Can Nintendo ever produce a relevant home console again?

[Soundwave]

I think there's too many factors working against them, they would basically need a miracle gimmick for the console (and how would that work with a unified handheld?). 

Truthfully I think the new 1/2 pillars for Nintendo are are no.1 the portable NX and no.2 smartphone games. Those are the two things that will drive Nintendo's profits from 2016-2020+.

The console NX I think will be more like an accessorie for the portable NX, for the sake of Nintendo's past legacy and for the 15-18 million or so Nintendo fans that just must play Nintendo games on their TV. And it's no/low risk for Nintendo if the NX console is basically just a souped up version of the handheld chip that doesn't require it's own separate software development (as games will be shared).

It's kinda like Apple ... they make the iPod Touch, which doesn't really sell that much compared to the iPhone and iPad, but it's for people who don't want an iPhone or can't have an iPhone (ie: kids who are too young for a phone) and it keeps the iPod brand alive in a technical sense.

But in terms of competing, there are lots of problems namely by 2016, the PS4/XB1 will be past 80+ million in users and have a library of hundreds of games by then and probably be $299.99 in price. Just gonna be impossible for Nintendo to make much/any traction there, we saw how much trouble the GameCube had and the PS2 only had a year headstart/18 months (in Japan). This would be a full 3 year headstart.

That and the portable Nintendo systems are getting more and more powerful and more and more able to handle ALL the Nintendo IPs, not just bite sized/massively scaled down versions. The next Nintendo handheld will be able to handle fairly high-end 3D and do just about every Nintendo IP justice even in 3D on a large scale. So that really leaves the Nintendo console in a "does anyone really need this other than core Nintendo fanatics?" predicament.