I never said you were being humble or that I didn't believe you.

Good. Good.

I block together consoles with handhelds because we are talking about NINTENDO as a whole, not just one specific part of their business. Pretending handhelds don't exist to prove Nintendo is doomed makes about as much sense as saying Apple is doomed because iPod sales are declining. Handhelds make up roughly 70% of Nintendo hardware sales of the last 15 years, do u really think it's logical to completely brush them aside when talking about whether or not a company is "doomed"? So when talking about Nintendo as a whole, they had consistent sales for 4 consecutive generations, one hyper inflated generation, followed by one single generation of decline which is a rather modest decline if we pretend Wii/DS don't exist since they are a fluke according to u.

Also every handheld sold less than the previous? So it makes sense to compare a device that spanned 2 generations and 12 years without a successor to a device that was succeeded in less than 4? Gameboy vs Gameboy Advance if u didn't catch on. Calling that a decline is ignoring so many things that it can't even be taken seriously.

3DS/Wii U had so many problems that affected sales, it can't simply be blamed on "less and less people are willing to buy Nintendo hardware for Nintendo games". Price, droughts, marketing, features, etc. contributed to 3DS/Wii U selling the way they have.

The way you block together consoles and handhelds is completely arbitrary. 100%. It only has relevance to you because you say it does. Notice I didn't really talk about handhelds when I mentioned Nintendo's decline in sales? Its because of the things you mentioned. It's not nearly as clear-cut as the console decline. However, deciding "this handheld belongs to this generation and that generation, and this handheld belongs to this other generation even though it was sold more during another generation, and if we do all of these groupings, look! Nintendo sells about the same during these arbitrary, non-consistent periods of time" is just completely meaningless crap. It doesn't mean a damn thing.

Also, if the Wii is not a fluke then, Nintendo can easily prove that by making a home console that sells just as well as the Wii. Anyone willing to bet that's going to happen? Anyone? I'm willing to wager there are far less people willing to bet that the NX home will sell as well as the Wii than people would be willing to bet the PS4 would sell as well as the Wii a year before the PS4 was announced. I wonder why that is. Could it be because it's completely unreasonable to expect a Nintendo home console to sell over 100 million units?

No, not arbitrary at all. All of these groupings are between consoles and handhelds who shared the majority of their cycle side by side, do they match up 100%? No, but it's all pretty close and gives a general picture. The only one that can be argued is the original Gameboy since it had a dual generation life span from 1989-2003 so I compared it's first half to its second half which happens to match up close to the times SNES/N64 were on the market.

Look at the beginning of the quote tree between u and I and the other person that u quoted, the entire conversation has been about Nintendo going with a unified approach so it's only logical to talk about both sides of Nintendo's hardware, in which case u are completely ignoring their strongest side in order to continue ur "Nintendo is doomed" narrative.

A fluke means they got lucky and luck means success/failure brought upon by chance rather than through ones own actions. Chance means to do something by accident or without design. None of these things describe Wii. Nintendo saw how gaming was becoming more and more complex which made it hard for new and former gamers to enjoy, games were becoming more and more expensive to develop and that entire demographics were being leglected.

So what did they do? They created a low power console that kept hardware price and software development costs low, they created a controller that was simple, easy to understand and could be used by anyone, they created games that could appeal to multiple age groups and demographics and also created games in entirely new genres with brand new concepts.

Is that a fluke/luck/chance? No, that's called having a great idea and having great execution.

It's absolutely arbitrary. If someone wants to group every 5 consoles that come out as a generation it's just as arbitrary as saying "between this time period and this time period is one generation, unless its a handheld then it's between this other time period and that other one". It literally doesn't mean anything. You just decided on random quasi-convenient criteria to what signifies a generation and poof that's suddenly a good way to measure Nintendo's success? Nope. not buying it. Let's just look at each type of console and compare it to the others in its lineage. That makes a lot more sense to any reasonable person, except some Nintendo fans who insist it really means something they totally promise just believe them okay? No.

Alright, if the Wii was no fluke, all Nintendo has to do is repeat its success. Go ahead Nintendo blow us away with a NX home console that sells 100M+ units. It should be easy right? Tell me though... if you were to bet. would you bet the NX home sells more like the PS3 (80M+) or more like the Gamecube (20-30M)? I think we know where you're betting if you actually had a significant amount of money on the line.

Try to be honest about this one too: if you were to bet a year before the PS4 was announced would you bet it would sell more like the PS3 (80M+) or more like the gamecube (20-30M)? I think we also know where you're betting.

What do you think that tells you?

It's a bit absurd to think that popular opinion has anything to do with the potential success of a future platform. A few poorly informed people betting for or against the success of the NX isn't indicative of anything. I think the NX has a very strong chance of being massively successful, just like the Wii. What Nintendo has said regarding the NX and its plans for its future platform and brand expansion are calculated, measured, and forward thinking.

The Wii was absolutely not a fluke, but how so is a debate that has been explored to death. The fluke comes from Nintendo's inability to take advantage of and maintain that success, but the actual breakout success was just as calculated as the NX will be. They new what they were doing. The problem with the Wii was that it was short sighted. The NX is being planned from inception to be a longterm success.

Saying "it should be easy" is moot. Making the Wii successful wasn't "easy." Making the PS4 a success wasn't "easy." It's not about ease. It's about compitence and execution. The Wii U and 3DS lacked the compitence and execution at launch that Nintendo will have going into the NX. You can see tangible examples of that compitence and execution right now with Amiibo, the Universal partnership, the N-Box, the merging of their handheld and console divisions, the restucturing of their company, and the DeNA investment. This is a very different Nintendo than the one who launched the Wii U, and that's for the better.

"So what did they do? They created a low power console that kept hardware price and software development costs low, they created a controller that was simple, easy to understand and could be used by anyone, they created games that could appeal to multiple age groups and demographics and also created games in entirely new genres with brand new concepts."

It's funny how that exact process can be applied to the wii u, and yet the wii was a success and the wii u was a failure. What's the difference, Nintendo got lucky with the gimmick they implemented with the wii and not the wii u. The fact that they did the exact same thing for the wii u as the wii and ended up with drastically different results shows how the wii was a lucky console.

Let's see how that plays out when the rubber meets the road. If the Wii is not a fluke Nintendo needs to demonstrate as much, and they haven't yet. Why was the Wii successful? It was cheap, easy and novel. You could literally play video games with your grandparents and they would understand it and enjoy it. The NX doesn't appear to be any of those things from what I've seen. The Wii U was confusing, more expensive,  and had no real novel ideas (let's take a DS and make one of the screens a television). Now the NX appears to be more of the same. If anything by unifying theit handheld and home consoles under one banner, if the games made arent compatible with every version, you're making it even more confusing than the WIi/Wii U naming confusion debcale. You think Nintendo is setting themselves up for massive success, where as I think they're setting themselves up for more of the same failure. It seems to me with all of those initiatives you speak of do nothing to make their video games more entertaining or their consoles more desirable. They're just doubling down on the Nintendo fans they already have, trying to wrench every last dollar out of them rather than trying to appeal to an audience that doesn't appear to be shrinking with every successive console release. Meanwhile, they're doing nothing to make the devices more desirable to iPhone/iPad gamers and non-Nintendo fans.

I seriously think you're in for an unpleasant suprise when the NX releases. The writing is on the wall, and it appears you just do not want to read it.

When I say that the Wii was not a fluke, I mean that it wasn't a success by accident. It was orchistrated. They did prove that by the way they marketed it and the way they capitalized on it for the first few years. It was cheap, easy, and novel on purpose. A fluke, that does not make.

The NX does not need to be any of those things to be successful. What worked for the Wii does not need to work for the NX. These are different times with markets and different expectations. The Wii U was an execution nightmare. Looking at that isn't indicative of anything. Nintendo knows the Wii U saw unsuccessful, they've stated why, and they've made structural changes within the company to reflect that. They are not tackling the NX from the same angle as they did with the Wii U, and that will likely garner much more success, as this angle is a more intelligent, forward thinking one.

Unifying the platform doesn't confuse anything. iOS and Andriods, the two most recognized platforms on the planet, already do this. The concept is well understood. It just has not been replicated to similar effect in the traditional console space yet.

Those initiatives mean everything. Their games are already entertaining. Their issue isn't quality, but one of their largest recent issues is exposure. Nintendo's brand awareness is weaker than its ever been, and these initiatives are all important in rectifying that. Especially mobile. All these initiatives give the average Joe more opportunities to have a reason to say "Nintendo," and that's an extremely powerful thing. People here scoff at mobile games, but mobile gave Angry Birds a movie deal with Sony's A team.

Unlike Angry Birds, Nintendo's brand is already powerful, and they already have iconic IP. Coming on to the mobile market with quality games in a precise and innovative fashion would be titanic for them. Serkan Toto, a prominant analyst of the mobile market, agrees with me - Nintendo is laying the groundwork to significantly inpact the mobile market, and anyone who cannot see that is not paying attention. This is not "Pay-to-Mario." It's not "1-Up for $1." This is big. If you're underestimating the importance of mobile, that's your failing. It's more important now then anything outside of the actual platform itself.

When Nintendo's brand was the biggest? When all those shitty Nintendo shows and movies were being shown everywhere for years. Nintendo was everywhere, not just on its physical platforms, and anyone would be remiss to think that that didn't play a significant roll in their massive success. They are setting themselves up to do that in an even bigger way with all of these brand expansion initiatives. That's all completely without all of the movie and TV shows that are bound to be in the pipeline as we speak. Most of this stuff will be either starting or entering their full swing at the beginning of 2017, which will be the most important year for the NX. The membership will have been active for over a year, with assuredly hundreds of millions of members thanks to their mobile games alone before the NX is even launched.

They aren't doubling down on Nintendo fans they already have. The mobile games are concrete proof of that. They expect the first game to have 200m+ users. That isn't current Nintendo fans. That's everyone. Hardcore Nintendo fans, lost Nintendo fans, and newcomers. The NX platform is showing many signs of appealing to mainsteam western console gamers. The mistake is thinking that doing that the PS4 and XBO have done is the only way to do that. If Apple thought like you, smart phones wouldn't exist, and we'd still be listening to music with CD players. Nintendo wants to change the traditional gaming definition of a platform. One that is not tied to hardware like the PS4, XBO, and Wii U currently are. When that is finally revealed, and everything they've said about it up until now takes tangible shape, people will look at these consoles as antiquated and the NX as modern by comparison. It will end the era of hardware upgrades and start the era of firmware upgrades. If you can't understand how huge that is now, you will when the NX launches and it becomes a worldwide phenomenom.