I think Nintendo would be better without home consoles at least. But then it would be hard for them making games for the other consoles and keep making handhelds, so I don't really know. But as long as the handhelds keep the profit high, I don't think Ninty is ready to go 3rd party. Even later, I think their pride would make them think going to the cards business again, instead.

I'm actually looking at older numbers but its impossible to disentangle the NGC from the GBA without some presumptions on splits of profits.

Oh well, its not a big deal. The NGC was still sold at a profit and had high software retention rate so it was positive, its just impossible to find out how positive.

The WiiU and 3DS are the first time when Nintendo launched with loss-leaders and the pain has shown over two fiscal years. Fortunately both are now cheaper to make than to sell by a decent margin on both ends.

I think Nintendo should go handheld only

Yeah, Pachter, the fake analyst. Years later, still an idiot.

I don't think Nintendo would go third party willingly, not as long as Iwata/Miyamoto are around.

And perhaps it would be a silly move ... an alliance with say Microsoft could work better, because I don't think MS necessarily wants all the work/headache of being in the game business alone either. So how about a partnership along these lines:

- Nintendo and MS agree to partner, MS agrees to take a secondary role to Nintendo in terms of branding and control. Nintendo gets a 65/35 split of third party licensing revenue and console profit or losses. MS agrees to pay Nintendo a nice large money hat every year of the agreement and to assist with marketing.

- Satoru Iwata is president of all worldwide gaming divisions under the new alliance. Phil Spencer becomes new head of Nintendo of America and unifies NOA + MS Western studios. Works well since both companies (NOA and MS) are across the street from each other in the Seattle area. Reggie Fils Aime is vice president, Ken Lobb works to transition both sides to work together -- perfect fit as he's worked with both Nintendo and MS.

- Hardware going forward will be co-branded, with Nintendo as the lead brand. Nintendo and MS assist each other in hardware design/development.

- Nintendo agrees in return to use Microsoft's online infastructure (XBox Live) and to use Windows 9 mobile as their OS for the next-gen Nintendo portable, bringing MS' struggling mobile OS to a larger new audience aside from just Windows Phones. A big win for Microsoft here, MS doesn't really need the peanut profits from the game business, but they do need increased marketshare for their mobile Windows, getting kids hooked on Windows mobile over iOS and Android would be a big win for them. For Nintendo it saves them time/money from having to develop their OS and having wide functionality for it.

- Nintendo + MS jointly launch next-gen 4K capable machine in fall 2017 (one year ahead of Sony) with Mario + Master Chief + lots of third party support, go on to theoretically dominate Sony.

Bold: Was it though? NGC had better hardware overall than PS2, which always led me to think it was more expensive to make. 2nd, they dropped the price to 99 at some point, and most of its life I remember being cheaper than PS2 as well. So there you have it: more expensive hardware+cheaper console=less revenues me thinks. Maybe it managed to be profitable considering the standards Nintendo saw for it, but not profitable compared with PS2 (I don't trust that lazy chart around the web btw, it says little and the little it says hasn't been confirmed).

Underlined: definitely higher than PS2 exclusives, but still lower when compared with overall SW retention.

this

Lots of people in gaming forums seem to agree so it must be true.

Funny thing is, the console that is years behind is outselling the one with 3rd party support, a modern online infrastructure and the one he predicted to win the gen. He is a moron, Nintendo do their own thing and he should stop comparing their business model on that of sonys and microsofts

FW Alt Removed, Carl