Yes I think majority of Nintendo fans would either support the handheld only or find something else! There are some that would migrate over but it wouldn't be enough to justify going 3rd party on consoles. You can't forget that the thought of interacting with the fan base of Sony and Microsoft alone would turn many gamers off! When I owned my PS3 and 360 last generation, I never played online games on those platforms because it only took a short while to get sick of the childish behavior. So I like my Nintendo games on Nintendo platforms and so do most Nintendo fans... 

I don't know if balance is ever coming back though, partly because mobiles/portables do a pretty good job of playing cartoony/quick play/entry level games. 

The thing in the 90s/early 2000s was that portables really were extremely limited pieces of tech. Couldn't even display 3D graphics until the mid-2000s, but now they can easily. 

So that branch of gaming kinda just went there, consoles have become more like high performance PCs that people who want really high end game experiences go to. 

1) The thread is about Nintendo leaving all hardware behind.

2) The amount of people who would migrate or not to other consoles, there is no way to tell. You think most wouldn't but I thought Nintendo fans were very loyal to Nintendo games, but maybe I am wrong, who knows?

3) There is no difference between fanbases. Annoying people can be found anywhere. Voice chat is more prevalent on games from Micro and Sony though. Micro and Sony having a bigger userbase makes the chances of finding annoying people greater.

This is going to sound insane, but believe it or not, Nintendo actually makes money on more than just software. 😱

Nintendo makes a fair amount of profit (biiiiiig difference between profit and revenue though) on portable hardware, but if that's a shrinking market because of mobile, there's not much Nintendo can do there.

Consoles have largely been duds for them 2 out of the last 3 generations, I doubt they made a ton of money on GameCube or Wii U hardware itself.

The whole razor blade model of dedicated game hardware is to sell the hardware close to cost, because you want to make money off software.

This thread is completely pointless then, because Nintendo still makes console quality games and even the 3ds has very good full size games on it. Why on earth would they just give that market up? They can do mobile and still have a handheld or some hybrid device that does both. But it would be stupid for Nintendo to give up that market and think that their games would sell on Xbox and Playstation. 3rd party companies are already suffering from their titles not selling enough on 2 consoles, why would Nintendo throw their names into that hat.

Once again most Sony and Microsoft fans consider the games that Nintendo makes as kiddie bull shit, so what difference would that change if it was all of a sudden available on their console of choice. The mindset will still be the same on the kind of games that Nintendo makes! The numbers just aren't there to support this crazy theory of a 3rd party Nintendo on consoles. If Sony and Microsoft's exclusive games sold better, I would maybe agree that there's a market for titles other than the normal which already saturates those consoles completely...

I agree.  Selling peripherals and other add-ons for their hardware probably accounts for a fair amount of their potential profits to the extent that I wouldn't be surprised if a significant amount of their Wii profits came from selling wiimotes alone.  Getting someone to buy just one extra controller probably nets them close to the same amount of money as a 1st party software sale.  It's probably one of the bigger reasons they continuously emphasize local multiplayer in their games; so that they can get people to buy more stuff.  I mean, just imagine if Nintendo sells just 30m console NX models and each owner buys an extra gamepad; that's like the equivilent of selling 30m copies of 1st party software right there alone.  That's not including the cut they don't have to pay to hardware developers, the cut they get from 3rd party developers and other positive aspects of being a hardware developer that I'm forgetting.

You don't have much faith on Nintendo titles I see. Not all third party companies do great, but there are those that sell a shit-ton of copies of their games.

You read some comments on the internet that mock Nintendo about being kiddie and you translate that to the whole Sony and Micro camp thinking the same like a bunch of robots. Not everyone that owns a PS or Xbox thinks like that. PS and Micro have the majority of console sales, real loyal Nintendo fans would buy the software and at the same time, Nintendo has a chance to sale copies of their popular titles on bigger user bases.

To say that Nintendo titles would enter a saturated market means that Nintendo already has companies that give the same experience they offer in PS and Xbox.

no, it would hurt them in the long run

Horrendous profit margins? Where are you getting that? Are you considering the profit generated by royalty sales on their hardware? Also, you can't judge an entire generation's profits based on a late-generation year where hardware sales are significantly down. When you consider the generation as a whole, Nintendo's hardware revenue vastly outstrips their software revenue, and in their best years, their profits greatly exceed their direct software revenue numbers as well, indicating a large portion of their profits is a result of their hardware business. The hardware business is why Nintendo is consistently (with only a few recent exceptions) the most highly valued videogame company in the world.

 http://www.zeldainformer.com/articles/a-deeper-analysis-of-nintendos-financials-why-they-cant-drop-hardware