It's bad enough to not take the full video game history into account (it hasn't even been 40 years since the Atari 2600 was released, so there aren't huge amounts of relevant systems to go through; it's basically three per generation on average), but it's inexcusable to ignore parts of the history of a specific company when trying to predict their future.

It's also inexcusable to say NES and Gameboy are representative of what make Nintendos platforms successful today.

Your point is that the industry has changed and first party alone won't make a console successful, but didn't the Wii just prove that there is a first party that can do just that? It wasn't third party games that led to huge Wii sales.

Agreed on that last sentence, but not the rest. It was the gimmick, bringing motion control to the mainstream,  coupled with first parties taking advantage of that gimmick that brought the Wii success, not first party alone. There is no way in hell the Wii would of sold anywhere near what it has now if it didn't have an interesting gimmick.

What speaks against Wii U success are the N64 and GC, but not in the way you outlined in the OP. If Nintendo chooses to forego making certain games, their market performance will suffer. The 3DS already showed the devastating results of such a Nintendo mindset.

The 3DS had a slow start mainly due to the low price point, as soon as it got cut it was selling more than the DS did in the same time period.

The two main pillars of the Gameboy were 2D Mario (Super Mario Land) and Tetris. In 1996, a third pillar got added with Pokémon. These are the games that the market expects from a Nintendo handheld: 2D Mario, Pokémon and something like Tetris. (Tetris wasn't owned by NIntendo and got ported to countless platforms, so its value as a system seller greatly diminished. In the DS era Brain Training was an adequate replacement for the Gameboy Tetris. This pillar is definitely the hardest one to keep intact, because it's not tied to a fictional universe that consumers want to visit again.) 

If the Gameboy had a major rival at the time there is again, no way it would be as successful. The success of the DS can also be attributed to being lower priced than the competition, and having an interesting gimmick as well it's first party library.

The 3DS didn't get any of these three pillars so far, hence why its sales are still atrocious in the Western markets despite a major price cut (Japan doesn't view handheld gaming as second rate gaming, so the 3DS is doing alright over there). The simplest way to encourage your audience to buy a next generation system is to make sequels to the most popular games. Ergo, NSMB2 and Pokémon should have been on the 3DS as soon as possible. Sounds logical, doesn't it? But we are talking about a company that took 19 years to make a new Super Mario Bros. game for a home console and with the 3DS they proved that they've learned nothing from their past oversights.

lol wtf did I just read

You said it was too early to make statements, I disagreed as I've made multiple predictions to address multiple scenarios. The only scenario I haven't adressed is one or both of them being total failures, others have pointed that out and it's a very good point imo. 

If you're saying you think it's too early for you to make statements than I find nothing wrong ^^

Chandler said:
@ APM

Yeah, maybe soon they will be able to do that. So What? You are not buying that flying car now because soon (Whenever that may be) you will be able to buy a flying car?

Flying cars aren't right around the corner, tablets that communicate with your TV are, the latest till we get that is like early next year. And this is assuming tablet gaming on your tv is a big incentive. Tablet gaming on your tablet seems to be more than enough for casuals, especially if it means taing that tablet anywhere they want.

Face it, the Wii Upad can do more than a 3DS and also more than an iPad AT HOME.

More than the 3DS? Sure... don't see how that's relevant, more than the iPad? Aside from physical controls, which casuals don't care about, than no.

While it isn't really portable it can still be a superior Media Hub in your home with larger storage space and flexible output (TV or Pad) for the casuals.

 Being a media hub isn't really going to make much of an impact seeing as Microsony's systems will probably do it better. I doubt casuals care too much about tablet to TV, and even if they do, tablets will be doing that within the next year

sporting superior leetpwnge controls for teh hardcorez. Again, hardcores aren't what made the Wii sell as almost 100m.

Nintendo will be fine. I agree

Jay520 said:
Also, the Wii U will be launch a year before the other consoles. If within that time period, 3rd party developers find success, they'll likely stick with the Wii U just to be safe.

Though it's likely, we aren't sure if the Wii U will be a year ahead. The PS4 could be announced at TGS with a release date of Q1/Q2 next year, there have been rumours about Sony wanting to get it out before Microsoft. And hell, even nextbox could be revealed in a couple days. But I guess it is unlikely, so that's a good point.

Another factor to consider is will developers be willing to use consoles to their full potential next gen? This gen, we've already seen plenty of studios shutting down due to the skyrocketing costs of making games technically impressive. Next gen may very well be the first gen where developers choose to not use the full potential of their consoles. I think only the largest studios will bother pushing the PS4/720 to their limit. I could see a generation where 3rd parties decide to make games 'cheap' enough that they'll be able to function across all three consoles.

Or if we see a huge push towards digital distribution, we'll see all the costs that go towards manufacturing and distributing physical copies, go towards the games budget instead, which will make up for the added costs to some extent. Also, all 3 are tyring hard to make developer-friendly consoles, which means it's easier and quicker to create games and port them, this lowers costs as developers don't need to work on games for as long.

I even think that the consoles this gen are too powerful that developers shouldn't bother trying max out. It really isn't worth the development costs. If you're a big company like Epic or Naughty Dog, then sure, push the cosnsoles. But I think the average developer should just focus on making a game look clean & not ugly. No need to max the consoles. And the consumers won't mind the non-top-notch graphics. Look at CoD for example. I wouldn't be surprised if next gen, the majority of developers only bother to make a modest bump in graphics that the Wii U will be able to handle them.

That scenario considered, it still wouldn't be enough for the Wii U to come 2nd or 1st imo, unless one of the others fail.