Reggie on NX: "For us it's not about specs"

[Soundwave]

There's little/no chance Nintendo would have to pay royalties as a third party publisher. The bidding war between Sony and MS for their services would be immense and Nintendo could easily leverage that into a deal for no royalty fees among other things (like paid marketing costs).

As for losing licensing fees, they're basically right now getting nothing from their console division on that end, and I suppose they could just continue on making handhelds even as a console 3rd party. Doubt MS or Sony would care.