I understand not wanting to cut off support before necessary but N64/GC/Wii software releases and hardware sales took a nosedive almost a year before there successor coming out. I agree with u on there handhelds, Gameboy went on forever but if not for Pokemon giving it new life I think its successor woupd have been out a couple years earlier and I think ur right about DS, they released ot sooner replaeced GBA before it needed to, fearing PSP would come in and steal its sales.

About GC tho I feel it was late, ya Xbox came out at the same time but if GC had come a year earlier and had Perfect Dark at launch it could have kept the shooter crowd it won over with GoldenEye thus proventing Microsoft from getting a foothold in gaming. Losing over $4 billion plus being in a distant 3rd place could very easily have made them not enough try again with 360.

It's not that Nintendo consoles have launched late, it's that others have launched early to try to get an edge starting with Genesis when Sega realised that Master System was a flop. In order for Nintendo to launch first it would have had to cut the life of a system short, as MS did with XBox 1. This finally changed when MS and Sony decided to stretch out the costly PS360.

O'rly???  Tell that to the Wii... from 2010-2012, it only received TWO notable 1st party games, DKC Returns and Skyward Sword.  Nintendo essentially allowed the Wii to starve to death during its last 2 years in the market prior to the Wii U's release, which cost them a ton of momentum as the casuals started flocking to Kintect, and the Wii, which dominated in sales for most of this past gen, ended up limping to the finish like while sales of the 360 and especially PS3 remained strong throughout and allowed both companies to gain momentum going into next-gen.

So ever since M$ entered the console industry there's been no competition and no innovation?  Developers aren't competing and innovating because of M$?

I understand alot of people want to go back to the "good ol' days" of Nintendo vs. SEGA or Nintendo vs. Sony, but lets not kid ourselves here, they're not the only ones who have done innovative things in this industry and helped it to grow and expand over the past few generations.

they gave us achievements I guess...but they also made shooters limited to two weapons, not focus on single player, and regenarative health.  Seriously I like Halo but I hate what it's done to the genre (a bunch of samey rules for them that I don't like outside of Halo).  Overal they cut into Sony profits that could've been used to fund more awesome first party content.  Nintendo kinda has a different crowd but maybe they wouldn't have had to focus on motion if MS hadn't taken those 24 million sales and obviously was about to take more this gen.

So basically you're mad at M$ for making console shooters that don't center around picking up endless keycards and health packs, and for cutting into poor Sony's profits?  Wow, do you have stock in Sony or something?  Otherwise why would u care about how much money Sony makes?

I just said it would give them more resources for first party content.  Also I mentioned Nintendo just as much as Sony because I'm a fan of both.  Why nitpick the Sony parts?  Have something against them?

They did leave the Wii out to dry especially in NA and Europe.

Nintendo published a good steam of games in Japan including fairly high profile releases of The Last Story, Pandora's Tower and a few Japanese casual games, while dangling Dragon Quest X before Square Enix revealed it was a MMORPG. But their is no doubt whoever was controlling the game out put on what came to the Western side of the world was a moron that would rather gamble on Fortune Street (Monopoly + Mario + Dragon Quest) then either Western produced software or their more traditional software made in Japan. It took a campaign and probably Nintendo of Europe doing most of the work to get Xenoblade released in NA and them to let a 3rd party to release both Last Story and Pandora's Tower. One would hope that Nintendo of America now under Iwata's directly will be better with scheduling releases on more then just their handhelds but time will tell.

But that seems to be more attuned to Nintendo's arrogance that they could survive via casual games and the dwindling 3rd party support they were getting at the time rather then them NOT trying to bleed the Wii dry. If they didn't try they would have dropped the Wii U much earlier which probably would have been to their benefit.