It's cool for collectors. I have at least one friend who has bought a ton of them just because he wants the figures. Personally the quality isn't quite high enough for me to want to display them or anything, and they don't hold enough value for me because I don't plan to buy all of the games they're compatible with. So to me it just feels like Nintendo made some extra stuff for a couple of games I actually would buy and then locked it away piecemeal behind a bunch of $13 DLCs.

I wouldn't mind it so much if it was like... I could buy a single, great-looking amiibo for $20 (or even a bit more) that would unlock all of the content locked behind individual amiibo. There's no technical reason a Link amiibo can't hold the data for a Mario FP in Smash Bros. $13 is much more than the Mii costumes in Mario Kart are collectively worth, etc. Of course this would be a terrible business plan for Nintendo because it wouldn't incentivise fans to buy more than one amiibo, so they would hardly be selling any at all.

What's good for their business leaves a bad taste in my mouth, though. It reminds me of free to play games with a "premium subscription" setup, only none of these games are free to play so I definitely feel like the $60 I spent on them ought to have given me access to all of the content, and that "extra" content sold separately should be priced reasonably, not $13 for a single costume or a special computer opponent that can only take the form of one out of fifty playable characters.

Actually, Kirby is one of the ones that looks great. I doubt they could do much better even at a higher cost. But Link, by far the most "useful" amiibo so far, looks pretty lousy. It would certainly be possible for them to make better-looking figures without raising the costs, as the designs and stances chosen for the Smash set are just mostly inconvenient for conversion to figures. Hopefully the situation will improve now that it's clear they're popular... but then that begs the question of how many times Nintendo fans will be willing to buy the same characters.

Because they didn't think it was viable. Nintendo proved them wrong.

There was no reason for anyone to go that route anyway really. 

Sony was coming off the PS2 (which crushes the Wii's LTD to this day), so they had no incentive to change direction. 

Microsoft was only in the business to directly counter Sony because they were afraid Sony might try to trojan horse the successful Playstation against their OS monopoly (shoulda paid attention to Apple instead, Microsoft). So MS staying directly on the same route as Sony was basically locked in too. 

Nintendo was the only that was kind of becoming the third wheel and when Sony threatened their 'sanctuary' in the Game Boy brand, they had no choice but to find a new way. 

Problem is today there is no uncontested demographic that Nintendo can turn to where they can try to make inroads with little/no push back from competetion. 

They either deal with Sony/MS on one side using the business model that they invented with the NES, or they have to find an answer against Apple/Google on the other end who don't play by any of Nintendo's rules ($40-$60 games? Nope, developers can charge $1 or even give them away for free). 

Maybe they've finally decided to make the right decision and put me in charge. I'll get Nintendo back on track.

but can Ninty even make such a device and still have it AFFORDABLE. cause we know that people arent going to go in droves and pay for anything over 250 and if im being honest and i hate to admit this they are putting things on tablets and phones that are making me go "whoa"

Yes ... I think so. Keep in mind an iPad Retina mini with a super high resolution 8-inch display, 2GB RAM, and a pretty smoking A8 processor (which would destroy the Vita head to head) costs Apple maybe about $200-$250 to manufacture. 

It would be a bit of a challenge, but not impossible. 

First thing you have to do is have an affordable screen that's still of decent quality. So a 5.5-6 inch 1280x720 touch panel takes care of that, regular LCD (no fancy OLED or 3D screen or anything like that, you can always release an OLED or 3D screen version later in the lifecycle if its so important). Save some money here. 

You don't spend a lot on-board flash memory, let the user upgrade that via their own SD Card. You go for a cost effective CPU from ARM, something powerful but something that's common and will scale down in cost quickly with good power efficiency. 

The GPU is where you spend your money. Custom design. Power that bad boy up to the top. You splurge a little bit on RAM as well. But RAM scales down in cost relatively quickly too. You use regular RAM (like LPDDR4) too, nothing exotic or crazy. 

You sell for cost or at a small profit from day 1, but using more common components you can rest easy that the manufacturing cost will drop fairly quickly. 

If you're sharing the same processor/RAM components with your "console" you can order in even higher bulk and ask for a lower price (another reason to do the unified platform route). 

No matter how successful you are, it's never a good idea to leave a lucrative market untapped. Nintendo were just the first to take the plunge.

I'd have never thought that I'd be totally in sync you ... 

This so much so especially the last statement ... 

At this point it's pretty hard to find out a new sizeable audience worth pursuing. A blue ocean platform pretty much ALWAYS requires new people with a moderate amount of disposable income to boot. It's a huge road block for Nintendo trying to carve out it's own customers since gaming content consumption has drastically increased which means there's little left to exploit. Competing in the smart devices segment is already a bad idea because of the fact that mobile gamers don't value gaming software much hence the low profit margins and it's already crowded as it is. PC gaming also isn't the right direction either since many of the userbase don't value a whole lot of Nintendo's traditional console game franchises. The only market that Nintendo can sell to left is the handheld market and it could downize even further than it already has in the future. 

It looks like the only way for Nintendo to succeed is wait a long time until the new generation comes along or more consumers gaining a higher income ...

I think VR actually could be a blue ocean, it could be an entertainment medium in itself that goes beyond just video games.

That said, I think Nintendo is probably too late on that with Sony, Facebook/Occulus, Samsung, etc. already well into development of their own versions.

The competetion is really fierce these days every company nowadays is looking for the "next big thing" in electronic entertainment. 

Most agreed that VR could most definitely be blue ocean since it provides a potentially very different interactive experience compared to the rest of the gaming devices ...

Nintendo is indeed outdone by the likes of those that you mentioned ...