Keep in mind most publishers are constantly posting record revenues and profits, making this ultimately irrelevant.
I'm not going to loose any sleep because EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft have higher-development costs when they keep announcing record revenues/profits/sales... And neither should you.

Nintendo doesn't really get to use the "cost of development" excuse when some of it's best-selling games (I.E. Mario Kart 8, Tropical Freeze, Pikmin 3, Breath of the Wild, ) are just WiiU ports anyway... As far as I know, the original releases were profitable to a degree, the Switch variants just print free money.

Plus Nintendo balks at the idea of lowering prices on it's games to make them more affordable to lower-income families/individuals anyway, could you imagine the increase in volume sales if they did?

I think it was a natural progression for Nintendo to consolidate it's developers and platforms eventually anyway... Even if they had two co-existing platforms (Handheld/Fixed Home console) the idea of having a single game running on both was the ultimate end goal.

I mean, Nintendo *tried* to do that during the Wii/DS and WiiU/3DS era by releasing Wii and WiiU games on DS/3DS with most of the concessions being on the visual front, it was just very difficult due to the hardware differences.

The Switch though, isn't a hybrid, it's a handheld first. It's just that *some* models got a convenient feature to output to an external display, something that Notebooks, Tablets, Phones have been able to do for many years prior.

I mean... For example, here is a Display dock for Windows Phone back in 2015, a few years before the Switch released:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Display_Dock

Not a new technology.

Either way I think at some point Nintendo would have used the same exact hardware between it's fixed console and handhelds at some point, even if the Switch never happened, they gave up chasing graphics and performance, so it was only natural for it to reach that point... That way they could release the exact same developed game on everything.

Ironically... Microsoft has been trying to reach that same goal but using a different approach with it's Smart Delivery system with one game on multiple SKU's of hardware.
It's just a natural goal for console manufacturers I guess.

Nintendo just made it a feature that is extremely seamless and convenient.

x86 isn't slightly more power hungry than ARM. That is a very broad, arbitrary claim to make.

nVidia will own ARM very soon, it will be able to offer a Switch 2 with a massive leap in hardware capabilities by leveraging Denver or the latest Cortex X2 CPU cores with the latest Geforce technology.

I mean... The Switch wasn't even using the best mobile hardware on it's release anyway... Add years of hardware refinement and improvements on top of that and the jump should look impressive.

I think we should aim for 1080P first.

It will get torn apart by the media and community if it cannot achieve 4k though.

Wii motion plus had gyro controls more than three years before the Wii U, technically.

Why not the switcharoo ?

Vita and  the dualshock had gyro controls but iirc wasn't Zelda Ocarina of Time 3DS remaster 2011 the first game to use it, or is it just me remembering it because of having played it?

Wii Sports Resort used gyroscopic controls in 2009, so before 3DS even came out.

Forgot about Wii Sports Resort being basically built around the Wiimote Plus and it's gyro.

Did it really? Wow I totally forgot that, and I played Starfox 64 3d back in the day too lol. I will correct.

I in no way was suggesting in my post that Nintendo invented the technology, just was proving that when they add a new technology they tend to keep using it in future generations lately.

Nintendo absolutely could go off into left field and do something completely different next gen, but people assume Switch 2 because we all want just a next-gen version of the Switch in a few years and the hybrid concept has been insanely successful with the Switch very possible becoming the best selling system ever so why would Nintendo run away from that success. Also after doing a hybird it's not like they are going to go back to an ordinary console or handheld-only, so regardless of what they do it seems obvious they'll stick with the hybrid concept which means very likely it'll be a direct successor. Of course knowing Nintendo they might add in some other thing like maybe it'll also somehow be VR or something I can't even think of.

patiently waiting for switch pro. i know it seems unlikely after the OLED, but look at the DS, Lite, i, 3DS, 2DS, XL, New…it’s possible another model will come in a year or two.