Obviously Nintendo could kill themselves, actually, any fall from such a high perch couldn't be merely the result of external factors, but having said that what would a Nintendo-asskicking competitor look like?
Well, clearly it wouldn't just have better tech. If this gen wasn't enough proof then a quick look back at the late 80s and early 90s shows a graveyard of consoles that had superior tech to Nintendo but were zero threat to them.
Sony had success against Nintendo by leveraging their other business segments, luring away developers, and by focusing their marketing on key demographs. Blame Nintendo's survival on handhelds if you wish, but any Nintendo slayer clearly would need to deliver a one-two punch against both their handhelds and consoles. And obviously just doing what Sony did was not enough.
In the early days of Sega 's console business it tried to mimic Nintendo's strategy, and this was only a marginal success. That doesn't mean a company built in Nintendo's image couldn't succeed, but to kill Nintendo this way would require doing what Nintendo does better than Nintendo does it. Moving to a "Nintendon't" strategy as Sega eventually did merely stole one demograph from Nintendo.
I guess what I am saying is that a potential Nintendo killer would have to
- have great 1st party games for all demographs (that do what Nintendo games do only better)
- lure away 3rd parties even moreso than Sony ever did
- be set up to distribute their HW globally
- be able to enter the console and handheld markets in quick succession
Some people have mentioned Apple; I don't think Apple is currently set up to do this, but they are sitting on a mountain of money right now, and they could probably afford to pull this off if they so choose. Imagine if Apple decided to buy out one or two of the large publishers like EA or Activision. Then launched a special version of the iPhone that included typical gaming buttons/controls. Follow that two years later with the iConsole. This could threaten Nintendo in a huge way.
But I doubt anything like this is going to happen.
