financials. However with the prediction of selling an X amount of Wii U's the production costs were already in the books and selling each and any of theses already "made" units would be money in the bank. So they were not yet profitable by themselves, it was just that they already had the cost to make these units in the books but not yet sold them. They ended up with thousands of units costing X to make but not yet sold, so no return on investment yet. This was incorrectly interpreted as the Wii U being profitable from then on. They just meant selling those machines would not cost anything to make and would be a pure + in the books.

No that is not want that means - once they sell off the stock this year that was already written down on the books they will go back to whatever the actual cost is as thier basis-  I remember the comment re 1 game takes them to profit but now they are bundling 1 or 2 games in many of thier console sales so that raises their basis a little and cuts into software sales-   Not saying they can t make a profit, it is just getting more difficult for them-  IMO they will lower the price after this fiscal year