I find it funny how non Nintendo fans have an opinion on how Nintendo should be, if it was upto you guys we would have console triplets, how boring would that be, Nintendo do things differently accept it or move on, if you dont like that fact then they are not the company for you.

Nintendo aren't innovative, they haven't been for years..

Nintendo fans will claim a nintendo-creation as innovative, then default to "but nintendo made it mainstream/popular" if you point out a lesser known device that had the feature/function first.

In terms of "hardware innovation" no they haven't had a new breakout type of control interface since ... like maybe the Wii Balance Board in 2007? 

That's almost a decade ago. 

 I think hardware innovation like that should happen organically and through need, you shouldn't try to force things for the sake of being innovative. 

3D screen, off-TV play/having a screen on the controller, Vitalty Sensor, even that Pokemon Go accessory they tried to sell ... none of those things have really taken off or in the Vitalty Sensor's case it didn't even make it to market so something must've gone very wrong there. None of that stuff has become standard.

With Switch they basically knew they didn't have a new controller innovation that would really sell systems, so the portability of the system is basically the ultimate safety net ... they know no matter what they can always sell the thing as a portable Nintendo system, and they still do a decent job of that so if all else fails they know they can lean back on that feature. 

Nintendo just needs to make great games, that's all. "Innovating" with some dildo controller isn't what's going to save them going forward, they need to focus on execution, but moving away from the home console segment is smart because they're just not very good at home consoles anymore. 

it's half assed though, a middle ground where it fails as a portable because of its size/bulkyness (in the same way the vita does because its uncomfortable as hell in the pocket), has poor battery life, it's a tablet but does very little of what a similarly priced tablet would do (while being no faster at doing it). and fails at a home console through lack of power, limited functionality beyond games, and prohibitively expensive accessories/controllers.

The portability came at a comprimise of its home-console mode, and it's home-console mode came at a comprimise of it's portability.

All the while, anyone actually interested in Nintendo handheld games still have the 3DS as a much cheasper and better supported option.

The secret is it's a portable. Really. Nintendo knows this full well and they know that's where they will make hay with the system, they know damn well as a home console company they have huge short comings. 

They want to sell the 3DS for another year, because why throw perfectly good profit down the toilet, and they want to still be able to sell $60 games, so initially marketing the Switch as a "home console" works for them. 

But make no mistake as time goes on they will play up the fact that it's a portable. 

If it wasn't there would be a 3DS successor well into development, not only that it would be given priority over the Wii U successor. The fact that Nintendo has no 3DS successor even in the beginning stages of development tells the real story. Don't listen to the PR bullshit. 

Nintendo knows full well they can die shrink the Tegra X1 chip for smaller (and larger) Switch models down the line. In fact I would bet good money these revisions already exist in Nintendo's R&D lab as prototypes with things like a 10nm Nvidia chip that they won't be mass producing until 2018, the shit we see (the current Switch/NX) is the stuff they were working on largely 2+ years ago. 

Nintendo could beat Microsoft if they tried. Sony is another story and a much more tedious task since Sony keeps all of their bases covered in all aspects. Microsoft is the only company of the three who is terrible at actually making games themselves. If Nintendo secured third party and made some cool new IP's that are cool for adults Microsoft would be in trouble since they can never find new IP"s to carry on what Gears and Halo started. Nintendos most stable consoles in all genres have always had stable third party (which were the first two consoles).

They could probably take Microsoft if they did everything right and got some better management in place, but the problem is they'd be forced to engage Sony head on whether they want to or not in that case and MS would also force them to spend money beyond what they want. 

I think after the early 2000s and Yamauchi realized that Microsoft wasn't going to fail massively in the game business, and seeing how MS just casually threw several billion in his face to buy Nintendo entirely ... Yamauchi changed and so did Nintendo. 

From that point on Yamauchi instructed Iwata and all his staff that they had to be different and could not compete head on as it would be suicide financially as MS could outspend Nintendo no matter what. Before that time though Yamauchi had no problem with direct competetion and was often a vicious competitor. 

Microsoft is what changed Nintendo I think, they got scared at where the industry was going and didn't want any part of that, it's like being in a poker game and seeing the money on the table getting too rich for your blood. Time to bail. 

Would such console sell that much better than WiiU/GC? Those who really care about 3rd party games will stick with PS, PC or Xbox.

Right now? Nope. 

Problem is Sony is simply doing everything more or less correct, so what do you have to take advantage of? 

VR? Nope, Sony already got to that first. Well make a more powerful system? Nope, they have a PS4 Pro model. 

There's just no where to go, and you'll also get squeezed by Microsoft on top of that. 

Nintendo can still sell portable systems ... consolidating everything into a portable machine that can also output to a TV was really the only logical play they had left. 

The time to stand up to Sony and MS was 15-20 years ago really, but Nintendo decided to poop the bed back then. 

Since it's an argument about dpads, one of the first actual single injection cross shaped 4 directional "d-pads" was on the mattel  armour battle and mattel sub shark handheld games.

This was in 1978, the input buttons themselves are all physically connected by a thin cross allowing them to flex and return to the original position.

Prior to that Atari released the Atari VCS with a joystick that used a single piece plastic base that had a central pivot to prevent input for alternate sides of the 4 button matrix at the same time, and only neighbouring buttons for diagonal input.

Both the dpads form (mattel) and function (atari) are not innovations by Nintendo, the only thing Nintendo can be credited with here is combining both the pivot and the shape together, and that, ladies and gentlemen, isn't innovation, it's simple evolution of an existing idea.