They'd continue failing until they had success. They could weather Wii U level failures for over 30 years before running out of money because unlike most businesses, they are extremely frugile and efficient with spending of money.

Unless Nintendo loses their minds and makes failure after failure (like 5-7 of them) or started spending money like other businesses do, they are pretty much safe from ever leaving the hardware industry. Probably safe through at least 2050 from leaving the hardware market, AT LEAST.

First of all, if the Launch Switch(OG Switch) failed, their back up plan would be the Switch Lite. Honestly, after they revealed it, it was pretty clear to me that the Lite was their plan B from the get go. But the Switch was a major success, and it never came to that.

So, in another words: If OG Switch failed, they would use their plan B, which was the Lite, thinking that the lower price and the form factor would perhaps be more attractive in that scenario.

I think it's funny how people speculate on Nintendo going 3rd party. I remember after the Wii came out and everyone wanted one, a friend of one of my roommates told me while I was playing the Wii that he heard the Wii is gonna be Nintendo's last system. I just laughed. Like yeah, they have a system that is generating a word of mouth buying frenzy like no system ever has and they're just gonna stop making systems after this haha.

Even during the Wii U failure, they still had the popular 3DS going and while they lost money for maybe a couple years they started generating profit again even during that period. People seem to think Nintendo is on the verge of going out of business whenever they aren't dominating the market.

They would abandon console market for a while and focus only on handheld market. The opposite of what Sony did after Vita flopped

However they know handheld market is shrinking as time pass by, so I guess they would still making their last console effort around 2024-2025, focusing in the Sony and MS strategy: Raw power and 3rd party games

If nothing work out and their new home console sell as bad as Wii U they would go just a 3rd party software developer. There isn't another way around

I think they would try to capitalize their brand, their characters, through more agressive merchandising and would also focus on mobile games. Sort of what they are already doing with Pokemon and other IPs but much more agressively. Maybe keep supporting the 3DS but I wouldn't be sure if they would release a succesor. Definitely out of the home console market.

im still waiting on that damned nintendo phone fuck sake

I don't think Nintendo would have let the Switch fail. Not without a hell of a fight, anyway. We'd be seeing a truly desperate Nintendo for the first time. I suspect they would've taken some major loss-leading strategies with hardware and software price cuts, more third party deals, more first party games. They would likely be leaning harder into their smartphone output in an attempt to mitigate losses, and promotional/toy deals to expand brand awareness too.

If the latest iPhone failed, then what would Apple be doing right now?  I don't know the answer, but if you can figure it out, then you can bet that Nintendo would be doing something pretty similar with their business if the Switch failed.

Running the business in damage control mode like the 3DS/Wii U days, but this time making money because the Switch was designed to do so since day 1 on the market.

This