You could make the same argument about having an Xbox when Microsoft already deals with computers. Why have a separate console when you can have a PC that does the same and then some?

Nintendo's first party IPs are partially what keeps it alive. Think about it. Mario and Mario Kart have more or less been the same for generations, yet people (including myself) keep coming back for more.

Also, the Wii marked a decided family-friendly focus for Nintendo. Everyone complains about Nintendo's online ecosystem being so abysmal. This is rightfully so. If you look at it from the perspective of a parent with children, it's basically the perfect platform. Aside from their IPs, Nintendo consoles don't offer much for older gamers that Sony and Microsoft does way better. However, Nintendo consoles do get tons of games that are child- and family-oriented.

There really is no financial reason on any side to keep the proprietary single platform console hardware for game releases. Nintendo would certainly (as demonstrated by Pokemon Go) make ludicrously more revenue if their games were on all platforms rather than just their own. Because nothing their hardware does is useful. They make nice peripherals (Wiimote, whatever the tablet for the Wii U) which could easily have (and often do) have driver support everywhere else already.

So what are you getting out of a Nintendo console? Lackluster proprietary software and crippled low powered hardware. Not a compelling offer to pretty much anyone, so they use their software to prop up the hardware and lose out on dramatically more software sales to maintain a dead hardware business.

If this console were just an Android handheld / console switcher device it would be immensely more successful.

>> it's not going to take long before mobile phones offer similar graphics, and gamepad experiences.

But they already do now. The only problem, albeit a big one, with gamepad experiences is the constantly changing form factors of phones over time.

>> At that point, what's the advantage of buying a Switch, when the phone in your pocket does all of the same things, and more?

It's not about the hardware, it's about the software. And in Nintendo's case, it's about having the latest and greatest first party Nintendo games. Which, with few exceptions, are not available on other platforms. The bottom line, enough people are still willing to pay for proprietary hardware to play Nintendo's games.

I agree, their hardware sells because of their games. Profits are in game sales and not hardware though, so why sell proprietary hardware in the first place, if it just vastly limits the audience for your game sales?

Nintendo see themselves as a toy company, in fact they still make non-game toys.

They don't make consoles as a "CPU+GPU+GAME" they make toys, for example this is why they invented some back then outright bizarre stuff, like N64 funky controller and first 3D platformer games, Wii and Wii controller, that board controller, and so on.

Nintendo doesn't like making games, they like making toys, the fact that their best product are consoles+first party games doesn't change this fact, if you look videos of they designing stuff, you will see that their first games for a platform are usually designed alongside the console, with game designers making prototypes of potential controllers and designing not a game for a console, but the console+game pair that fits their goals.

Then, they accept third party games as a "bonus", but it is NOT their focus.

> Is the Nintendo Switch much different than the below[...]

Yes: Nintendo's offering allows for "couch co-op" and/or "party games"—that is, local multiplayer. It's Nintendo's bailiwick, and always has been. Every feature in that video (each device supporting two players; ad-hoc pairing of N devices to get 2N players) is about local multiplayer.

Phone hardware is generic; you can force it into a gaming mould, but it won't support gaming experiences out-of-the-box in a way that a gaming console does. And because of that, devs will make single-player or online-multiplayer games for phones (for the people who care to specialize their devices themselves), but no devs will bother making local-multiplayer games for phones (because that assumes everyone in your friend group has bought into the same specialized peripherals.) This is why the Ouya failed: it assumed the Android ecosystem had local-multiplayer titles, or that devs would build one once offered a TV "target." It doesn't, and they won't.

Apple does want into the local-multiplayer space (they're working toward it with paired iOS+tvOS apps) but as I said, iOS devs just aren't interested; meanwhile, Nintendo consoles have Nintendo developing first-party "flagship" local-multiplayer titles to prop them up, and to encourage and provide a role-model for third-party devs who want to do the same.

> Personally, I think Nintendo should move away from hardware and focus on game development.

The other thing Nintendo is "about", in the modern era, is developer lock-in. You buy Nintendo consoles mostly because of their exclusives. How do they achieve so many exclusives? By making them in-house, yes, but also by designing their consoles to do unique things, such that third-party devs will write games that exploit those unique console features... and then find themselves unable to make a sensible port to any other console. Every Nintendo console is designed with the idea in mind that "if it was a plain-and-simple PC, you could just enjoy the same game on another console, or on an emulator. So let's make it not just a PC."

The Wii's Wiimote is a pretty good example of this lock-in effect; but it was eventually cloned—by Microsoft and Sony both. (They never intended anyone to make games just for the Kinect or the Move; instead, their strategy was effectively just to cancel out Nintendo's de-facto exclusivity and encourage devs to make their "motion" games into cross-platform releases, rather than Just Dance et al remaining Nintendo-exclusive.)

But the best example is the DS. Make a game for two screens, with touch-interaction only on the bottom screen? it's going to just look plain silly if you do a direct port of that to iOS or Android. It's a "natural" barrier in the way of porting.

And keep in mind that [3]DS games still vastly outsell iOS games in the mobile gaming market. Nintendo's strategy works. They make mobile hardware specifically for gaming, and people buy it. And they make money on the hardware, not just the games!

The Switch, though, creates a second, higher rung to Nintendo's mobile strategy—like the iPad is to Apple's. This isn't a home console, it's a mobile console for people who want a high-def gameplay experience and local-multiplayer.

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In Nintendo's previous generation, we saw Super Smash Bros 4 and Mario Kart: two titles that were developed in parallel for both the 3DS and the Wii U (a lot of work!) They did that work because the Wii U was "a thing attached to your TV", while the 3DS was "a portable thing", and they wanted people to be able to play in both contexts. Other games that would have been perfect for this setup (e.g. Splatoon, Pokken Tournament) were left behind.

Effectively, those were all just Switch games that were released before the Switch was ready for them. They'll play better as ports to the Switch than they played on either the Wii U or the 3DS.