I think it boils down to this. Microsoft and Sony need AAA third parties to survive. Games likes Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Battlefield/Battlefront, FIFA, Madden, and Fallout are the biggest sellers on those platforms. So those systems need the extra horsepower to make third parties happy. Thus Sony and MS build expensive systems, and should they sell them at a loss they have other divisions that can make up the difference.
Nintendo, conversely, has a stable of hugely popular first-party games. So it doesn't need third parties to survive. It doesn't need to make powerful systems because its own software doesn't require cutting-edge tech and it doesn't find much financial sense in making expensive concessions to third parties. Plus, Nintendo is a company solely focused on gaming. It can't rely on other divisions to cover losses on hardware development and manufacturing.
Making a "traditional" console would be much more expensive and risky, and it wouldn't benefit Nintendo's games (or the games of its partners), the most attractive weapon in its arsenal. It would really only benefit AAA third parties, who would suddenly have a new suitor against which they could leverage Sony and Microsoft.
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