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Ckorik on 05 January 2016
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Picture this:

Nintendo releases a new handheld - the NX - specs are decent - hardware is tight and it replaces the 3ds (and is backwards compatible even).

3rd party support for nintendo handhelds is already there - lets make this a great 'dream' and say it's got similar power to a wii-u out the gate and decent PPI (whatever resolution that turns out to be) - which for the sake of argument puts it slightly at or above the 360/ps3 in pure processing/graphics power, however the chip they use is now based on standard x86 instructions and so is able to run the most popular current-gen engines with some bells and whistles turned off.

Who here wouldn't want a nintendo handheld that had easy 3rd party ports of 360/ps3 franchises....

Ok now add that with the reduced resolution it can manage many 3rd party current games without much work making it a very attractive option for porting current titles.... remember less screen = less power needed. Now nintendo rides this for at least a year - they may even sell the hardware at or below cost because they know buy-in to this is what makes or breaks the company. Nintendo devotes *all* resources to this platform and has a decent (lets say 4 to launch and 10-12 by 1st years end) number of titles to go along with this.

A year later using a better chip/etc. and hardware they release the home console version - with built in upscaling and the ability for a publisher to take an existing title and load newer graphics files = full version of their game. Suddenly all those 3rd party games are available for almost no dev cost to run on the new system and of course nintendo doesn't make 'handheld zelda' - they make 'zelda' and it works on both. The OS and account system are tied together - the underlying hardware is the same instruction set - just different power. Much like having a PC game where it will run on 5 year old hardware with half of the options turned off - and look like the best thing on earth when using modern hardware and all the options on - that's how easy it is to run a game on 'both' systems.

Some people only buy one of the two - but the library works on both. Many buy both systems and enjoy the ability to play anywhere.

3rd parties are able to fully jump in because no one else has a viable handheld that even comes close - and the cost of making it work on the 'home' console is so cheap of course they support it.

That's the vision Nintendo has - I think they can do all of that - and I still think they will screw up the online features horribly, they just really don't understand the internet. However the key (I think) will be to make the handheld system good enough to handle current gen games (even if this requires turning off a ton of options) - which means it needs to be a x86 chip with 8GB of *RAM* - how much would that cost.... I think they can do it for 250 or under - but we'll see.