The Wii U sold mostly to people who did not game. It was an anomaly, or lightening in a bottle that will not return until the next big gimmick. The more frequent gamers play traditional games. For the most part most of those gamers have been sustained by Sony as their primary brand for the past twenty years. The PS3 and Xbox 360 sold right down the middle into the PS2's marketshare which sold over 160 million by itelf. Interesting, eh?

I'm sure Nintendo wouldn't like to take the losses Sony made with the PS3. That's why it's a failed console. 

Are you sure the Saturn was less powerful than the original Playstation? Even the N64 was more powerful than the Playstation.

The losses were largely due to the Blu-Ray format being forced onto the system by Sony's higher ups, not the game division. 

Still says something when you can come back from a disastrous start and still end up selling 85 million. It means the consumer still values your product highly if that many of them are willing to buy it. 

It's like a star athlete that has a "shitty game" by his standards but still ends up putting up a ton of points/yards/whatever that any average or even other good player would love to have a game that "bad". 

And the PS1, 2, and 4 generations? Not even close. Not even competetive, Sony has just slaughtered the competetion in those gens. Have to give credit where credit is due. 

The difference is it still had 85 million sales, and the majority of those owners went on to buy the PS4, where as Nintendo went from major profits and 100m sales to sub-vita sales and poor profits.

I'd much rather take a hit one generation and retain a healthy customer base then turn a profit to a significantly smaller customer base.

...in the distance I can hear the guteral scraping sounds of goalposts being moved..

"It works for them, it will work for us!!!" is a horrible way of thinking.

Copying another companies successful strategy does not mean you will be successful, an example Wii Remote & Playstation Move. Wii Remote was a huge mass market success, PS Move was a moderate success at best. Other examples, Smash Bros vs PS All Stars or Mario Kart vs LBP Karting.

The point of a powerful console+traditional controller strategy is primarily get the big multiplatform 3rd party titles so the question is how many of the people who buy consoles for these games will choose Nintendo over PS/XB? Will current PS4/XBO owners jump ship to play these games on Nintendo? Not likely, they already have a console to play them. Will future buyers choose Nintendo over PS4/XBO? Perhaps some but most will choose the consoles with already large libraries and online communities that their friends are playing on.

The most likely result is that the majority of people who buy this Nintendo console will do so to play exclusives and multiplats will be an afterthought.

Poor profits, you mean like the ones Sony is making? Nintendo made over $900 million for Q1-Q3 2016. And over $500 million for Q3 alone. 

Anyway, 3DS still sold over 65M and will probaby reach 70M when all is said and done.

PS3 is a failed console no matter what way you look at and it brought Sony much closer to demise than the Wii U did Nintendo. 

I actually think the Switch is their most "traditional/conventional/standard/normal" system since GBA/GCN. Normal controller (in terms of inputs and layout), no second screen, no touchscreen controls in games, and while there's still motion controls they aren't the focus of every game (only one or two so far, optional or unused otherwise) and aren't compromising the controller i.e. Wiimotes. The gimmick this time doesn't affect the games or their design themselves, just where you can play them. You don't have to waggle or look down at another screen, Switch games are played the same as they would be on Sony/Microsoft systems or older Nintendo systems, you can just take them anywhere now is all.

And yet, those happy PS3 customers carried over to the PS4, resulting in this.

Profit is more important than revenue. Also, Sony has closed down numerous development studios this gen, so they can't be too happy with the money they're making. 

And happy PS3 customers, I know I wouldn't be happy if I bought a PS3 for $600. MS just shot themselves in the foot by releasing a weaker console for $500 this generation. They made the same mistake Sony made last-gen.