Japanese devs are on board because of the portability, but western devs I think are bullshiting. I bet only Ubisoft is gonna give it a real chance, everyone else will be done after one late inferior port unless Nintendo moneyhatted. I'd like to be wrong of course, but I'm keeping my expectations in check.

Yeah Western devs unfortunately will probably bail out after the first year or so like Wii U. 

Nintendo fans are picky as fuck too, they turned their nose up at perfectly good PS3/360 ports on the Wii U and cited reasons like "well the frame rate is like 2 frames less on the Wii U, developer waz lazy". 

LOL, if that's going to be the attitude for Switch ports it's going to be ugly, because much larger compromises are going to have to be made to get a lot of games running on the system.

I think Nintendo should just agree to cover part of the costs for FIFA/Madden NFL/NBA 2K/Assassin's Creed/COD games on Switch if it comes to that. 

At least you'll have sports + 1 FPS IP + 1 third person action IP that way. 

Yeah, I think there's somewhat of a cycle going on with 3rd party support with Nintendo.  No easy answers to it, really.

The more I hear about the NX, the more it feels less like a home console with some handheld functionality built in, and more like a handheld with some home console functionality built in. And handhelds is where Nintendo does well. This could be their way of subtly stepping out of the home console market.
I just wonder if their handheld days are limited too. These days people expect or all portable electronic gear in one device, which for most people will be their phone. But then again, the Switch seems looking to do what phone's can't yet, which is high graphical fidelity (relatively speaking) with a more traditional control scheme.
In that regard, I wish them luck, though I'm personally not interested, and I don't take all the publishers who've sworn their support all that encouraging given that they all said the same thing last time and look how much the Wii U actually got in the end...

That's basically really what this is, Nintendo is just putting a happy face on it. 

It's effectively Nintendo exiting the traditional console market (that they created), but having a TV dock lets them keep one toe in the water at least. 

What market handhelds have in the future will be interesting to say, to be fair though the 3DS is still selling pretty OK. 555k in November is not that bad for November, it was about half of the PS4 or XBox One. It's certainly not the DS heyday or even the GBA days, but it's not like 20-30 million worldwide only either. 

Is it an underpowered home console or an overpowered handheld console?

Honestly I think that'd be a waste of Nintendo's money. The communitys for those games are already well established on PS4/XB1, so I don't see people switching (lel) to the Switch versions when all their friends own the games on the aforementioned systems. Though maybe I'm underselling the value of portability and free online (Switch's online BETTER be free) against better graphics/performance and playerbase size.

They'll do it if it can make them money. I don't think they care too much about power.

My guess is that they will always make a small try and see if it works (Console sells a lot/software sales are good). For me it's like a placeholder that means they won't go all in but they will be there if things go right

It could be a Wii U situation or a Wii one

Honestly it's semantics, instead of arguing whether it's a powerful handheld with console aspects or a weak console with handheld aspects people should just accept it for what it is, a device designed to act as both and the power is probably right in the middle of what a new dedicated handheld & dedicated console would be from Nintendo.