Seriously, Nintendo is not THAT Important

[Legendary_W]

I don't know. I believe Nintendo is indeed important.
Put it this way: Back in the days Nintendo and Sega tried to destroy each other. Sega's commercial were ridiculously agressive towards Nintendo. It was a fight to death between two titans. Now, Sony and Microsoft don't fight like that. They share a lot of things. Similar specs, similar controllers, most games are multiplat, similar services. Sure, they have their differences and exclusives, but not enough.

I, honestly, think MS and Sony are both too scared to try anything that could unleash a serious war. If Sony destroys Xbox, there goes any chance of making considerable profit out of the gaming division in Microsoft, making everything a colossal waste of resources and time. If Microsoft annihilates Sony, PS4 failing/not being very profitable would be bad news for Sony since, despite being one of their smallest divisions, it's one of their most successful products and obviously a company in a delicate situation need to produce as much profit as they can (Unless I have a horribly wrong understanding of Sony's current situation).

So, in the end, I believe Nintendo is important because Sony and Microsoft are basically the same since that's the only way they can play it relatively safe, while Nintendo is the one taking risky moves in order to offer different experiences, which, if successful, MS and Sony can try to implement and it would be a much safer bet due to the simple fact that it would be a refined version of an already existing successful product.

But this is just my opinion.