What if they are not going third party.

[SegataSanshiro]

betacon said:

Soundwave said:

1.) Console wars are serious business for some, Nintendo going "third party" would be a shameful event for some Nintendo "faithful". This is a bit of a childish reasoning. 

2.) In a practical sense it could damage Nintendo's software output, where they only make 4-5 of their bigger franchises and basically ignore everything else because they have no responsibility for selling the hardware any longer. 

Point 2 I can understand but with the same mindset they can now increase software output with resources not going to hardware development.

They have contributed a great deal to the industry in both hardware and software and they still contribute.  They led the way getting Unity on consoles with Wii U. Wii U may have been a sales failure but some idea's and philosophy compeition carried on. Their software is designed specifically with their hardware in mind down to the controllers. It's vital. Mario 64 only exists because analog stick. Hell Super Mario on NES only exists because Dpad. They need their hardware design to make their games and Sony and MS often take ideas and run with it.  SEGA was hugely important in the 90s to hardware with stuff like SEGA Model 1,2,3 which was the Unreal Engine of it's day as that was the era everything wanted to look as good as arcades. Arcades became irrelevant but a lot of SEGA's innovation many copied. We lost a lot more than we gained when SEGA went 3rd party. Advancing hardware and the only company who could compete with Nintendo IPs.  Less compeition is always a bad thing.