Of course you have already mostly addressed what this prior PS president says, which is hilarious because this is proof this person should stay in their lane. I would also like to point out how premature it is to assume Nintendo has nothing innovative up their sleeves Switch 2. This is a 7 to 8 year project, plenty of time to introduce something new. Labo wasn't day one or even hinted at in the initial Switch rollout. Drag & Drive is pretty different and the joycons being so easily attachable to things (magnets) kind of invites the use of peripherals.

"Nintendo annual gross profit for 2024 was $6.585B, a 0.5% increase from 2023."

Yes they can pay their workers, and still pocket a fair bit, each year.

"and at the same time companies need to be profitable, they're not charities and they need to pay their employees and continue to exist." ???

^ Multiple billions of US dollars every year? Common, Nintendo isn't some small cheap company at the breaking point or anywhere near it.
This reads very weirdly.

Nintendo is still in their "lane." There really is nothing else quite like the Switch that is so simple and easy to "switch" from docked console play to handheld play, so Switch 2 will continue to have a unique niche. They are not reinventing the wheel again, but there would be no point in doing that after selling 150 million Switches. The Wii U showed how bad an idea it is to "innovate" just for innovation's sake. The next system after the Switch needed to be what it has turned out to be, a bigger, better Switch with more modern tech. The addition of mouse controls provides another way to instantly "switch" how games are played and provides the requisite hardware/control innovation without ruining a good thing like the Wii U gamepad did.

Where do you think these profits go?

Answer: Investments, specially now that they need to increse their powerhouse as developing is getting more complex.

Expanding the company: creating more studios to allocate new employees.

Expanding the brand: releasing new stores across the globe, thematic parks, movies, etc...

Everything that I listed you could see in the news recently, the only company expanding while everyone were closing studios, firing teams and/or crashing in bankrupcy. So they are not holding all that cash for bragging material.

What I am saying is they are going big bc what are we seeing for now is a huge step, bigger than what they did with BOTW/TOTK and they are not willing to lose part of their business and employees like the others companies, so they are in need for those financial resources

Furukawa era is going to be different from the Iwata era just as the Iwata era was very different from the Yamauchi era. I said this many times and it's playing out in real time.

The only people who are dumbfounded by this are those who think Nintendo started existence in 2004 with the DS (or were vaguely the Game Boy company before that) or were going to operate like it's 2004-2006 forever.

We're in a different era, Nintendo becoming more of a premium brand as they get an older buyer base always made sense. Companies like Microsoft fading out of the hardware business also changes things, Nintendo simply doesn't like things when they are over crowded, but once there is room to operate ... well then, all bets are off.

There are no revolutionary tech gimmicks that can drive mass hardware anyway. The touchscreen and motion controls are coming up on 20+ years and there hasn't been since then anything that major. VR is more of an outgrowth of motion gaming and VR has its limitations and is not likely to drive 100+ million units (let alone 150 million). This isn't just a "Nintendo thing" ... everyone would love some brand new killer app interface ... you think Apple and Google and Meta and all these huge market cap companies that dwarf Nintendo and Sony wouldn't want that too? In fact nowadays they would be first to something like that, they have far larger R&D. No one's been able to make it because there's simply nothing that makes sense. A 2-3 year old can use a touch interface, you can't really get any easier/simpler/more dumbed down than that. 

And a motorcycle and a car both have wheels and can drive on the road.

They are both vehicles that transport people. 

Weird hill to die on, but at least you're dead.

If CDPR can run CP2077 on a 7 week effort, RS for sure can run GTA6 on S2 and make it pretty comparable to the other consoles.

The 7 week build proved to be a misunderstanding. The build that they were showing was 7 weeks old, but has been in development for much longer. 

It's all laid out in Digital Foundry's latest video & hands on with CP2077. 

Their takeaway of the the build currently being shown is that it's in the same ballpark as the PS4 version, so I don't think we should expect any miracles here...

I think that Nintendo have picked decent hardware, I just wish that they'd pushed the boat out a bit & gone with a smaller process so that the clocks could be higher. I feel like MS or Sony would have made a move like that, but I guess it could have been worse.