In all honesty, it is all up to the shareholders at this point.

>Release all old games on Android and iOS
>Easy as hell to pirate
>Nobody will pay the money Nintendo expects from VC sales

Seriously this would be a huge short coming... the level of piracy would soar, and Nintendo would no longer take a cut of the hardware necessary to run these VC games... right now if you want them, you have to own a WiiU first...

Also, by doing so, they would undoubtedly have to lower the price, which means lowering the value of their product, and less money per sale.

This calculation is very flawed and in no way comparable to the current situation.

Nintendo doesn't sell nearly as much WiiUs as it sold Wiis. The profit margin is currently smaller and will get worse if they are forced to cut the price even more. Building and shipping hardware has more costs attached to it than making software.
Nintendo would sell more software when it goes multiplat.

Suddenly hardware is not nearly as profitable. If other developers and publishers are able to make a decent living of producing software, the software giant Nintendo easily can as well.

Agreed.
There´s no point for Nintendo go 3rd party right NOW, that wouldn´t help them anyway - only increase their expenses - since PS4 and XboxOne players really don´t care about Nintendo. They have their own audiences, just as Nintendo. And we still don´t know what the future holds for the market now that the casuals flocked away from console gaming.

Maybe in the future, in 6 or 8 years or beyond, depending how the market will develop, Nintendo may eventually go third party..... for mobile and PC/tablet gaming.....

Resumably R&D of harware costs money, but so does game developement.  We don't know numbers, but we do know they have much more staff in the game design area than the hardware area, so that factor would probably make the hardware side even more important...probably getting up to the 65% of their business that Nintendo says.

The total software includes the Nintendo software.  The line from the Nintendo software does NOT include the the royalty portion, only the "publisher" portion.  In other words, Nintendo makes extra money off of their 1st party software, but only because they are a hardware platform holder so that money is on the hardware side of revenues.

They're far too big of a company to go software only.

They're a $25+ billion company, to put that in perspective, Rockstar is like a $1.5 billion company even with the no.1 third party franchise.

They're also just spent a ton of money on a giant new development center in Japan (new office for Intelligent Systems too).

Nah, third party ain't happening, it would mean they probably would have to start laying off staff and downsizing the company considerably just for the sake of maybe selling 20-40% more Mario games (maybe).

I think it's more likely they would accept an alliance with a company like Apple or one of Sony or MS (exclusively) in which they would still perhaps make their own hardware in some ways. Simply going software only is a non starter.

Can - yes, should - no.  Yes, Nintendo could be a smaller company selling games on other platforms.  But it would be completely stupid to give up the massive, easy royalty revenue stream.  Saying they should is stupid.  It's not about making a "decent" living, but as much money as possible.  Hardware is Nintendo's main source of revenue, and that's before even looking at the handheld side.

Even if Wii U sells like Gamecube, Nintendo 1st party should sell OK and the 1st and 3rd party royalites will be worth more than extra software sold on other systems could ever be.  Even if Wii U does poorly, they need to stay in the hardware game so that they can produce another console which can adress failures and sell more units.

Saying Nintendo should go third party is completely ridiculous.

I think - as you have discussed - a multi-purpose android tablet type device from Nintendo is coming.  They want and need to keep exclusive control of their brands, and want to keep the royalty revenue from games on their devices.  But as Iwata recently said, exclusive game devices are falling out of favor so a tablet makes sense.

I'm not saying it should (well actually I am because I want to play Mario on my PS4) but I'm also not saying that it shouldn't. The software business can be very viable and if they (or their share holders) decide it's time then it won't be much of a hit to revenue.

Looking at their current situation it's more viable than ever.