Since the launch of the 3DS, and the announcement of the Wii U at E3, there seems to be a massive wave of fear, uncertainty and doubt in forum threads and mainstream gaming journalism about the future of Nintendo on a level I haven’t seen in many years. It has reminded me of early 2005 when everyone was convinced that the slow start for the DS and lower capabilities were going to ensure that it was eclipsed by the PSP, and that no matter what Nintendo’s "Revolution" was there was no way that they could compete against the PS3 and XBox 360. Not only were these critics wrong about Nintendo being headed for failure, Nintendo thrived in this environment and had two consoles which reached levels of success that were unprecedented for Nintendo; and the reason for this can be explained by a presentation that Nintendo gave back then (at E3 2005 if I remember correctly) ...

Nintendo’s presentation essentially said that in the galaxy of interactive entertainment what we know as videogames only represent 1 planet; and Nintendo planned on taking people to countless new planets and creating new experiences. They followed this up by releasing the following software that can hardly be called games in the conventional sense to massive success:

Nintendogs
Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day
English Training: Have Fun Improving Your Skills!
Art Academy
Personal Trainer: Cooking
Personal Trainer: Math
*face training
*common sense training
Wii Fit
wii Music

*really long Japanese name

On top of this, they repeatedly broke all the rules and conventions that everyone claimed were necessary for videogames and received massive success for doing so. Retro gaming became viable again, and accessability became a value which was as important as complexity for the success of a game.

With this in mind it becomes clear that there is an emerging and very important market developing in front of our eyes, and who (besides Nintendo) is putting a serious effort towards developing this market? How many games that exist in these markets are not clones or copies of what Nintendo has done and received success from?

While the 3DS is certainly a strong core gamer system, and I suspect the Wii U will be more viable for core games than the Wii was (in part to reduce the "need" for a second console), I don't think these system's success will be determined based on how well suited it is to play core games. If Nintendo can find a new "Wii Fit" every year along with a handful of successful unconventional games they could easily become far more successful than anyone is currently predicting.

They can't, otherwise they would have done so uninterruptedly. Their strategy is just a hit and miss most of the times, as this segment of the market is unpredictable.

They also need some new IPs.

Please list these "misses" along with their game sales

sounds about right. It seems that people are just doing doom and gloom threads and pieces because they're so starved for stimuli (E3 has a tendency to flatout kill significant gaming news for weeks) that they'll just yap about the Wii U and Nintendo because nothing else has been happening.

Plus Nintendo seems to feed off the crying of "hardcore" gamers. The more the faux-hardcore whine the stronger Nintendo becomes. They'll be fine.

Wii Music should have sold 10+ million.   It is a miss since it only sold 3 million.  

Agreed

While I completely agree that the fear and doubt over how Nintendo will fare with the 3DS and Wii U seems utterly overblown at this point, they are not completely without reason.

Yes, Nintendo reached loads of success with their previous strategies, but by aiming at new features at low pricepoints. The 3DS has some new features, but the only thing about it that is really new is the glasses-less 3D, and the reaction has been mixed in that regard. The price point is way higher than that of the DS though.
At the same time, there is a big focus on what the cost of the Wii U will be, and cost issues relating to the controllers and Iwata saying the console won't be cheap isn't helping.

One of the key reasons Nintendo were successful with the Wii and DS was because of the good pricepoints, but the 3DS selling at the same price as the Vita puts them in a very different situation than last generation, and there is still a lot of uncertainty about the Wii U price range.

Nintendo is in a lot better position this time around then compared to the start of this generation. However, one could say the same thing about Sony. I believe Nintendo will continue to implement new ways to play and make gaming exciting for a majority of people. They need to think out of the box more and find interesting game concepts that others might have overlooked. If they were just to follow in the footsteps of Microsoft and Sony then you would have a generation such as PS2, GC, Xbox. The GameCube was a very fine system but it didn't differentiate itself enough to entice people to give it a try.

imo things are very different this time around for one thing nintendos console will most likely be the highest priced console on the market whereas before the 360 and ps3 were at substantially higher prices in comparison

then you have the exclusive feature being used to differentiate the wii u ( the tablet controls ) being available to a certain extent on other devices unlike with the wii

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpQ7GamEfnI

even the ps3 and psp had a similar feature although not as extensive obviously :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mASdFCTNA7I

i honestly think nintendo has its work cut out they need to keep the price on this thing down and clear up all the uncertainty about the controller...

one thing i've been wondering is how will people be able to play 2 or 4 player multiplayer games ( like 2 player tekken or 4 player CoD ) on the same console that are incompatible with wiimotes will someone have to buy an extra tablet or 3 extra tablets? or will there be some type of new wireless classic controller compatible with the system