Yeah, they did that "get it into more people's hand" tactic with the Wii. That wasn't the best result from a core-gamer's perspective. And how do you make casual-/mobile games that are any good compared to hardcore games?

This is what lead to the Wii being of the worst consoles of all time and by the far worst Nintendo one (not counting virtual) Non gamers shouldnt be targeted, they dont deserve to play games except for the junk on phones. Nintendo should put all their resources in to zelda, mario etc. One zelda game every 5 years is unacceptable. They released 3 in that time frame between 1998-2003.

That apparently did wonders in getting the PS2 to sell over 150+ million. :P

In all seriousness, its funny reading all of these "elitist" and "hardcore gamer" posts. I don't see a problem with what Nintendo are doing. Remember one of Iwata's greatest quotes? Games should be about fun for everyone. What's wrong with having a variety of people playing video games besides the typical gamer? One of my favorite times as a gamer was seeing my family and friends play on the Wii and I've been playing games since I first had the Sega Genesis and the SNES. And most of my family and friends are not necessarily part of the gamer description. So what? It was fun playing games, which is one of my long-time hobbies, with those who usually don't.

And even then, Nintendo still has Smash, Metroid Prime 4, Fire Emblem, Pokemon, Yoshi, Octopath Traveler, Monolith Soft's next project, Travis Strikes Back, Wolfenstein 2, Crash Trilogy, Okami, etc. coming to the Switch. So all of this nonsense about Nintendo abandoning core gamers is unwarranted. It was unwarranted back during the Wii/DS days. Those are two of my many favorite consoles. The DS not only had games like Brain Age and Nintendogs, but a plethora of JRPGs, Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, and new series that found their niche on DS like Layton and Ace Attorney. Heck, do people forget that Animal Crossing has a solid female fanbase in Japan (and I'm sure in the rest of the world)? Does that series scream "core gamer?"

Wii's decline in sales latter in its life had more to due with Nintendo not evolving it and and basically abandoning it while prepping for Wii U. As for Labo and 1-2 Switch, 1-2 Switch's budget was nowhere near BotW's, so it's still a success as far as Nintendo's concerned as it made back its presumably shoestring budget and managed to push 2 million units in counting, which is still good for any game. In Labo's case, it's more of a Toy than a video game, Toys have different sales traction than games do, banking more on holiday sales than launch day. Nintendo plans to keep the momentum going, and hoping that Christmas will do the real work along with additional kits. 

You think the audience may be gone, but the evidence you give me isn't strong enough to back up that claim, it's just attempts to justify a delusion. 

Nobody cares what a few vocal "hardcore" folk think. Point is, it gave Nintendo critical and commercial success generally speaking, and to a company, that's what matters. Casual games can be good, Nintendo has made good casual games before, just look at Brain Age and Wii Sports. Games are games, who cares how "hardcore" they have to be in order to be good.

Yes, let's overwork developers and stifle their creativity by forcing them to make AAA Zelda games every year until their hands bleed. I'd hate to see you run a game studio. 

MM wasnt creative at all... except being the most creative Zelda ever. I dont care about the developers, their job is to work as much as they can be worked to create triple A games. In the 90s and early 00s you routinely had developers in Japan sleeping in their offices, working 20 hours shifts, etc to get things done. Now you have this westernized notion of workers rights entering japan as well which is leading to a decline in work hours and productivity. 

You forgot to add “then people will complain that Nintendo doesn’t create new IPs and are just milking their old IPs”.

They will make new IPs, they made plenty in the 80s and 90s and those developers were worked to the point that many of their health collapsed. It doesnt effect innovation. Infact their sadness/pressure reflected in Zelda MM and made it a better game as a result. 

Game developers aren't robots, they're human beings like you and me. Hard work is always important, but working respectable hours and taking your time on a project is also more important than a mandatory studio-wide death march. The latter is how you get companies like Konami, who treats their developers like shit and makes working conditions a nightmare. Voluntary Crunch-time is one thing, but treating your creators and programmers like slaves is completely different. 

It worked in the past. Even Nintendo worked their employees to the brink in the 90s and had phenomenal results. Game releases were constant and high quality. You just need to push them to the max and if they cant handle it they can leave or you fire them. "Respectable hours" isnt respectable, you need to work them the max you possibly can and you will get shorter release schedules and still HQ content like in the 90s