Each competitor would kill to be able to do what Nintendo does, sell enough 1st party to survive and be majorly successful pretty much irrelevant of third party sales.
But its not enough at times, as evidenced by the late term sales of Wii, so they gave third parties an open field to exploit. They didn't take advantage, and its their own fault.
“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking. ...if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.” - Satoru Iwata - This is why corporate multinationals will never truly understand, or risk doing, what Nintendo does.
