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

[archbrix]

Hardstuck-Platinum said:

archbrix said:

There can always be arguments made about who makes the most revenue vs profit vs market share but the thing that Nintendo has that no one else can compete with is the strength of its intellectual properties. No company on earth can compare to that other than Disney... and even it can only compete due to the acquisitions it's made over the years, like Star Wars and Marvel. Mario has been more recognizable than Mickey Mouse for over 30 years now. Even among Americans.

Third party support is always important, but Nintendo is in a far better position to stand the test of time than Playstation, Valve, or anyone else in the games industry. Why? Because even when it slips up here and there with its hardware, Nintendo has maintained such a high level of quality regarding its key franchises and making its games enjoyable. So far, anyway.

Mario Kart 8, Super Mario 3D and Yoshi's Wooly World world were very high quality titles but it didn't save the Wii U. Even if Zelda breath of the wild came exclusively to the Wii-U it wouldn't have saved it. Quality first party titles alone cannot save your hardware, and Nintendo is in the hardware business. The Switches success has massively inflated everyone's sense of Nintendo's strength in this industry. When the Switch 2 comes out and it doesn't do anything even close to the OG Switches numbers, people will come back down to earth

I didn't say that quality first party titles alone could save hardware at all.  What I said was, even when Nintendo makes a console that few people want, like the WiiU, it is still consistent with making great games for it and that maintains a positive perception of the company.  So when Nintendo follows up with a system that people do want, like the Switch, it's able to achieve stellar sales because people can always count on great games, which sustains the company's success.

The only complete embarrassment of a system that Nintendo has produced so far is the Virtual Boy and as long as it avoids something like that again, its legacy IPs will always be fine.  And much to your dismay, Switch 2 doesn't have to achieve PS2 level sales again to continue this pattern.