Susceptible in what way?  Nintendo's games are selling very well as are Wii and DS.  Nintendo doesn't seem to be susceptible to anything in the near future.

What you may have meant to say is that "Nintendo's failure to sustain their own hardcore games" has made the consumer who prefers "hardcore games" susceptible to the whims of 3rd party developers.

Of course, feel free to correct me.

"6. Outsourcing & Reprioritizing of First Party Titles – In response to Third Party developers complaining of Nintendo’s near impossible to compete against first party line up Nintendo licenses out several franchises to third party developers during the Gamecube days to try and bring favor back to their brand. In addition Nintendo also tried its hand at letting lower tier talent within the company try their hand at franchises such as Mario. The Gamecube generation was perhaps the worst generation for Nintendo’s first party titles ranging from the Miyamoto absent Super Mario Sunshine to Namco’s uninspired Starfox Assault. It was this trend that led to many calling Nintendo's first party games rehashed and done to death."

sorry what?

I for one thought that the gamecube first party games were great. I enjoyed sunshine more than 64 and SMG. Starfox adventures more than the originals and wind waker is my 2nd favourite game of all time.
If anything, these games are absolutely not rehashed. You try telling me what game in the metroid series is similar to prime? or zelda and wind waker? or Mario and sunshine? or Starfox and adventures? smash bros and melee? etc.

Point made.

The Famicom Disk System was pretty popular in JPN...the only place where it was released.

We will probably still be scratching our heads wondering what some of the games industries best known 3rd party teams/icons could have done with the interface and concept of the system at the end of the generation. By that time, that mantle may be taken up by some other system so we may never know what may have come of the Wii had it come with a more reasonable performance to satisfy a wider variety of game developers. Thats probably the only real mistake from Nintendo this generation.

Despite all of these mistakes Nintendo made, the company is still extremely profitable. Makes you wonder.....

Good list, and good reasons for all of them. But I do disagree on a couple of points:

"3. Proprietary N64 Cartridges – While not just defaulting on the cartridge format many developers were eager to move on beyond in the fifth generation, Nintendo insisted on themselves being the only one able to produce the cartridges forcing developers to buy through them."
I may be wrong, but I thought that they were always this way with their cartridges. I seem to remember hearing that SMB3 actually caused a cartridge shortage among third parties because Nintendo was hogging so many.

"7. Gamecube - The Gamecube's design was a severe shortcoming for Nintendo in trying to recover from the N64. The Disc Format, while novel drew scrutiny and limited game size despite its impressive graphical capacity. The box-like shape was unnapealing to many and the controller seemed to lack direction and, like the gamecube itself, seemed as if it was trying to do everything the competition had already done a day late and a dollar short."
Was the smaller disc size really an issue? I mean, only a few games actually used more than one disc, right? And the PS1 had many games that used several discs.

IMO the shape of the console is really a non-issue, it was only something that people who were already looking for an excuse to mock it could latch on to.

I don't think the controller was actually bad at all. I like it quite a bit; and if anything it was one of the more differentiating points between the Gamecube and the competing consoles.

The last thing I wanted to mention wasn't something you said that I disagreed with, but something you didn't say -- at least in the OP. Nintendo's controlling nature with respect to third parties was touched on a few times, but nothing at all was said of the infamous censorship activities in the mid-1990s. Nintendo's encouragement of the Congressional hissy fits may not have hurt the industry too much (something like the ESRB was probably going to become necessary anyway), but the damage to Nintendo's reputation among gamers was incalculable.

@ Sky Render: I can't really say I agree with the SNES point. If they were just trying to be like the Genesis only better, why the slower processor?

Anyway, what else could they have done? Other than not wait quite so long to do something about Sega.

Sure, in retrospect the SNES may look like the innocent first steps down the path of ruin, but who says it would have turned out nearly as badly for Nintendo if they hadn't made so many mistakes with the N64 and of course the SNES-CD projects (which IMO are separate mistakes from the SNES itself)?

No, I agree with others who have said there was no mistake at all in this area.  It's true that any console design will close possibilities as well as open them, but you can't have it all.  Wider variety of game developers, hah.

It seems Nintendo has a game model something like this:

1. Use small, elite core teams to make game.

2. Market the holy heck out of it if its good.

3. ???

4. Profit.

That was just a joke, the Wii suits the Nintendo style of development, small agile etc. It suits them, but it may not have suited other developers. More performance doesn't do anything but improve most game genres. The console market has grown along with the possibilities that the added performance every generation has bought. Im not talking a hardcore select few who are happy with a text based interface, the GUI lovin' masses are the people im talking about. Yes there is a point where there is TOO much performance, let the Xbox 360 and PS3 walk in... because there are some very real tradeoffs. Im just talking about a natural performance increase inline with previous generation power consumption and packaging norms.

But then Iwata wouldn't have been able to pull it out of his jacket.