That's not the point, the point is Nintendo doesn't like to compete in crowded markets. 

If doesn't matter if MS is winning or not, they have set the rules in a lot of ways for the industry by throwing cash around like it's going out of style. "Competing directly" means having to match that. 

Nintendo just doesn't like to do that. If MS wasn't around then I think Nintendo would be more inclined to make more of a traditional console as there would be a wide open spot at no.2 (minimum) to be the alternative to Sony and sell even 33-45 million units in a poor cycle. But when you add MS into the mix, it just throws everything off. 

The industry has never supported 3 platforms that try to do the same thing. If it was just two hardware makers, that's a huge, huge difference. In that scenario, Nintendo could sell 40-50 million likely each gen without much fuss, I don't think they would mind at all even being no.2 to Sony. 

I agree with you. A 2way competition would be better for the gaming scenario. Preferably with Sony and Nintendo.

Regarding the 3DS, that wasn't anti Nintendo, Devs just weren't interested in the dedicated handheld market. Vita got similar treament, worse from the japanese side and slightly better on the western side due to its specs allowing certain console ports and sony financially pushing projects like COD: Declassified. Besides that I presume people look towards the gamecube which actually had a lot of support. 

And you're right, the prospect of third party support was never that great on the Wii U. Part of what I was saying is that its logical to suspect power to be part of that reason. The people who bought third party games on PS3/360 bought into a system with virtue of them being "modern" devices and offering blockbuster experiences. The Wii U specs doesn't fit in line with said audience and the experience they want. I mean Square Enix was happy to announce Dragon Quest X (a wii port) for Wii U but not Tomb Raider. Nintendo produced a system that wasn't part of many devs roadmap and the support it had day one were from the mega publishers EA/Activision/Ubisoft, who don't really have to think to hard about throwing a few mil at a port. For most It didn't fit into their end of gen plans of capitalising off the 160m PS3/360's out in the wild, I'm sure plenty of devs wanted to drop the dated hardware of those platforms but they had a u$erbase to milk.... Whilst at the same time Wii U did not align itself as a future platform to invest in. Its specs were well below the future benchmark 1Tflop+ GPU's and x86 architecture, it was caught between a rock and a hardplace and I believe power is one of the main issues.

The 4 systems are NES/SNES/N64/Gamecube. All very profitable, all modern specs, all moderate third party success. We shouldn't ignore that Nintendo spent around $100 of the WIi U's cost on functionality around the gamepad that could have instead gone into producing a  1Tflop, 4GB RAM system. The difference of their current nature versus the gamecube days, isn't necessarily how much they're spending on hardware, more where that money is going. 

What do u mean so? Are sales supposed to rise or stay stagnant when support drops? Why did Wii sell 11 million in 2011 if nobody cared anymore? Obviously people still cared about it at that point.

As I just pointed out, 2011 had a major decline due to Nintendo support being non-existant outside of the holidays (the first 3 quarters of the year just had a bad Mario sports title and a bad mini game collection). 2012 wasn't any better and Wii U still to this day suffers from long droughts between Nintendo software.

A system of 50m people is useless if they're only going to buy casual games and Nintendo titles, if the system isn't designed for your audience, you don't expect your product to sell much on it regardless of its userbase. I couldn't speak on the many of the devs that lacked interest in Wii U, I still suspect a lot of it is due to power and percpection but regardless I think you speak in black and white terms regarding a systems potential to sell. The question isn't whether Nintendo was going to win 1st or second place or whether 100% of third party games would be there, but could they comfortably grow beyond the success we've seen on the Wii U. 

It wouldn't have to outsell the Xbox One for it be more successful then the gamepad scheme. One which i don't think attracted any notable amount of the Wii audience, one which also generated confusion through marketing with emphasis on the controller, making it appear like an accessory. With a more powerful Wii U, being the least powerful isn't a huge problem as long as you're offering a generational leap. Would plenty of people hold back and wait for the PS4/X1? Sure! The question really is whether more people would more have adopted the Wii U? I think so, of course assuming this brought it better third party support (I'll agree to disagree on that). We may disagree here too but I don't think the power difference has too much to do with the PS4's success over the XB1. In the markets where X1 is strong (USA/UK), the difference between the platforms is negligable  and can be drawn from the fact X1 was $100 more expensive at launch+bad press etc. Similarly, being weakest of the 3 certainly wouldn't help the 1tflop Wii U, but it doesn't mean it wouldn't find success. It'd be the cheapest of the lot whilst still being very capable system considered a leap over 360/PS3.

N64 and Gamecube may not have hit their sale goals but they were successful at being profitable and satisfying consumer demand. Essentially there is potential in the "me-too" approach, its how the Xbox brand grew. I believe the market is more receptive to it now then it was in the PS2 era where jaugernauts like Final Fantasy, GTA , Tekken and kingdom Hearts were treated like sony 1st party titles. The jaugernauts of today will be whored out to any system where they will make profit without too much effort

It's not really up for debate, games like Xenoblade/Bayonetta are not Nintendo's primary concern in terms of games they develop/publish, they make up maybe 10% of Nintendo's output.

Of course it's not up for debate. The entire structure of their current console landscape contradicts you. The way they build their consoles. The way they build their games. I never said they were good at it, but is a primary focus. They may not have an onslaught of first party Bayonetta's, but the machine was definitely built to have them.

If there seperate SKUs and the console NX sells even 30 million, I think Nintendo will be quite happy with that.

I kinda agree, though Nintendo screwed up letting Microsoft into the game. They should have competed with Sony better, but didn't. Microsoft filled that void, and too this day its still like that. Maybe Nintendo should re-consider that buyout offer Microsoft made to them.

Nintendo doing it again.