Nintendo is not immune from failure. The company has deep rooted issues that have plagued them since the N64 days, as well as other long term issues that started with Wii and DS. No amount of gimmicks will ever fix these base problems, successful or not. Successful gimmicks like Wii and DS can only buy them time. Still, it's true that complete failure is far from likely anytime soon due to another deep rooted idea in the company : their ability to adapt. It's why they've been around for more than a century.
There's only one way this generation can continue, and that is the Wii U seeing gamecube like support more or less until the end, whether that's 2016 or afterwards (most likely 2017). Which up until that point, they will continue to steadily lose money. The only thing they can do now is mitigate these losses as best they can. I still like and might end up loving the Wii U, tablet or no tablet, though. I'm content with the console right now, BARELY.
Now, the interesting part about all this is it forces Nintendo to make a drastic change in one way or another next generation. They can do any of these things :
A. They can address (or attempt as best they can) the aforementioned issues that have plagued them since the N64 era, by bringing their 3rd party policies up to speed with the rest of the industry and try to get as much support as possible. (However, this mostly concerns big 3rd party developers as Nintendo is currently doing a fantastic jobs with smaller independent developers, and that's one of the great things they're doing with Wii U and 3ds.) As well as having affordable, competent hardware that isn't plagued by stupid short sighted decisions. They need to get competitive with technology again, not that they have to make monsters though. Just *competitive*, modern hardware. Iwata's (formerly Yamauchi's) thinking of not competing at all costs is the heart of all their problems.
B. Bank their money on another radical (possibly useful) gimmick while ignoring the core issues above, or at least making the gimmick top priority and seeing the core issues not get resolved anywhere near how they should be. They could very well do this because they are so stubborn and inward looking, but part of the reason I think this thinking may be changing is because of how much pain they're having adapting to new game development techniques (HD) and the issues they're having with their online service. Wii U could be an unintentional testing ground so they can get back on track with the rest of the industry next generation.
C. Both? Maybe they can think of an actually useful gimmick, or just radically improve the Wii mote like they already should've done in addition to fixing everything else. The Wii mote's IR pointer is integral for a lot of games, and so could the motion controls be if they advance them and the ergonomics a lot more.
Everything i've said also apply's to their handheld's, but since they always seem to be successful to some degree no matter what, I focused on the home console. Plus I haven't cared about gaming handhelds since the GBA, but you get the idea. Vita looks like a fantastic piece of hardware, without the games to go along with it. It's the opposite for 3ds.
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