What do you guys think?

I remember it felt like the entire gaming community on the internet after the Wii U's failure and during the NX discussions were all begging Nintendo to just ditch the gimmicks and try to make a powerful console that gets the 3rd party support that competes with PS & Xbox. as many saw that as the only way Nintendo could stay relavant in this day and age with people thinking there's no way another underpowered "gimmicky" system will work like the Wii cause all the casuals moved on to smartphones.

However, it's been nearly a decade since these discussions and Nintendo again went down that route creating another underpowered "gimmicky" system that doesn't aim to compete with PS/Xbox with the Switch. With the Switch proving a lot of those wrong who said the only way Nintendo could be successful is to create a conventional system. With the Switch on pace to become the greatest selling console of all time, it seems like this underpowered gimmicky route Nintendo took was highly positive in the eyes of millions of Switch owners.

However, there's also a good portion of the gaming community especially as of recent constantly complaining about the Switch's specs and beg to see a hardware upgrade soon. With these types of complaints as well, it almost may make some people think they would've better preferred a powerful Nintendo home console that can play the Switch's best 1st party games with great performance and 4K visuals. As some people feel like Nintendo is greatly limiting the potential of their games with such weak hardware.

Which side of the fence do you stand on? Would you rather have a powerful conventional Nintendo Home Console that competes with PS & Xbox that can play the best Nintendo games at 4k 60fps, while also getting better 3rd party support & performance from current gen games? Or would you rather have the Switch as we know it today,  hybrid console that gives you the option to play the best Nintendo games on the TV & on the go seemlessly, while also coming at the cost of performance and 3rd party support?

For me, while I'm sure I'm not alone in dreaming about playing some of these Nintendo exclusives in high settings at 4k, the seemlessness of playing these games on the TV & on the go is too much for me to give up to be honest. I love the versatility of the Switch so much to where I can't imagine only playing Nintendo games on the TV. Playing these games on the go is just so amazing.

There's two sides to this.

On the one hand, I don't care about portability, I prefer to play on a big screen and I only use my Switch docked. In that sense, a powerful home console would suit my particular tastes better.

However, if Nintendo had made a powerful home console instead of the Switch, it most likely would have failed commercially, leading them to either go third party or pivot to a hybrid device anyway. This would also likely mean poor software support, both from third parties as porting wouldn't be worth it, and first party as games with high end graphics take longer to make.

I'd rather a thriving hybrid platform than another Wii U, so I'll take the hybrid option.

I didn't know the Switch was gimmicky but I prefer Switch because home consoles are a stagnant/declining market for a reason. They aren't convenient in a world that is all about convenience.

I don't care about portability.
More powerful hardware would have been better... Then games like Pokemon Violet/Scarlett wouldn't have been terrible.

It would help Game Freak, but they seem to struggle to optimize their games for the hardware these days. Maybe part of it is because they're being pushed out the door before they're ready for release, but I'm not 100% sure.

Nah that is entirely Gamefreaks fault. BOTW,  Mario odyssey and plenty of other games come in at a respectable frame-rate and  without the bugs that Pokemon Vs had.

I don't care about the portability of it. I would rather have the Switch like console as opposed to a more powerful one and a handheld because that would split Nintendo's first party developers onto two systems instead of one limiting the amount of games on the console.

A conventional approach would have been nice instead of the Wii U, but if we're looking at now I just don't see what Nintendo would do or gain with the power of a PS5. I guess having Nintendo games that look like Astro Bot would be cool, but it's not that huge a step up from Odyssey for example so I don't think it's worth the sacrifice of portability, particularly not when a new portable system would land somewhere between the two.

Making two separate systems, one home console and one portable, just wasn't viable any more, even with Wii U and 3DS they weren't able to produce enough software for both.

A powerful new console and a next gen portable would've been even worse, and there's no way they'd give up their portable line and go all in on a home console alone when historically their portables have always sold more.

Unifying their product lines, as they did with Switch, was really the only viable path forwards.

I don't really care about portability.... however, I don't see nintendo needing to go toe to toe, with xbox/playstation in performance.
Just go small and cheap.

A "switch" console (thats without the screen, battery, dock ect, joycons) could probably be sold 100$ or more, cheaper than the normal Switch.
Do that... make a "Home" version of the Switch, thats then just small compact and cheap