The audience that wants games of very simple complexity, that are easy to pick and play ... are property of Apple and Android now. How that came to be is pretty much not even worth debating because what's done is done and nothing can change it now. Even Miyamoto acknowledges in their most recent Q&A that smartphones are hurting their business. 

People may not be buying a Wii U, but the 3DS is still selling reasonably well (at 30+ million it's the largest selling game platform thus far) ... but even there games like Brian Training and Nintendogs are gaining no traction and while Tomodachi Collection is a modest success it's no where near the level of success of previous Touch Generation type titles. Coincidence? No way. Where there's that much smoke there's fire, and I think you are underestimating how big that fire is, it's wildly out of control actually.

It's no different from the death of the "point and click camera". Those were everywhere 10 years ago, nightclubs, vacationers, teenagers ... if you wanted to take photos you had to have one of those cameras. Nowadays it's very rare than anyone buys one of those. Everyone just uses their smartphone for taking "point and click" photos as those do a good enough job for most people. And then you have sales of high end DSLR cameras for enthusiasts and budding enthusiasts that want better quality photos, and says of DSLRs are booming actually. So you have a high end market and the cell phone market, but the "middle market" which was the old point and click has become extinct. 

Now what industry does that make you think of? Hmmm ... Or MP3 players ... no one buys an MP3 player anymore, because why buy that when your cell phone can play MP3s too and do a hundred other things? Even the iPod touch doesn't sell that great anymore, people have that functionality covered through their iPhone/Android phone nowadays.

There is no value proposition to someone who only wants to play games about as complex as Wii Sports or Nintendogs or Brain Training to have to spend $150-$300 on a seperate piece of hardware just to play that when their cell phone does that already, at cheaper software prices to boot. 

Microsoft and Sony really just took what Nintendo was doing and adapted it to the teenager market (which Sega actually laid the foundation for). Nothing more, nothing less, whether Sony admits it explicitly or not the PS4's great grandfather is the NES/Super NES, everything starts from there. And really Sony/MS are complimentary of Nintendo and even share a lot of the same principals (listen to Yoshida speak) ... the console war bullsh*t really is passe, there are bigger issues for industry today. 

The one thing you are dead right about is there was always a conflict between Nintendo and not making enough simple software, but that's because it's not in Nintendo's DNA to make simple/casual software. Wii Sports was a bunch of demos they slapped together and gave away for free to demo the controller, it wasn't meant to define the software Nintendo would make for the next decade. This was always going to be a conflict for Nintendo. Mario 3D World is more the essence of Nintendo than Wii Sports is, and if you can't appreciate or see any value in that type of game, then you're always going to have a problem with Nintendo. 

Amen to that

Which opinions would those be? I'm genuinely curious if you can even name one. 

If you mean I don't blindly rah-rah behind any corporate flag like a cheerleader and rather make opinions based on what's happening in the industry, then I'm gladly guilty of that. 

What developer wants to make games they dont want to make...?

Yeah, Im sure Miyamoto has one foot out the door...lol

come back and there is more doom then usual

It's not a moot point because the casual audience doesn't really care that much about any specific titles, they just want enough selection/variety for them to have fun. They are not fussy like "hardcore" gamers who will freak out not only if they don't get just the right, exact lineup of games they want, but freak out over details like how cell shaded Zelda is or whether Raiden or Snake is the main character in the 50th Metal Gear game. They just want something "fun" for the 10 minutes of spare time they may have on any given day to play a game inbetween Instagraming, Twittering, Facebooking, sexting (lol), and the billion other things they can do on their phone to pass time. 

Just because you kissed a girl at a nightclub, doesn't mean she pledged her undying love to you or even wants to date you. That's all Nintendo got with the Wii and casuals ... a hook up, maybe a one night stand at best, but they weren't married to Nintendo, and they never wanted to be married. The casual audience is the hot, vapid girl at the bar, she doesn't care if one guy walks because another three guys are waiting to hit on her. And Nintendo was never "boyfriend" material for her, just a fun distraction for a while. 

Sorry I lost track about the hardcore gamer bit? Nintendo actually always has been a 'hardcore' gaming company to be honest. Even the original Donkey Kong is a frustratingly difficult game, Nintendo's always been a hardcore game company, they just opted to wrap their games in a faux Disney-style packaging with warm colors and friendly characters (most of the time). 

In the 90s at the height of the SNES-Genesis war for example Hiroshi Yamauchi so incensed that Arakawa had allowed Sega to paint Nintendo as a company for "kids only" that he threatened to fire him (his own son in law, lol! hugely taboo in Japanese business culture) unless he shaped up in a public interview. It was after that time that Nintendo greenlit projects like Killer Instinct, uncensored Mortal Kombat 2, and launched the "Play It Loud" ad campaign to directly respond to Sega.  

Guys guys dont we all remember February where it sold 100k in US with donkey kong. This means its possible it can do that again with mk8.

They are married to smartphones in a sense actually because smartphones are integral to their day to day life. They don't need (and never really did need) a gaming machine. 

Nintendo is closer to Sony and Microsoft than they are to the type of basement development/fad based gaming that defines the casual gaming trends of today. 

The difference really is that Sony/MS are far better at marketing than Nintendo was and took advantage of some mistakes that Nintendo made in the late 90s/2000s to force Nintendo into an uncomfortable position. But they're not exactly reinventing the wheel, they just took what Nintendo did with the NES/SNES and took it to its logical conclusion (if you liked games at age 12, you'll probably still like them at age 22, not exactly rocket science and Sony wasn't even the first to put 2 and 2 together here). 

Casual gamers don't make me "angry" either, I'm just pointing something you yourself actually have pointed out too ... there is a "disconnect" (your own words) between Nintendo and so-called casual audience. That's because Nintendo never was a casual company to begin with, Wii Sports is not really indicative of the general type of game they've made the last 20-30 years. And casual gamers weren't interested in the standard type of Nintendo game.

Using the girl analogy, does a guy really have a right to be mad at a girl for not falling in love with him? If she's in her college years and just wants to party ... I don't begrudge her, just be happy you hooked up with her once, dude, but she's not down for a relationship either. You were never really her type, you just made her laugh and were the token "fun guy at the bar that night" that she decided to hook up with. Enjoy it for what it was, and move on when its over, lol. 

The problem for Nintendo though is that cheap/casual gaming culture on phones/tablets is killing their future audience with kids too. That's where it really hurts. That's where Nintendo is being pushed out of their comfort zones and not being able to find a reliable audience anywhere. 

Well I guess in response to that I'd say "how different is Nintendo from Sony and Microsoft really?"

They're not really. The main difference between the companies is Nintendo opts to tailor their business philosophies first and foremost as a family game provider. Not because they give a sh*t about raising your kids, but because it's been a reliable business tactic for them since the 1980s. 

Sony's philisophy is to tailor their marketing from the 21 year old onwards with the belief that younger kids tend to want to play the same games their older brother is playing.

People who are still obsessed with console wars don't get it. They don't get what's happening with the industry. These are petty pissing matches that even the companies themselves don't do anymore. Nintendo does not take shots at Sony and Sony does not take shots at Nintendo, I mean for crying out loud MS ran a 'what's your favorite Zelda game' on their official Twitter account during E3. 

What do I think about people who think Nintendo needs to be more like MS and Sony? Well in a broad sense, I think they are probably living in a different decade if they still think that dynamic is what defines the game business today, because it's not. 

As far as competition goes though, you should never be too proud or arrogant as a company (I don't care what company you are) that you feel you can't learn anything from anyone else or that your sh*t smells like perfume. Don't ever believe your own hype in other words. There's nothing wrong with Nintendo learning a thing or two from Sony or MS, no one company in this business has a monopoly on all the good ideas.