I think yeah I hindsight, they should've just for gone the traditional "we'll wait 5-6 years for a successor starting again at ground 0" with the Wii, and should've released a higher end Wii model around 2009 or 2010 or so, when the Wii craze was still riding very high. 

Waiting until 2012 allowed the craze to sputter out, and then Nintendo was stuck launching the Wii successor with zero momentum behind them, in fact by then the fact Wii brand had negative momentum because it was kinda seen as outdated by then. 

You could see the same thing was happening with Apple even, when they went through a long period where the iPhone was not updated or they weren't offering a larger screen iPhone, they started to lose marketshare to Samsung, but since they've finally refreshed with the bigger screen iPhone 6, they have really experienced booming sales again. 

If they had waited another 2 years to make a big screen iPhone, I think they would've lost a lot of momentum. This is a case where listening to video game traditionalists was not a smart move. 

I don't get this Fusion concept. So rather than buying two video game systems (e.g Wii and DS) and two sets of games (e.g Wii Music and DS Music) you only buy one console and one set of games? That seems to mean much less revenue for Nintendo and reduction in profit opportunities. 

Well, the point of the Fusion for Nintendo is being able to concentrate all of its software output in one OS, shared by two machines. That way, no matter how little support Nintendo hardware gets, there would be always enough software to play on them (Both WiiU and 3DS had important droughts on their first years, killing the momentum of both systems), also they could concentrate on only one version instead of two, making their output faster. Second, the Fusion would mean that a buyer of only one version could access all Fusion games: imagine the sales of the WiiU games if 3DS owners could play them on their machines. What is lost in hardware is gained in software. Third, the situation of both Nintendo home consoles and handheld is a progressive descent in sales, so joining them together could be more effective than trying to repair each one individually, not to mention handhelds competing against the home console. They can do that now, specially with the upcoming QoL proyect and mobile games covering in sales if something goes wrong.

I think it's a good idea. Even if the hardware isn't as powerful as the PS5, Nintendo doesn't recquire that much power for their games and  big 3rd parties ignore Nintendo anyway, so I don't see that holding the project back.

It's more about freedom of choice and many people simply prefer one form factor over the other. Some people prefer playing on a handheld and some prefer playing on a console, this causes many games to lose out on potential sales because a handheld only owner isn't going to buy Splatoon/3D World/Tropical Freeze and consoles only owners aren't going to buy Pokémon/Tomodachi Life/Animal Crossing because these games are on devices they don't want.

In terms of shpimemts, Pokémon X/Y are at 13.85m, Animal Crossing at 8.94m, Tomodachi Life at 4.16m, if these games were on Wii U as well they could very likely be over 15m, 10m & 5m by now. Games like Mario 3D World or Tropical Freeze could very well have sold 2-3 times as much if they had the 3DS user base to sell to as well.

The fact is that Nintendo really can't handle supporting 2 separate devices with a strong output and that's only going to get worse as their next-gen devices become more powerful and require longer/more costly development cycles.

Another key point is that by creating an ecosystem where all games are available on both devices, there is less of a need for Nintendo to make 2 separate entries of their major franchises and they can focus more on creating new ip. No longer do they need to release a Mario Kart game for their handheld and 2.5 years later release Mario Kart on their console, instead they can make one badass Mario Kart game, support it with DLC then release a brand new ip 2-3 years later.

There are a lot of benefits to the unified ecosystem approach as long as they don't make some big mistakes along the way.

Actually Fusion allows to save money and increase profits.

Let's assume Nintendo makes 20 games per year.
That means 20 budgets but only 10 games on the HH and other 10 on the HC - ideally speaking, of course.
Each of those games has it's sales potential cut because it only exists on one Nintendo console.

Now, if you have Fusion in place, even assuming that Nintendo only made 15 games per year, each console would have 15 games per year.
That means that despite having less games, you spend less money on game budgets and you manage to not only increase the number of games per system, you also increase it's sales potential.

I think it's safe to assume that most people neither buy two (Nintendo) consoles, neither do gamers buy a system for just any game.
With Fusion you garantee that even small or "medium" sized games can sell well enough, but you also create a bigger market for all the developers who support Nintendo.

In the end you do increase your revenue with 1st party and 3rd party games.

The dirty little secret is however that most Nintendo fans don't actually buy both the handheld and console. 

Most only buy the handheld, consoles can be hit and miss (GCN, Wii U are misses, Wii was a hit). 

In either case, I don't think they'll actually lose any hardware sales. There's still incentive to buy both, I'll buy the handheld to be able to play on the road and the home version because I like to play on my big screen TV when at home. Shared or unshared libraries doesn't change that. 

It's like saying no one who owns an iPhone could possibly ever want an iPad ... yet many people people buy both. 

Can't see this tbh. But who knows.

The storage device has nothing to do with needing active cooling or not.

This thread deserves a bump. In fact it deserved a bump a full month ago when Reggie had an interview with Polygon (http://www.polygon.com/2015/6/22/8824789/fils-aime-nintendo-is-always-thinking-games-it-doesnt-sell-tvs-or ) in which he said:

"I do think that consumers find a sense of security in having the physical thing, and given that, I think the option of the physical thing always needs to be there. How that manifests itself in our future development we'll see."

The fact that there is even a question about "how that manifests itself" is suspicious to me. I've come around to Rol's side on this one, cartridges are only getting cheaper to produce and can hold as much data as a blu ray on a little chip the size of my thumbnail. They bring shorter loading times and generate much less heat. It fits Nintendo's style.

Tbh, this is more exciting than...well you know what I'm going to say...

Anyway, this is fun. It's like playing a detective game where we put together all the pieces.