If the Switch failed, where would Nintendo be right now in 2020?

[Slownenberg]

Or they would make the Nintendo Classic system, basically an all in one Classic console. Fully digital. You pay a monthly fee and can download NES, GB, SNES, N64, GBA, GC, and DS games. Basically what Switch has but with like 10x more games. They even release occasional brand new games in the graphical style of the different systems. All multiplayer games have online play. $50 for the system. Comes in home and portable versions. They get 100 million monthly subscribers and five years later reenter the modern console market sitting on king maker cash, with a load of AAA first party games they've been making over the past 5 years...

...Third parties give in and port all their recent AAA games to the new system. Sony just keeps supporting the PS5 but gets out of the hardware business, Microsoft moves entirely to a streaming subscription that plays on PC and Nintendo. Nintendo then moves into mobile, racking up billions in yearly profits off the mobile market. But Nintendo starts getting cocky, starts pushing third party developers around. Suddenly Sega, buoyed off the profits of releasing highly popular new games on the Nintendo Classic system and then becoming a major developer for Nintendo's new system, announces the Sega VR glasses that blows away all previous attempts at VR, to be launched in one month. Third parties rush to this new VR revolution. VR finally goes mainstream. Sega is the cool thing to play. Nintendo follows suit a year later but, infamously, their VR takes large cartridges thus making the headset uncool looking and far larger than the Sega VR glasses. Nintendo stock plummets, people cancel their Nintendo Classic subscriptions en masse, their current gen system sales die off, fans demand that Pokemon Crustacean/Jelly be brought to the Sega VR. Nintendo refuses, a global boycott ensues, and Pokemon Crustacean/Jelly fails to sell a million copies on a system with 250 million sales. Forced to sell, Nintendo's major share of the Pokemon company is bought by Sega. Sega then offers a $50 discount if you trade your Nintendo system for Sega VR. Tens of millions of people trade in their Nintendos, Sega burns them all in a giant bonfire on a piece of land they bought near Nintendo's NOA headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Nintendo gives total executive control over the company to Shigeru Miyamoto. He lays everything on the line on a last ditch effort game, 200 million dollar budget. It's a forest simulator where the goal is to grow the flora healthy enough to feed the animals. It fails miserably - 10 million copies of Nintendo VR Forest Simulator cartridges fill the back of stores around the world, it only sold a few hundred copies to ecology departments. Sega, still desperate to buy Nintendo's IP to put the final nail in the coffin, offer Miyamoto a staggering amount of money. Miyamoto sells Nintendo to Sega for 1000 Bitcoin, in what is the largest corporate sale in history. NOA headquarters turns into a hip movie theater with hammocks and screens on the ceiling. The following year Sega releases Sonic Mario Bros, it sells 100 million copies in its first year. Miyamoto now lives a quiet life in the desert, far away from any forests.