For people with a limited budget, a Nintendo console does need to do it all to be the one stop set top box entertainment shop. Their omission of DVD playback o

For people with a limited budget, a Nintendo console does need to do it all to be the one stop set top box entertainment shop. Their omission of DVD playback on the Wii (to save money on licensing, the hardware is perfectly capable of doing it) was a pretty bad move for them. The one encouraging thing I've heard out of Nintendo Japan was the vision for the Wii U as something that you always have on, that you constantly go to while you're at home, and the controller with the screen facilitates that. Some interesting things could come out of that. Unfortunately, I just don't think the hardware is up to snuff for that kind of usage. I played with the Wii U controller at E3, and it is unfortunately not going to be particularly useful for doing much other than playing games. It has a big ridge across the back, which makes it somewhat more pleasant to hold horizontally when you're using the game controls, but makes it totally useless and uncomfortable for holding vertically, which is how most people would want to hold it if they were surfing the web. It also just feels cheap and low grade. I completely agree with what you said about appealing to indie developers, but that strongly clashes with Nintendo's corporate culture. In general, Nintendo's business practices and overall philosophy are laughably outdated by international business standards. Nintendo Japan is the only entity with any power or control over products at all, every other entity is just a glorified marketing arm for NOJ. Reggie Fils-Aime and the other apes over at NOA have no say whatsoever when it comes to long term strategy or product development. You're also spot on when it comes to the smartphone threat against Nintendo. During the lean years of the N64 and Gamecube, Nintendo could fall back on the huge success of the Gameboy, GBA, and DS, but that market will be almost completely eroded by smartphones in the next few years. It's a good time to short Nintendo.