Pachter: "There is no place for Nintendo hardware". Thoughts?

[Zekkyou]

Vena said:

Zekkyou said:
That said, i wouldn't want them to stop. They might fall flat on their faces sometimes (WiiU and GC), but other times they make something interesting or new (N64 and Wii). They add a little bit of spice to the industry that gives Sony and MS a second dynamic to consider when making major decisions.

I'm not sure GC was "fall flat" since it was still profitable... the only profitable console of its gen.

The PS2 only lost money in its launch year (about $450m), it made about $2.6 billion in the following 4. Nintendo did make more overall profit that gen ($4.8b in the same 5 years for the GC and GBA), but the PS2 was without a doubt considerable more profitable than the GC. Unless you want to imply that that the GC made a similar amount of profit to the GBA? (22m vs 81.5m for hardware and 210m vs 370m for software).

Profitability alone isn't a sign of success though. A company doesn't dedicate years of its time and resources in the hopes of making a small profit and losing market share, especially when that product represents a major portion of their business. The GC could certainly have done worse (as shown by the WiiU's current situation), but for a company as profitable as Nintendo it was without a doubt a failure.