I know you're very convinced of what Nintendo will do with its next home console, but until (further) proofs are revealed that support your theory, it's only that, a theory.

Also, you are contradicting yourself with my post. Given that you still want to believe that they will launch the next console in 2013, you point that YE2013 saw less R&D than YE2012 despite launching WiiU in 2012, but a console launched in 2016 will be included in YE2017, not YE2016. Unless they launch it in the fist 3 months of the year, something very unlikely.

I think the reasons for expending less is simple: they have been spending in Amiibo and their QoL branch. One will launch this year and the other... God knows how much is hardware and how much is software.

I don t think they can make a profit this fiscal year, particularly an operating profit 

I do think they are releasing a new handheld gaming machine in 2016 no matter what. 3DS is simply not strong enough of a platform to justify a 5+ year console life cycle. 

I don't really see a contradiction in anything, sadly I don't think there is another console after Wii U in a traditional sense. Wii U is probably going to sell less than the GameCube. What would another "traditional" Nintendo console even be? It can't just be a PS4 equivalent (or somewhat better), by 2017, no one will care about that type of thing, just like Wii U is having problems because its like a PS3/360 that came out 6-7 years late. 

So it would have to either be a PS5 level equivalent, and I don't believe Nintendo is willing to go there and likely would face another tough jump forward in development budgets. I don't see it happening. I think they will just make a handheld that has roughly the capability of the current Wii U and allow that to be played on the TV in some fashion.  

I actually don't think hardware costs that much in terms of R&D unless you are doing somthing ridiculously new like VR or something. Game development costs more and that is part of their R&D spending I believe, that's why generally the biggest years of R&D spending for Nintendo come in year 2 of a console/hh life cycle, it's usually when they are developing the most games simultaneously. 

If they cut back significantly on the expense side, how will they crank out enough quality software to support the Wii u over the next several years ( much less advertise for it)?  

Ok, let's go one by one

@Dunban67 on getting from 40 billion loss to 40 billion profit: Yeah, I don't know how they plan to do it. But they have missed their financial targets before (and by a long shoot), so I take that more as a hope than a reality.

@Dunban67 on cutting costs: R&D has nothing to do with the budged of games. Cutting expenses there doesn't mean that games won't have quality. We're talking about Nintendo here, quality software will always be assured.

@Soundwave: I don't know much about what is involved in R&D, but I know that it goes up during the final stages of hardware development. Not only because it's then when the make the jump from the theoretical numbers/machine to actually start building prototypes, but also because they also have to test them for performance and durability, and in case of Nintendo also noise (they seem to be obsessed with little, quiet boxes).

As for how powerful it will be, your guess is as good as mine. Will it be as powerful as the next consoles from SOny and MSoft? NO, Nintendo can't afort to go that route. Will it be in the same ballpark as the PS4/X1? If it's a proper home console then yes, it can be that way, but if as you say it's a handheld hybrid then it won't be that way because it would use too much power for a handheld.

In any case, given that I can't see the future (otherwise I would be rich by now), I won't speculate any further, even less with Nintendo with is a lot harder to predict than Sony/MSoft.

My point is that making games is a big expense-  although I agree Nintendo won t put out a low quality game for the reason of saving money, they may make fewer games and/or perhaps less ambitious games -  

C'mon! They can't make even less games.