Ever since Microsoft came in and took Segas place and spend a lot of money into the console market they pretty much ousted Nintendo and took their place as second plattform for third party support. Before that everything was normal for Nintendo.
In fact the N64 got plenty of AAA third party support, back in the days it was the console to go for ego-shooters which you could argue was the birth place for that genre on consoles. Perfect Dark, Golden Eye, Turok Trillogy, Doom, Quake etc. The List of ego-shooters where huge for the N64 which were either exclusive or the better versions. And if you consider that the cartridges were so much more expensive than CDs while also having a different architecture the N64 did pretty well in getting third party support imo. All games which nintendo didnt got could not be counted as AAA often times. It would be too risky releasing these types of games on cartridges thats why the N64 lacks 2D sprite games in general.
With the Gamecube Nintendo moved in the right direction everything seemed normal at first, it got in fact third party support in the beginning thanks to the cheaper Mini Disc medium. But as Microsoft bought up Rare and Halo to push its console for ego-shooters the same people who owned an N64 for this genre and Rare games went for the Xbox instead. The same people were missing now meaning that multiplats sold worse on the gamecube afterwards. Of course Nintendo made the mistake letting Rare being bought by MS but the fact is it was MS sheer money that would have brought down Nintendo sooner or later.
At least this how i felt it during my childhood and most people and friends which i knew were in that direction. They also loved their N64 for its shooters which was the supirior platform for it at the time. The Nintendo PlayStation dualmonopoly got replaced with the Xbox and PlayStation one for AAA games.
All things said i think Nintendo will never be in a place where they can get AAA multiplats again. Just imagine if they would try making a console priced and being as powerfull as the PS4
- their games dont need much horse power anymore unlike it was with Gamecube and N64 era. It wouldnt fit their game design meaning all the extra hardware wouldnt be utilized except for multiplats
- AAA itself is slowley dying. It seems we are in a time where AAA will be more dependent on the console manufactors budget to make these types of games happen which people want nintendo to aim for now all of the sudden. Nintendo doesnt have an inhouse AAA devoloper and cant make games like Horizon or Uncharted 4. They can fund AAA games but either way it would cost them more than its worth it because they would have to catch up to Sony which i think they couldnt afford right now and third party exclusives would also be too expensive to fund those all the time. MS can afford it like they did with Tomb Raider to counter Uncharted or Sunset Overdrive to counter Infamious and so on.
- the Nintendo online infastructure is lacking. Even if they would get these multiplats like Call of Duty and even if the online would be for free people would still complain about it like they did with the PS3 when sony had to adopt.
- they can never sell their hardware at a loss or make losses in general. Gaming is all what they have so it has to be profitable for them. MS and Sony are giant cooperations espacially microsoft which has access to Wallstreet and is cooperating with the US goverment alot like with the NSA.
Yes even Sony is still huge. For Sony it will always be cheaper to devolope hardware, producing ads or marketing their games because sony is everywhere from music, TV, cinema, software, electronics you name it.
Can you really blame Nintendo if the NX would be a weaker console in the end? After thinking for a while they should go their Nintendo way its the best thing they can do at the moment to stay in the hardware bussines.
I think aiming for a cheaper console without any gimmick for 150-230$ that is compatible and shares the same OS like their handheld is the best way they should go for.
