Personally, I'm very glad we got the Switch instead.

While this is fascinating from an academic point of view, it would've gotten way worse third party support and the games would be more technically restricted than Wii U, and so would have felt like a step backwards rather than forwards.

I feel like this was an evolutionary dead end, and Nintendo seemed to realize this too given that they hit in the reset button not just on this device but on the overall design philosophy it reflects.

I miss the glasses free 3D. That's still cool. Also the streetpass features. But in every other way the Switch is better.

I don't think the specs are bad at all for a dedicated Nintendo handheld considering how low-spec all previous handhelds from them have been. The Gameboy and DS outsold competitors who had far more powerful hardware. They were cheap, had great battery life, and their hardware was weak enough that game development didn't take as long. By the time the 3DS came out, the added features both raised the price and lowered the battery life, killing a big part of the appeal of past systems. On top of that, reaching near-Gamecube levels in terms of graphical quality increased development time at the start of the console's lifecycle, really hurting it at launch since it had few worthwhile games for first couple of months. Under those circumstances staying with the old low-spec model that worked so well from 1989-2010 wouldn't cut it anymore. All the advantages the low-spec model gave previous systems were gone while all the problems that design philosophy always had remained. The Switch may seem pretty low spec now after 5 years and the launch of a new hardware generation, but in 2017 it was pretty high spec for what it was and in terms of handhelds by far the biggest jump in specs Nintendo had ever done on the handheld side. The jump from the Gameboy to GBA or DS to 3DS are nothing compared to the jump from 3DS to Switch. Of course it's a much smaller jump from the Wii U, but even then it turned out to be bigger than we first thought with it running games the Wii U could never dream of running like Witcher 3, the Crysis Trilogy, and Doom Eternal.

Great post, and yeah the jump from 3DS on Switch is one of the biggest generational leaps Nintendo have ever done, practically a generation and a half in one jump.

If Indy had been released, it would've been more of a standard generational upgrade from the 3DS; not terrible for a dedicated handheld, and consistent with the design philosophy of Nintendo's previous handhelds, but they were clearly better off going with the Switch as they did.

Interesting, but sounds like the Switch hardware is considerably more powerful, so not really losing any sleep over this one.

It's crazy how we went from the Dark Ages (3DS and Wii U era) straight into the modern Golden Age with the Switch. In hindsight, it makes trudging through those rough days of a decade ago worth it.

I love my old consoles, but I don't miss having separate handheld and console lines at all, and I don't think I'd ever want Nintendo to go back to those protocols.

I kind of appreciate some of the things that came out of Nintendo's desperation at the time, like the quick 3DS price drop and that time Nintendo gave an entirely free full retail game like Wind Waker HD or Wonderful 101 with the purchase of Mario Kart 8. That definitely ain't happening now.

While it may have been a fun console, I’m glad they changed course.

Let’s say this was a $250 Vita+ with a 3D screen released in 2016 and presumably the Wii U successor would have been a $350 PS4/XBO level console with some sort of gimmick released in 2017.

This would have just increased the problem Nintendo was having with supporting two separate hardware lines. We would probably see some sort of cross buy/play/save like Vita/PS4 had which would help but not enough to make a difference.

IMO these consoles would have seen continued decline compared to 3DS/Wii U where the handheld sells like 60 million and the console sells like 10 million.

Yeah I can't see this selling as well as even the 3DS, and if there even was a home console component, which I honestly don't think is a foregone conclusion given their struggles in the 8th gen, it likely would've been another big flop plagued by crippling game droughts.

This system speaks of a continuation of the 3DS/Wii U philosophy, which saw their player base contract considerably. It was a wise move to shelve it and rethink their approach; the meteoric success of the Switch speaks for itself.

I never want to go back to a world of Nintendo's games being split across two separate hardware lines.

Still, I find this fascinating to analyze as a path not taken, another possible timeline.