To be fair Nintendo have also recognized where they failed with the Wii U.

But like all things, I will reserve judgement untill we start seeing hard data.

They need a minumum of two things to regain or even better retain their hardware market:

• 40/50 million NX sales (with profit)
• An enthousiastic, though a bit small fanbase who like talking about Nintendo products

If they fail in either these things, they might have one go left. But if that also fails, then Nintendo will be default 3rd party in some sort.

Indeed.

I don't think there is a set goal.  They just need to make a large operating profit.  It's hard to say how many units exactly that is.

Unless the NX is an absolutely brilliant product (doesn't seem to be the case but the rumors may be false/incomplete) then Nintendo will need to find a way to promote its hardware through non-traditional means.  Synergy between their mobile and dedicated business, Universal and other partnerships, etc.

With NX Nintendo are withdrawing from the home console business and they are putting at jeopardy their portable business with a design that is not very portable. A product that may not satisfy many people.

I think they are looking for the success of wii with a product that is cheap to make but fashionable and trendy and sells big numbers. It's a higher risk product but with larger rewards if it succeeds.

As much as I love Nintendo games I'm not really a fan of their hardware, its often under-powered and very overpriced.

Pachter predictions are based on normal business models but sometimes that's hard to apply to Nintendo.

I didn't expect the wii to succeed. I didn't think a re-packaged gamecube with a novelty controller in a stylish apple style case would sell for big money when its guts were seriously outdated and cheap and the games would be technically uncompetitive but Nintendo managed it big time. Nintendo likes using mature cheap as chips technology for huge profits.

It's a bit like Bose. I used to work in a hifi shop and you could get better sound for a tenth of the price, they were unreliable but looked great and the marketing was good and some people would buy them but the sensible money was spent elsewhere. We dreaded anyone wanting to hear a sound test of the Bose as we knew if they compared it to something else they would not buy and that money would walk out the door.

Sometimes a product can be greater than the sum of its parts in marketing and consumer appeal.

Hopefully, raising awareness of their IPs through theme parks, movies, TV shows, merchandise, mobile, manga/comics, cafes, events such as the Olympics will do them big favors. That way, there's increased interest, which could lead to increase in sales (i.e., Pokemon games and 3DS recently finding new life after the release of Pokemon Go). For the most part, as long as profits are on the upside, Nintendo should be happy for the time being.

But excess cash is not a good thing per se. It means that Nintendo doesn't know how to invest it for profitable projects=lack of creativity and planning or a fucked up capital budgeting process. Or just plain management stupidity. Especially in a situation where a company is struggling on their core business and it still has such a high amount of cash.
I'd be way happier to see that cash halved in the next few years to undertake some interesting projects. They said they need cash because the gaming industry is volatile so they need some sort of shield for the bad times, right? Well, now is "bad times" for them, so time to spend some of that cash.

Who knows what they're doing with the money on hand. You can't just spend, spend, spend. They have to invest carefully. Just because fans want them to create more studios or more games, doesn't mean money will solve that. Creating a studio is a process that can be complicated (see Curt Schilling's former game studio) and in order to make games in a faster pace, utilizing old assets isn't a bad idea (thus a lot of recent 3DS games with old assets but are released sooner so there's someone to look forward to). Who knows how much their upcoming NX projects are going to be this time around as well. Plus, they are already trying to hire for some positions, though not necessarily game related (check out their Nintendo Jobs twitter account).

They've just made a deal with Universal Studios to create theme parks so  they've must've paid at pretty good amount in agreement to create the attractions they envisioned. Plus, they did just open a new studio to help create more animation stuff like Yoshi's Woolly World shorts and Pikmin shorts.

They still selling consoles like their core business, of NX faile they will just try again. Keep in mind that they even this generation, generation in they have their worst selling console, they will make profit. And NX will sell better than Wii U in any case, so if they didn't abandoned market after Wii U or GC, they will definatly not abandon it after console that most likely will sell better than them.

Not exactly good comparison, Sony company have 123k employees, Nintendo company company has around 5k employes, so size of those two companies are incompatible (far more logical comparison would be Microsoft and Sony), but despite that whole Sony is just a little more valuable than Nintendo, that's pretty fascenting. Also keep in mind that Sony still have debts, Nintendo never had any debts.

Like you wrote, Nintendo made too many huge mistakes with Wii U and thats why Wii U is their worst selling console ever. Saying that I don't believe they can repeat all those huge mistake even if they want and of course they will work hard to not repeat them. Its hard to predict NX sales at this point, but I am sure it will sell much better than Wii U, because it can't sell less. :)

About this comparison Nintendo with Sony, do people realise that Nintendo is company that have 5k employees and Sony is company that have 123k employees, and despite that their value and financials are comparable.