Ok...saying this about the Wii U. Ok. Saying this about the Nintendo 64's use of cartridges. Ok. Even saying stuff about third party support on the Nintendo Switch? Fine. But the Wii? 

...come on man. You can't just use the same arguments for some Nintendo consoles as you use for other Nintendo consoles. There would literally be NO POINT in making the Wii better from a power perspective than it was. It still got a LOT of third party support, it's third party games still sold really well, and it was a huge success. Nothing but profit for Nintendo. Motion controls in 2006? Those were probably expensive. And sure, Nintendo probably made anywhere from 25-60$ of profit off the system when itt first rleased at 250$. But if Nintendo were to adjust that profit for better graphics, the Wii would have sold for 300$ just for a marginal upgrade or 350$ for a noticeable one. To make it 300$ with a big spec boost AND motion controls would mean their profit on the system would have to take a noticeable cut. Nintendo likes making cheap hardware with cheap prices and tons of profit. It makes sense, and they nailed it  with the Wii. They'd either have to cut into their profit, or sell it for a lot more money. What would happen in both cases would lose money.

There's plenty of advantages to having a better chip, it never needed to be an either or choice. 

The SNES and N64 and GameCube were all huge upgrades over previous hardware and all three were very affordable, so what ... something happens to technology in 2006 that makes tech so much more expensive just 5 years after the GameCube?

I don't buy it. Hell even the DS was a full generational leap over the Game Boy while also having a more expensive "gimmick" ... a second panel touchscreen was likely a helluva lot more expensive than a plastic controller with motion sensors and an IR pointer. 

The truth is I think Nintendo chickened out on investing too heavily on the Wii concept, it it flopped (same with the DS), the plan was likely to move ahead with Game Boy Next/Next-Gen Nintendo system. This is why they pushed hard to have the DS seen as a "third pillar", so they could wash their hands of it in the event that it didn't go well. 

They didn't want to risk much on the Wii, so if it flopped, they would've just have recycled the GameCube and not have expending a ton of resources on it. Their lack of vision though cost them dearly though, because they could've probably sold 150 million+ systems if they actually had real developer support, and no developer would have been able to not support the system with their main games, because the publishers (business suits) would not allow such a platform to be ignored. And the system likely would've have finished much stronger in the second half of the life cycle, when more and more people had migrated over to HDTV sets. 

Ya no duh there's advantages to it, and I literally just said it isn't an either or choice, but you'd have to increase the price which is not the point of the wii. 

It has nothing to do with specs. You're acting like a generational upgrade in specs ALWAYS costs the same as Motion controls. You're saying "Well they released a huge generational bumping console every 6 years for an affordable price...why can't they do it with the Wii AND with Motion controls?" Motion controls automatically account for some of the money that would have been spent on that generational bump in previous generations. In otherwords, when you bought a gamecube for 200$, you were investing most of that money into the generational bump. When you bought a Wii for 250$, you were spending most of that money on the motion control technology, and some of it on the small bump it recieved over the gamecube. To have both would mean nintendo making less of a profit, or increasing the systems price to the point of less sales. 

"Hell even the DS was a full generational leap over the Game Boy while also having a more expensive "gimmick" ... a second panel touchscreen was likely a helluva lot more expensive than a plastic controller with motion sensors and an IR pointer. "

...dude...do you even understand how innovation works. Like, at all? First of all, the DS screens were very very very cheap, they were also very small. And sure there was a generational bump as well as a gimmick, but that gimmick costed less than the motion controls. Also, the DS was a handheld system, Nintendo was *forced* to make the system affordable. If they didn't make it affordable the system would have sold terribly. The market was much different, they were FORCED to make it affordable. Do you remember the 3DS? Remember how poorly it sold because of price? Remember the Vita as well? Sure they both had bad launches for multiple reasons, but the price was a huge factor. Let's not forget that the Playstation Portable released in 2004 with MUCH BETTER graphics than the DS. You see the Gameboy  Advance and DS and think "Man, Nintendo really delivered a huge genrational leap AND innovation". But you only think that because you're comparing it to a 2d console. Compare it to the PSP which released in the same year, and there's obviously a huge spec difference. Let's say you're right and motion controls were extremely cheap - the Wii was still 150$ less than the 360 and 350$ less than the Playstation 3. They probably thought it was a great price for a small affordable innovative console that they could net a huge profit on with it's low costs. 

"The truth is I think Nintendo chickened out on investing too heavily on the Wii concept, it it flopped (same with the DS), the plan was likely to move ahead with Game Boy Next/Next-Gen Nintendo system. This is why they pushed hard to have the DS seen as a "third pillar", so they could wash their hands of it in the event that it didn't go well. "

This has literally been confirmed, what are you getting at? 

"because they could've probably sold 150 million+ systems if they actually had real developer support, and no developer would have been able to not support the system with their main games, because the publishers (business suits) would not allow such a platform to be ignored. And the system likely would've have finished much stronger in the second half of the life cycle, when more and more people had migrated over to HDTV sets. "

I disagree for many reasons but there's not a point in explaining it. Obviously me supporting Nintendo's success with the Wii does not mean I wish Nintendo to replicate it with other consoles, I do want a nintendo that cares about specs, but you're wrong for various reasons. 

You know what would have been awesome? If they did the game in the style of the animated series to make up for the hardware limitations. I actually would have been a little jealous of that version.

The Wii also came bundled with a game to show it off, something the gamecube and n64 didn't do. Wii Sports was a huge reason it sold so well at launch, allowing it to build the momentum for the next 5 years.

The problem Nintendo faced was that both Sony and Microsoft went overboard with the specs of their consoles. Microsoft was initially planning on making the 360 much weaker until Epic convinced them not to. Sony was selling the PS3 for a loss at $600. That's insane, even with the included Bluray player, and it cost Sony a ton of sales for a few years. Sure, had Sony and Microsoft made a more reasonable generational leap the 7th gen probably would have ended in 2011, but the porting issues might not have been so glaring, the cost of development would not have gone up as much as it has, and porting to the Wii wouldn't have been as much of a problem.

So my last point still stand. Profit

The Wii cost $158 to manufacture, not including wiimotes and wii sports. Add r and d costs and marketing costs and $250 looks fine when they also want to make a relatively decent profit.

https://www.engadget.com/2006/12/15/wii-manufacturing-costs-ring-up-to-just-158/

Actually that's a relatively large gap still, though I don't buy that adding a front loading disc drive, a meager amount of flash RAM, WiFi chip, and a moderate overclock of the chipset added almost $60 to the cost over a GameCube. That's a huge amount of wasted money. 

But even so, lets add $30 for the controllers ... so now you're up to $188 ... $70 more for a chipset is a massive, massive gulf. You could have likely gotten something about 1/2 of the XBox 360 in there without much fuss and the quality of the library of games would've been hugely different IMO. Third parties would've had no choice but to put a lot of their top teams on the system, because its sales were so hot its first 2-3 years. 

It's not just the controller. It's the bundled game, the marketing, and the research and development. All of these have to be factored in. Say Wii sports adds another $20. The r & d was still expensive, and the great marketing Nintendo had for the console couldn't have been cheap either. Both costs needed to be recouped. Some of the profit also has to go to the retailers like Best Buy and Gamestop. The article talks about Target making $12 per Wii sold. That's $12 that was not going to Nintendo. Between all that Nintendo is making a lot less than $70 per unit. I wouldn't be surprised if it was barely making $20 per unit sold. There's a lot more money spent on a console than just the basic manufacturing cost.

Noooo, why Dig Dug? That game could have been a masterpiece..