Can NINTENDO make traditional home console that sells well?

[Bofferbrauer2]

They can in theory. In practice, it's more complicated:

1. Nintendo doesn't have any other businesses other than the gaming market. This means they can't cross-finance losses or subsidize hardware nearly as mjuch as Sony and Microsoft do. Sega tried to do so with the Dreamcast, banking on the arcade market to recoup the losses. But when the arcade market crashed, it took Sega along with it as they couldn't rise the pricetag of the Dreamcast anymore. In short it means that Nintendo out of need has to be more conservative in hardware power (high power means high pricetag) and since they can't subsidize hardware as much, Nintendo consoles would always be more expensive for the same power.

2. Nintendo sitting at Morton's fork for every new hardware and software release. No matter what they do, everyone will complain. A Mario Game? "Nintendo is putting Mario into everything!" Casual stuff? "Nintendo is abandoning gamers!" Something totally new? "It will flop because it doesn't cater to their usual crowd!" Bringing hardcore games? "Useless, the crowd for those games is not playing Nintendo!" I could go on forever with such arguments

3. 3rd party publishers. Will they bring their games to a powerful Nintendo console too or not? And if they do, will they do without masekre them first? Especially early on, I doubt so.