If their HW keeps failing the same pace they could survive as 3rd party... to think that they could survive the same way if they only sell 15M Consoles and 30M Handheld is quite a reach.

I consider pokemon X/Y changes minimal and in essence the game only became shinier, so there you have it.

There will come a time where pokemon will have to become a 30+ million dollars MMORPG (mobile or console, doesn't matter), fully voice acted, fully 3d open world.

Cause if it doesn't it will die to the competition.

Altought I do believe, Nintendo will be able to keep up. Pokemon X/Y is a good game for today standards. My point is only that there will be a point where today standard won't sufice and neither nostalgia be relevant enough, Nintendo will have to shell out the cash, even for one of the most lucrative/cost ratio games it does, be pokemon or mario kart.

This is my take. Nintys online presence in the vg industry is atrocious be it online gaming, digital titles, network store, services or apps.  I feel they've gone down a cul de sac. Don't see any light at the end of the tunnel.  Just my opinion. 

people say this, and i would normally agree (except the parts about their online stores and digital titles of course. i dont know what youre talking about here) but you know what? at least their games that use online have actually been working. at least they offer the service for free and all the games WORK. call nintendo's online atrocious all you want, but at least its functional. these games that have been coming out for other consoles.. you have to wait a month or so for it to work, and you still have to pay money on top of that. unacceptable in my opinion. in light of this, i dont think we can really knock nintendo for how their online is. 

Yet I can play games when Nintendo's network is down. Some people couldn't even play offline games when the playstation/XBOX network was out (or so I was told at least). Oh and Nintendo's network doesn't fail as often as the others. ;) Yeah, Lizardsquad didn't target them, I know. That's a plus for Nintendo. 

I'll gladly take Nintendo's online over the others. What's wrong with Nintendo's digital titles? Please do tell. 

And lol @ apps. Keep that smartphone/tablet junk off my gaming console please. It's already bad enough that I have to use WIndows 8 on my laptop. 

All games worked fine for me. If ninty had a top class network used by millions daily they'd have gone down too. 

Nintys wasn't hit offline because it's nowhere near as popular as live and psn. It could have easily come down.

Yet I have no problem finding matches in Super Smash Bros. Wii U and Mario Kart 8, all lag free. And I have faith in Splatoon as well. 

Not sure what is soooo terrible with Nintendo's network. Ever tried their browser? Super fast and handy to use on the gamepad (unlike the other consoles). 

What's so bad about their eshop? Lot's of classic games on it and they download fast. There really should be GC games on it though... 

what does that have to do with anything? that has nothing to do with anything at all. im perplexed. hackers have nothing to do with lazy developers shoveling us broken ass shit. are you saying that because XBL and PSN are more popular, developers are willing to ship a broken game and fix it later because.. those services are more popular? either way, it doesnt matter to me. the fact is that nintendo releases complete games and you dont have to wait x amount of weeks for somebody to patch the online portions of the game.

yeah, i really dont see where the complaints are coming from. would nintendo's online be better if the games were shipped broken? and then patched later? all the while being charged for having a subscription? yeah, nintendo really is old fashioned in that sense.