It definitely seems that way. The Switch is an handheld with the added functionality that you can connect it to a tv through the charging dock. It's what the Wii-U should have been if you ask me.

That said it has been clear for many generations now that there is only room for two home consoles in the core market. So the decision is understandable.

Oh this is nice!

Im surprised no mods have taken any action! 

And I will agree with those people; because that is what it is. I could as easily say it's the guts of a console that I can pull out and use on the go. What you view it as primarily is a use case pereference, but by definition it is both.

Switch as a handheld only would do badly. They're milking the 3DS as a budget variant with a thousand games until the end of the year, and the battery life and price tag wouldn't work as a handheld that you could dock. No one would buy the dock seperately at 90 USD, and removing the dock only removes so much cost, maybe it'd be down to 250 which it eventually will be. But if they have a hybrid console, they can get rid of the faliure that the Wii U was, merge their software divisions and pump out more 1st party titles and provide enough content to boost sales for third parties to come over and port games to it, in the end creating the selling point of console games on one hybrid system that you can have at home and on the go at a price of one console. Nintendo themselves know this and Reggie himself has said it, and I agree with this strategy.

We don't know anything about the Switch's specs, it's unfair to judge it right now, a lot of people here believe it'll use an underclocked X1 even though it makes no sense for the form factor and is economically less viable now and even more in the long run, because it's Nintendo, though they've shown so far they can keep up with industry standards like microSD UHXC and USB-C, and with the Foxconn leak, Nathan and Game Informer heavily implying Pascal there's no reason for me to personally believe it's using Maxwell, but each to their own as everything is heavy speculation right now. The point being don't judge it basing off unconfirmed information.

PS4 PRO and XBOX Scorpio won't be an issue performance gap-wise, because all games for them work for the standard PS4 and XBONE, so downscaling and optimizing for the Switch shouldn't be that big of a problem at all, looking at the fact they were considering porting Titanfall 1 to the Vita and R* ported GTA V for the PS3 and X360, if it sells well they will spend the time and money.

You mention PS4 PRO being down to 350 during the holidays, though the Switch will very likely drop to 250 during the holidays too, that would sell like hot pancakes without an issue, especially with a bigger library and finalized online by then, that is if you want the hybrid form factor and/or Nintendo. So to sum up, no. Nintendo isn't out of the home console industry, you can't conclude that on unconfirmed information and opinions. The Switch is as much of a handheld as it is a home console. They have 50 billion dollars in the bank, so they aren't nowhere near going third party or selling out, they could go on 45+ years with them flopping hard yearly, and they have a fanbase, ideas and products that will keep them running no matter what. They're a smart company overall, very much so actually.

You can't spell "mod" without "fun."
-Michael Scott-

No, Nintendo is not done with home consoles but Switch is not a home console. I did not vote because I need better representation.

It's funny to see how many people are comparing the Switch to the Wii-U in a thread that argues that Switch isn't an home console. It would make more sense to compare it to the 3DS in that case.

Personally i think it should be compared to 3DS+Wii-U combined.

And this is why I will compare it's performance to the 3DS and not the Wii U,  ps4 or xb1. 

Alright, so I'm gonna go through this point by point.

First of all, Nintendo hasn't been directly competing with Microsoft and Sony since they released the Wii a decade ago. It was even the company mantra. There was an even a brief "Wii60" friendship between Nintendo and Microsoft fanbases because it was possible to buy a Wii and 360 for the price of a PS3. What you say about Nintendo's online infrastructure, third party support, and fanbase goes back even further, all the way to the GameCube days, when Nintendo put absolutely no effort into buildings it's online infrastructure, continued the bleed of third party support which began during the N64, and saw their fanbase shrink to a mere 20 million consoles. 

Your specs and price argument also ignores precedent. Both the Wii and Wii U launched with a higher price vs specs compared to their competitors, despite featuring bigger gaps in their specs vs their competitors than the Switch currently does. The Wii launched at $250, a mere $50 less than the far more powerful Xbox 360's cheaper unit, which had already been out for a year at the time. The Wii couldn't even run Unreal Engine 3, an industry standard engine for HD consoles at the time. Heck, there was even a time in 2009 when the 360's Arcade SKU was $50 CHEAPER than the Wii was, despite the huge difference in specs. And this largely came down to two things: Nintendo wanting to profit on Wii consoles (MS and Sony sold their consoles at a loss that gen), and the Wii featuring some unique bells and whistles, like motion control.

Wii U was a bit cheaper than the Wii was versus its competitors. But it's situation is basically the same as the Switch's will be versus Scorpio Pro, except it lacked portable functionality, was sold at a loss, and ALSO couldn't run industry standard engines like Unreal 4. 

Of course, unlike Wii vs 360 and PS3, or Wii U vs One and PS4, Switch vs Scorpio and Pro isn't really as relevant. Unlike Switch, these consoles are not meant to replace their predecessors. They are merely meant to run their predecessor's games at higher resolutions and/or frame rates. So the Switch never really needed to compete with these system anyway, since their only purpose is to appeal to gamers with 4K TVs. When comparing Switch to PS4 and One, the power gap is actually at its smallest since Nintendo started doing this with the Wii.

Power gaps also don't matter too much when it comes to third parties. GameCube was comparable to PS2 and Xbox in terms of power, but was still passed over by many third party games. Wii, meanwhile, despite being way less powerful than 360 and PS3, recieved the most third party support of any Nintendo home console since the SNES. And while there was a lot of shovelware in there (common for a market leading console in those days), the Wii also got a bunch of quality third party exclusives and ports of certain mass market third party games like Call of Duty. Then with the Wii U, Nintendo was AGAIN past over for multiplatform games, this time games that were cross gen or last gen exclusive that it was perfectly capable of running, like MGS5 and Assassin's Creed Rogue. Specs certainly DO matter when it comes to multiplatform games, but not third party support. If Switch sells a lot, third parties will come.

And...aw yes, the "TRUE SCOTSMEN" argument. This one annoys me. Normally my response to comments about "true games" and "true consoles" is asking if that means there are fake games and consoles, but that obviously won't work here.

But going by your argument, the only real difference between the Switch Nintendo's last two game consoles is that it's portable. All that stuff about price and specs are things the last few consoles feature as well. So yes, you could say "THE SWITCH IS JUST A PORTABLE CONSOLE WITH A DOCK TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE A CONSOLE". But you can just as easily say "THE SWITCH IS JUST A HOME CONSOLE WITH A BATTERN AND SCREEN TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE A PORTABLE". Neither make much sense, and both ignore key features of the console. 

Ultimately, I find these arguments that attempt to pigeonhole the Switch as one thing or another to be rather pointless. Here's what the Nintendo Switch is: it is another Nintendo console with a gimmick. THAT is what it is. Just as the DS had dual screens, the Wii had motion controls, the 3DS had 3D, and the Wii U had touchscren controller, the Switch is a console that can go portable and back to console. Just as Nintendo has never had a home console that can go portable before, Nintendo has also never had a portable that can connect to a TV and be played with a regular console controller.

Tell me, has a Nintendo portable ever had motion control wands? Has a Nintendo portable ever had a stand alone pro controller? Has a Nintendo console ever been able to connect into a base, allowing it to upclock its GPU and display on a TV at a higher resolution? Has a Nintendo portable ever received a brand new, mainline 3D Zelda game day one before? Or how about an open world explorable Mario game? Or a Splatoon game? Xenoblade has been primarily a home console franchise, only coming to portables in the form of a port many years later. Switch is receiving Xenoblade 2 as an exclusive. Or how about the more advanced Fire Emblem Warriors game, ala Hyrule Warriors on Wii U?

In terms of the types of games it's getting, Switch is very much a home console. It features peripherals that only home consoles receive. It can be played like a home console. So how can it not be called a home console?

The Switch is a home console. It is a portable. It even has a mode in between. Whether you want to call it all these things, or a hybrid,  what you can't do is pigeon hole it as one or the other. Nintendo is still very much in the home console business, as well as the portable business. You just don't need to buy multiple devices anymore. 

oooo! I last saw this on page one. It took off. I think.......the fangs today.