If it comes at no expense then sure, I wouldn't want them forcing any hardware components or architectural changes that will limit the system in any way just for the sake of BC

I wrote this in Mid-March, and threads like these still being talked about. smh
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=199910&page=1

The GameCube could have worked, but only if Microsoft didn't enter the business. 

Once there was *both* Sony and Microsoft to deal with, it just became too much of an uphill climb to provide the same group of people a third option they simply didn't want. 

Simply put in a traditional console sense, Nintendo needed to bloody Microsoft's nose so bad in that GameCube gen that they would retreat and say "you know what? Making consoles isn't for us". But Nintendo didn't fight hard/smart enough that generation and the repurcussion is they allowed both Sony and MS to walk onto their territory and now there's no moving them. Once the mistake of letting MS get too comfortable in the game business was made, there was no undoing it. Genie came out of the bottle. 

Ultimately that's the problem with the "C'mon Nintendo! Make a An Aweomse Third Party Console (read: a Nintendo Playstation)!". Two's company, three's a crowd. If MS wasn't in the business then Nintendo would have some room to maneuver, but since they are, it's just become impossible basically. 

In hindsight, they should've just accepted MS' initial offer of putting Windows CE on the GameCube and made them an ally rather than another enemy that they didn't need. I still don't even know what the hell Windows CE did on the Dreamcast anyway but it didn't seem to negatively impact the games any, so who cares. 

They were both half-assed attempts at retaining the "casual" audience while stealing away the "hardcore" audience which left it as being a device that catered to neither.

The Wii U is very much a casual-family system. This is Nintendo's own marketing for the system from day 1:

This is from Nintendo's "What Is A Wii U" section on their website:

But being casual doesn't mean you're gaurunteed to have some new controller craze every five years either. Just because you impressed casuals once, doesn't mean you have their life long consumer loyalty either. Nintendo underestimated how quickly casuals get tired of something and move on to something else. 

Probbaly because it doesn't register in Nintendo's vocabulary. In Nintendo's "logic" when you make a hit game ... like Mario or Zelda or Pokemon, the IP should be successful for 10 ... 20 ... even 30 years. They didn't understand the concept that Wii Fit or Nintendogs or Brian Training would just fizzle out after 5 years or so. The concept of that was completely alien to them. 

When the 3DS launched with Nintendogs and it wasn't a success, in fact it started to lag in sales post-launch, Iwata admitted the company internally was a bit stunned by that. They expected 3D puppies to sell the 3DS for months like Wii Sports did for the Wii and were confused when the same trick wasn't working again. 

They sold the goddamn thing for 99$ in just a few years (gamecube). So yes, they fought hard.

2. Focus on core gamers!

Casual gaming is dead for consoles, everyone has to accept that. With the NX, Nintendo NEEDS to focus on the core gamer. Make this powerful, and try to lure 3rd parties back to the system. And when I mean powerful, I mean considerably more than the PS4 or XB1.

Sigh. "core gamers" were always the focus of nintendo and wii u is already everything you mentioned in terms of power against previous gen.

Fighting hard/smart. Making your console look like a purple child's lunchbox ... probably not the smartest messaging. Cell shading the first Zelda game ... again probably not smart. A Mario vacation/jet pack game ... probably not smart. Just handing the FPS audience Nintendo owned with GoldenEye/Perfect Dark to MS with Halo and not putting up any fight or resistance ... probably not smart. 

By the time they dropped the GameCube to $99.99, the XBox itself was $149-$179 too ... so like it wasn't that big of a deal and MS by then had gotten that feeling of "hey, we're beating Nintendo at least, maybe we do have a future in this business". Damage done. 

In hindsight they needed to launch the GameCube in fall 2000 (one full year before). No purple lunch box. Move Perfect Dark and Majora's Mask to GameCube launch titles. Build a 7-8 million unit headstart and Microsoft is never catching you. They finish a distant third, pack up their bags and go home (or easier still, just agree to use freaking Windows, who cares really). 

I can largely agree with what you have posted and I honestly think it would work out fairly well (at least better than the Wii U has). However, I have to point out a couple things.

Going up against the PS4 and ONE for the core audience would not end particularly well and I can only imagine making modest gains, moderate at best. I'm not saying that I have a better idea because I do not know how to recapture the "casual audience" or create a new one. I would take the same approach but understand this would be the greatest obstacle. Appealing to third party developers would take a concerted effort but could pay the greatest dividends. Perhaps co-produce games with other studios a la Sony Santa Monica? I know that they have a mixed track record (especially as of late) but their collaborations have produced games like Flower, Journey, Sound Shapes and The Unfinished Swan.

I think that $399 would be too expensive. At that point the PS4 and ONE could be half the price which would be a disaster.

As others have already pointed out, using a standard PC architecture would make emulating WiiU games very costly and difficult. I honestly don't think the benefits of WiiU compatibility would out weight the costs.

I have to make an additional point and I can not stress this enough. They have to improve the online experience. When I log into Steam I am greeted by the majority of my gamer friends and can select from hundreds of my favorite titles which I purchased for a fraction of the original retail prices. It's fast, simple, convenient, reliable, feature loaded, content rich, affordable and light on DRM. It's not perfect though but it was good enough to stop me from pirating software.

As I said, Steam isn't perfect and Nintendo could make improvements if they weren't an inflexible relic who are, to put it kindly, a bit out of touch. I would love to see them turn things around and I can't imagine how much I would spend on the ideal Nintendo experience. If I could purchase all of my favorite NES, SNES and Genesis games for a dollar of less I'd treat it like Steam. I'd spend hundreds of dollars on it, countless hours of my time and I'd recommend it to everybody I know. Being able to play those games online with my friends with mod support, achievements and the like and I'd never stop playing (in turn I'd never stop paying).

So, basically an extremely powerful console, with third party support and with PC architecture, but at the same time backward compatible and cheap? Sounds a bit utopian.

If Nintendo did this, their loss would be colossal.