I have owned every Nintendo console except the Wii u(wait until it sells for $100 before buying)
Nintendo hasn't had real third party support since super Nintendo because they still had a monopoly on the console market (they did have some challengers but none of them got a real share of the market)
Once they lost their monopoly to the ps, since then they have been surviving off handhelds and Mario/Zelda.
The problem with this that the handheld market is their monopoly (please don't bring up vita) is challenged by mobile gaming. It might go away as fast as their console business but it will eventually resort to Mario/Zelda which is a niche market.
They should be transitioning to a software only company, if they continue this path.
Then again this my opinion and I was to lazy to include any statistics to support my claims but still just my two cents