I hear a lot of people saying Nintendo can't afford to compete with a traditional console...

[torok]

RubberWhistleHistle said:

nintendo is actually a larger company than Sony, and both are insignificant specks compared to microsoft. i dont know why people have a hard time understanding this.

Nintendo is smaller than Sony. Talking about assets, Sony had 15 trillion yens, while Nintendo stands at less than 1.5 trillion. In market cap, Sony is worth US$ 35 billions, while Nintendo is worth 22 B. 

Sources:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=SNE

http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/ntdoy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo