In hindsight, was it always smart for Nintendo to never prioritize or pursue 3rd party support?

[OlfinBedwere]

The N64 was definitely the biggest case where lack of third-party support was a major killer. That being said, launching two years after the PS1 (and Saturn) was also a major hindrance.

As far as the GameCube's concerned, having stronger third-party support would have helped the system out after Nintendo's own release schedule all but dried up after the end of 2003... but given that the PS2 had such a ridiculously huge sales lead, and even carrying on into the late generation third-party developers usually didn't bother giving any graphical upgrades to Xbox versions of games that were on the PS2, I doubt that doing more to attract third parties would have made much difference this generation. Might have helped avoid the embarrassment of slipping into third place, but even then we'd probably just be talking finishing slightly ahead of the Xbox instead of slightly behind it.

The Wii... let's face it, two-thirds of its sales were just to people buying Wii Sports, Wii Fit, and/or Mario Kart Wii. And its third party support in general actually was there, though arguably more by accident than design, given that the PS2 carried on selling and getting games right up until the end of the 2000s, meaning it made financial sense for publishers to still keep on turning separate Wii/PS2 and 360/PS3 versions. It was really only the top-tier AAA games that it was lacking due to hardware restraints, so the real question is, would it have done even better still had it offered motion controls along with the power of its two HD rivals? Maybe, but considering how many gamers bought a Wii and one of its two rivals, I don't think we'd be talking PS2-level sales.

As for the Wii U, well, the lack of third-party support was just one of a laundry list of things wrong with this system.