Variations on this line of commentary have been passed around for over a decade. 'Commoditization' of Nintendo hardware is almost irrelevant; no hardware innovation has gone uncopied for long. The core selling point for Nintendo hardware has always been Nintendo software.
The last Nintendo title I bought was Metroid: Other M. I've seen the endless parade of Mario Party/Mario Kart games and frankly I'm tired of it. Even Zelda is starting to get old.
In my opinion Nintendo seriously needs new IP - they've been riding on the coattails of stuff that was invented ages ago, and I haven't seen anything interesting in years.
It's also possible that I'm no longer in the target market, but I can tell you that Nintendo is not on the radar of my kids either (3 and 12).
Right, and Nintendo is now in a world where their hardware gaming platforms will never even remotely reach the scale of distribution they can get from the iPhone all by itself.
A lot has changed in the last decade.
A billion global consumers now have powerful computers in their pockets, and no Nintendo games run on them.
Nintendo isn't wildly profitable, and has rarely ever been so. They'd be far better off distributing their extremely valuable IP across a billion consumers via other vendor hardware. Put good Mario and Zelda games on the iPhone, and make a billion dollars tomorrow. Let Microsoft / Sony / and Valve fight it out in consoles, and release a Mario game for the XBox that sells 10 million copies. It's a radically more profitable approach than trying to stay in the hardware business when gaming platforms are plentiful via smart phones and tablets.
I found it very hard not to disagree with this. And I won't try. The only thing that makes a console different than a phone is the interface and the display. To which I much prefer a console on my big (and yet inexpensive) tv.
