Oh, John Lucas, how long-winded you are. The fact remains that Nintendo made a lot of errors. They are not the only company innovating and expanding the market of video games. You tell me I need to study video gaming history but I beg to differ considering I was part of it.
As far as N64 is concerned, cartridges were a MISTAKE. Low memory on the N64 was a MISTAKE. A stupid looking controller that wasn't comfortable I'd say was a mistake. Taking 3rd parties for granted was probably their biggest mistake and led to the first 2 mentioned.
You say the Gamecube had faster loading times which just proves that it was unneccessary to stick with cartridges. Comparing a memory card to a cartridge is cute, but you don't run games off of a memory card. The flash/SD/memory stick has gotten faster now, which is why the PSP also loads faster playing games on the memory stick, but a hard drive is now faster (ipod anyone?). Not of that, but those fast flash cards are limited in space especialyl when you compare costs. Not having more than 512MB of space on the Wii was a mistake in my opinion.
Now for your more ridiculous statement: "People forget that Nintendo has done "online" decades before except only in Japan. And Nintendo's GC-era argument that people weren't ready for online was true. Not until the last 2 years did the audience for online significantly grow." I'd like some nice "sourced" links showing that Nintendo had online games "decades" before. That's pretty funny. Japan may not have been ready, but the US sure was and Microsoft (and to a lesser extent Sony) proved that. Not having online play for the Gamecube was a MISTAKE. I would have bought one if they had it! Sega was the first to include a modem in a console with the Dreamcast, not Nintendo.
I am not saying that Nintendo does not innovate, I'm just saying they are not the default kings of the industry forever just becase they saved video games in 1983.
