N64, highest AAA/games ratio ever. The console that defined 3d gameplay.

Of course your different, your the only one who sees videogames for what they are. Can you honestly tell us why any of the "reasons" you gave us allows you to expertly judge what console is better? Of course not, because the console anyone prefers is always defined by the lives we lived, the preferences we have and a whole lot more  things that you just can't rationalize. So stop what you're doing, tell us which console you like more and that's it. BTW, I am not a native speaker, so sorry for my mistakes.

The SNES came way too late. Seriously, three years after the Turbo-Grafx 16 and Genesis, it was way late to the party. A year after the SNES came out the 32-bit consoles were already on the market. I suppose it was popular because of the low price. Interestingly, it seems like the console that is first to market has never been the most popular starting with the 16 bit era.

So now your saying the Wii immitates the NES. If so how can you argue that all Wii fans are non-gamers? If the Wii is really an emulation of what you call the best system to date then can it possibly loose by that much if it looses at all.  You just owned yourself!

P.S- I was born in 88 and remember playing MarioBros on my 2600. This was the earliest generation Nintendo was involved in. Yet I prefer GameCube. Why? because sure the NES revolutionalized the industry. But I have far more GameCube games then I have any prior generation. In total I prefer those games on the cube to the NES origionals. Sure Nostalgia means I downloaded every classic Mario, Donkey Kong , Zelda , StarFox on the VC, but that doesn't change my opinion that as a stand alone console the GameCube was my favorite!

Its not about hardware its about games.

Lost credibility - No actually I'd say they gained credibility. Consumers that chose to stick with Nintendo really became more and more devoted and die hard. Nintendo didn't produce software to make money anymore they released games for games sake. I remember everyone insulting WindWaker and Nintendo went through and released it and it ended up getting a cult following.  Nintendo gained credibility in the software industry and remained known as the number one software publisher!

Can loosing consumers be considered successful, of course it can. Look at the PS2 is it successful for Sony? Many will argue no it wasn't. Why because Sony lost its first party sales margins to third parties. Today the PlayStation brand and Sony's own first party lineups have been weakened by the PS2's success. Without the third party support that made PS2 a success PS3 can't possibly succeed. On the flipside Nintendo remained loyal to its die hard fans and didn't give an inch to third parties. This built the Nintendo brand stronger then ever and Nintendo carved out a niche for itself.  Now with the BlueOcean Strategy Nintendo has made the jump to casual gamers, yes that alienates some of the niche market they carved out but they remain a strong brand because of it.

No matter how you look at it Nintendo has maintained a strong position as the number one games publisher in the world. Sure they are a hardware manufacturer but they are a software publisher first and maintaining that marketshare dominance over software on its platform and on any other platform and in the end I don't think Nintendo cared much about whether or not the hardware succeeded. its all about the software attach rate and out of those 6-7 games bought per console I bet 5 of those games were bought from Nintendo themselves. Which yes is a major success!