Many easily forget that the GameCube was almost as profitable as the PS2. Nintendo was down, certainly, but there were not out.

They could easily have embraced the niche that they carved for themselves with GameCube, and continued to prosper.

Hmm you do know that Nintendo made more money then Sony during the GC/PS2 era right?

Next E3 will have a lot of hype going for it with a number of big reveals such as Zelda Wii, Retro Studios new title, Wii Vitality and Miyamoto's new DS titles and perhaps Super Paper Mario 2. I also expect Nintendo to at the very least mention the next generation of handhelds in some way, even if it's a Iwata saying that the next handheld from Nintendo can't be just a DS2 or that Nintendo are always innovating.

In terms of how they've been doing it recently, I think even Nintendo don't know how to hype these games properly in respect to their new audience so they've mostly failed. Galaxy and Smash Bros were well hyped but not a lot else.

2 reasons, too much focus on casual,therefore cammie on stage = boo
and lack of zelda.

nsmb wii was great step, but after playing it it kinda feels like mario 3-world again, nostalgic (i am old ;_; 21 soon) but not ground breaking.

galaxy 2 isn't really impressive either, but name implies it will be a direct continuation to mario galaxy, not many improvement invole.

my hopes are for zelda wii, i hope it reach 2010. but kinda feel lonesome to get a wii for just that game. (though many people will ).

the gamecube WASN'T as profit able as the ps2.

nintendo as a whole (Gameboy advance+gamecube) was profit able as the ps2. the reports i read here clearly labels nintendo VS sony game division only(ps1, ps2 and software), VS microsoft (xbox, software, zune, digital marketplace, windows mobile).

Not true.

The GC was profitable yes, but no where near the PS2.... probably only made about 1/4-1/3 of what the PS2 made.

As Naum said above me, Nintendo was as profitable as Sony's gaming division during the PS2 era, but those profits were not from the GC alone, they mostly game from the GBAdvance, but also lingering from GB/N64 as well as the early DS. (of course the "PS2 era" profits for Sony were also coming from the PS1)

I estimated a while back (earlier in 2009) what Sony made with it's consoles, I believe I worked it out to $5billion on the PS1 (10 years to 2005) and about $3 billion on the PS2 (though this is still increasing) they were about break even on the PSP, though now should be somewhere between 500mil and 1billion.
The PS3 meanwhile had lost alsmot all the money the others had made, so minus $7billion or so (and that figure of loss is still increasing)

Given that, I think I can roughly (more roughly than I did for Sony) work out some Nintendo consoles: (up to March 2009 same as for when I did Sonys)

Wii: $5 billion
DS: $7.5 billion

GBA: $2.5 billion
GC: $1 billlion

N64: $1.5 billion

(even more incredibly roughly)

SNES: $3 billion
NES: $2.5 billion
GB: $6 billion

Virtual Boy: minus $1.5 billion.
------

That leaves about $2.5 billion over 25 years that they could have made from all the extra merchandise and other stuff like Hanafuda Cards. (Remember this is very rought though... with the Sony figures I am probably within 3-400 milllion for all the platforms, but I could be a bigger percentage out for the Nintendo ones... should give a rough idea though)

I congratulate Sony on this. They promote their new IPs like Uncharted and look what we have here, new franchises! Nintendo seems to have seriously dropped the ball lately, and it shows.

We should see more hype soon, nintendo are beggining too up there game again.

I'd like this to be true, (and I don't mean for major IPs, these succeed no matter what, I mean that for smaller/new IPs), but what do you base this statement on?

From a post TheSource made using http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/historical_data/index.html:

NES software shipments ~500 million (61.91 million NESs shipped in total)

SNES software shipments ~379 million (49.1 million SNESs shipped in total)

N64 software shipments ~225 million (32.93 million N64s shipped in total)

GC software shipments ~208 million (21.72 million GCs shipped by this point)

There is no niche success for Nintendo as a hardware manufacturer. That would just be waiting to die. Over time more and more of what Nintendo did would be replaced by equivalents on the other consoles, and they would be ever more niche. There is a reason all consoles strive for the mass market, it's the only way to be healthy.

If you're not growing, you're dying.

NSMBWii was announced at E3 09, plenty of time to create hype. Nintendo released lots of videos (by nintendo standards anyways) and talked about it a lot. Plenty of interviews, Iwata Asks, and more. Heck, it already sold 3m units, and I'm sure it will sell a lot more, so why hype the gaming crowd for years? If they say something about the game, then find out they want to take that out, fans will be upset. Secrecy lets them create the game they want, while keeping the competition guessing about what is coming next. Just go look at who is playing catchup and who isn't and you'll see why Nintendo benefits from secrecy.