that's a lot of info... wow

It would certainly help to have handheld games playable on Nintendo's next home console but it would in no way replace home console third party support.  If they ignore that market then they are once more setting up their home console to finish in last place in the west.

There is, after all, a good deal of overlap already, with some of Nintendo's bigger IP releasing versions on both platforms.  There is some theoretical benefit there with the idea that a single version would free up more resources for other games but we don't know that for certain.

The one game I can think of that would have a certain impact in the west would be Pokemon.  Personally, I would be interested in a home console with Fire Emblem, but I don't know that it would be a system seller.

I think there are a LOT of questions about how this would work and what kind of effects it would have on the market:

• How many Nintendo first-party handheld franchises would have an impact if they appeared on Nintendo home consoles in the west?
• How many third-party handheld franchises would have an impact if they appeared on Nintendo home consoles in the west?
• How many third-party publishers would allow this?  Would it be cross-buy?  Would they resist?  Would Nintendo make it mandatory?
• Would it cannibalize total hardware sales?  Would Nintendo fans in the west only buy ONE platform instead of two?
• If there is "one version", does that mean that home console games are going to be limited by handheld design considerations?

Those are just off the top of my head so there are probably a lot more questions to speculate about.  The only thing I'm pretty sure about is that such a platform would be extremely popular in Japan, especially if they pull in a lot of mobile and browser games, which I expect.

Tagged.

18-25m on top of the 60-70m of the portable side of things, NX as a unified platform under this would already have expanded in the console side by default essentially.

It's like they read us. Basically what we have been talking about and speculating, but because this is an article it must be right.

Did not know about that Ready at Dawn comment. It's very interesting, to say the least!

The article has some good points and although power was never the main issue for a console to come out as winner, in Nintendo's case it might be more important than ever - to attract whatever 3rd parties are at least willing to try NX out.
Not to mention that on the core gamers side, Wii U being seen as the weakest platform sure didn't help.

Those 20M consoles that digitimes was talking about do make some sense if you see NX as a mix of platforms and not just one platform.
It really is like selling an ecosystem.

Personally, i expect it next year and the Zelda delay was probably due to it coming before 2016 is over.

In regards to your questions:

1 & 2- It's not a case of how many of them it's a question of the combined impact of the already big heavy weights across the entire user base, Smash, Pokemon, MK etc... The speculation is on NX being a software ecosystem that a group of devices use so as an example Smash across 3DS and Wii U has sold over 11m just 2m below Brawl which was on a platform that sold over 100m, under the specualtion it wouldn't matter that this is across two devices as the platform is the software platform which has a unified ecosystem not neccessarily the hardware much like Steam or IOS.

3. Third parties already are involved in this practice on Steam it won't be anything new them, they'd just need to develop one game for NX and it'd be available across all platforms using it even future hardware, again this is going by the speculation the article is pushing on NX.

4. Not sure what exactly you mean here I assume you probably didn't fully get the speculated concept of the article, fans don't need to buy both hardware they only need one and that's a new user for NX, much like IOS doesn't need every user to have both an iPhone and iPad. Hardware cannabalizing each other is an issue if the hardware isn't using the speculated unified approach.

5. Portable games are already like console games now days this isn't like 5-10 years ago otherwise the topic of a fusion like console or devices connected by a unified problem wouldn't even exist. It's because they're like console games that's become the issue for Nintendo, Sony just gave up on portable altogether for the same reason.

^ Not sure if i understsood your first two points, but from a financial perspective, releasing one game on two "equal" platforms does allow to cut back on development and marketing expenses, for example, while increasing your profits seeing as one budget now equals two versions and not one.

Also, smaller games will always sell a bit more or a lot more; japanese games will also sell more or a lot more, because there's more market for them.

Yeah that's basically a summary of the perks they're aiming for.

You made it that far? I stopped at "it sounds as if it will be the machine to finally get Nintendo back into the game, after nearly ten years of Wii made them a non factor in the larger industry’s ecosystem."