I guess I just don't see it. Left and right, all I hear is how terrible Nintendo has become and how they're dying and this that the other thing. In my eyes, Nintendo has been the same since the end of the SNES era. Yes, unquestionably (at least in the US), they dominated the NES era, by a mile. I don't know of anyone in the NES era who had even heard of the Master System. And they were the pretty damn clear winners of the SNES era too -- a shorter margin maybe, but they were still the winners.
And since then, they haven't been the winners, nor do I think they have really even been trying to be the winners. Plain and simple. They've focused on what they wanted to focus on, they've went their own way, they've bucked the trends and done what they wanted to do rather than what the so-called "experts" say they "should" do. Sometimes it's been a home run hit -- look at the original Wii with its motion controls that were poo-poohed by Microsoft and Sony right up until they were aped (and poorly at that) by Microsoft and Sony once they realized the Wii was giving Nintendo NES-style dominance -- and sometimes it's been a weak pop fly -- look at the N64, some solid titles but paled in comparison to the Playstation and really if you go back and look at it without the nostalgia lens, most games pale in comparison even to the ill-fated Saturn.
Yes, obviously every company wants to make money. But Nintendo is focusing on gaming first and (in my opinion at least) innovating a whole lot rather than churning out yet another Call of BattleHalo WarDestiny: Source 6 or Madden vs Fifa vs NBA vs Tiger Woods vs Forza: Ultimate Cage Match 2016.
So I guess I just don't see the doom and gloom about the company, and the "Oh god they're abusing their fanboys" and whatnot. Then again, I also really don't watch E3 announcements and I don't wait with baited breath for midnight releases anymore. I buy my handful of new games a year and mostly stick to my retro titles. So perhaps I'm not the same type of gamer as most of the ones I run into.
