I haven't seen this brought up here, but it seems pretty relevant, and it's recent news. Here's Iwata's words on the new unified hardware division. Up until now, we were under the impression that only two software divisions were unified. To me, this information is extremely telling.
"Currently Nintendo has four development divisions and one of them is for hardware development. Years ago, there were two different hardware divisions – one for handheld devices and one for home consoles, with few personnel interactions. In fact, we had to use completely different technologies for handheld and home console development at that time. Technologies that were suitable for handheld devices or home consoles had nearly nothing in common, so it was reasonable to divide hardware development into two divisions. However, with recent technological advances, technologies for both systems are becoming more similar. Also, just because they are home consoles does not mean today that they can consume as much electricity as they possibly can. In fact, we have already been proactively working to reduce the consumption of electricity since the Wii era. Furthermore, the Wii U GamePad has a large screen, a battery pack, control inputs and wireless modules inside, so in technological terms, it required very similar know-how to that required for developing a handheld device. Based on such experiences, we had been working toward consolidating the two divisions for a while and started the process two years ago. Of course, it takes time for two divisions to completely assimilate, and we now are confident that it has progressed very well. Senior Managing Director, Mr. Takeda, is in charge of the hardware development division."
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