But being all about specs lead to the failure that was the Gamecube though. Only when Nintendo did something different did they pull out way ahead. 

Point is I highly doubt that Nintendo want to get into this arms race between MS and Sony draining money into R&D for new console refreshes every few years. 

maybe they can't and they have accepted it, maybe its time for some of us to do the same

Yeah I think so. It's not the 80s/90s anymore, Nintendo had a great run then, but times change. 

Microsoft has come into the industry and they have grabbed the no.2 spot, Sony is still at 1 ... there is no room for no.3. The industry is also dramatically different today, consoles are largely big budget violent games now, with the need for smaller more cartoony games being satisfied by free smart phone games.

Nintendo's role is different and probably to be more of a smaller part of the industry, but they can still make good money off smartphone games and probably OK money off the NX if they handle it correctly. 

They needed to do better with the GameCube to defend their traditional console market and they failed to do so then, the Wii was a different direction, but they lost that audience too, so it is what it is now. You can't allow someone else to invade your country, take over, and think you can just win it back easily 15-20 years later. The enemey is too entrenched and has taken over. 

I do prefer Yamauchi's Nintendo over today's Nintendo, they just made a massive mistake with the CD-ROM issue, that screwed everything up and that kinda haunts Nintendo to this day. I think Yamauchi was too old with the GameCube and no Howard Lincoln/Minoru Arakawa around to shape the platform also killed it. People like Miyamoto should've been kept away from its hardware design. 

The only reason the N64 and GameCube didn't do as well as they could have....is because they went with expensive cartridges and mini-DVDs.

If they had industry-standard CDs for the N64 and regular DVDs for the GameCube they would have been extremely influential in the 5th and 6th gen.

The GameCube is still doing far better than the Wii U....both in terms of third-party support and worldwide sales. And, Nintendo made a nice profit with the GameCube as well.

GameCube had too many small problems that snowballed into a loss. 

Launching in 2001 was a mistake, the hardware was done in 2000, they just sat around a full year waiting for games to finish up. That pretty handed Sony a repeat console win with such a large headstart and even let Microsoft (who was late) to mobilize against Nintendo. 

The design of the system was stupid, classic case of Nintendo's Japanese designers letting their ego get in the way of market realities, it never should have looked like a child's toy. 

No killer app at day 1 of launch was also a mistake, it should have launched in 2000 with Zelda: Majora's Mask and Perfect Dark (taken away from N64) as launch date software IMO. 

Giving up the FPS audience was a huge, huge mistake too, they just handed that over to Microsoft without even a fight.

No online. 

The list just goes on and on. 

It could have been a different story if the choices were made differently in those regards, but I was talking more so from the specs approach (but you do make a very valid point). Also the fact that the Wii U barely got any third party support shows some of the realities of the market. The flocking of big name publishers like EA and Activision to the other consoles, plus the complete dissapperance of the "B market", plus the reduction of risk-taking has really robbed Nintendo of getting any software selling (that isn't theirs) on the Wii U. Given these circumstances, I feel as though a beefed up as hell console might not be the answer to Nintendo's prayers. 

Well it's too late now for both of them. 

Sony and MS to me look pretty entrenched in the traditional market and now that they're offering iterative systems there's not even room for Nintendo to release a traditional console that would've been a decent amount better than the PS4 and gain traction from that, because both Sony/MS are going for 4+ TFLOP machines. 

It's just a pissing match Nintendo can't win. 

Besides that the industry is too different nowadays. Nintendo has too many cartoony franchises to be taken seriously as the defacto market leader unfortunately. 

Nintendo is like the 1970s Superman when everyone is into things like Deadpool and Iron Man and Batfleck. Nintendo's too sweet for what the industry has turned itself into. 

It is equal to making a sacrifice in popularity with... umm.. How should I put this? ...those who have a harder time looking past appearances, especially their own.

Low price won't save Nintendo though I don't think.

The XBox One and PS4 Vanilla are likely to be reduced in price pretty rapidly as the next year goes on, not only will you be able to get them for sub-$300, there probably will be lots of promotions, like right now you can get a XB1 for $279.99.

Nintendo can't win on price, even at $199.99, XB1/PS4 are too close, this is the same thing that happened to the GameCube where even at $99.99 it couldn't gain much separation because PS2 was $199.99 anyway, not that much more.

Nintendo is definitely out of touch if the they keep saying "For us" rather than what the 3rd party wants.