Well actually, Nintendo's greedy bastard ways directly lead to Sony making the PlayStation after Nintendo stabbed them in the back over a potential CD-ROM expansion for the SNES.

Then Sony went on to totally dominate the next two iterations of consoles and forced Nintendo to take a gamble with the motion controls of the Wii after most 3rd party publishers had dumped them.

ECONOMICS IN ACTION: Competition breeds innovation and helps the overall growth of an industry. Especially when said competition is motivated by revenge.

REVENGE: Cornerstone of prosperity.

To be fair, Mr. Frick, your company made Dudes With Attitudes.

Seriously, I'm not saying Nintendo weren't being dicks here, but why was every unlicensed NES publisher so terrible?

Um, that was supposed to be its own comment, not a reply to myself.

And now I've gone and replied to myself again to explain this! And now I have to go and fight Astos! DAMMIT NINTENDO.

Dr. Lobotomy: That's only half the story. The reason Nintendo 'stabbed Sony in the back' was because they found a loophole in the contract that meant they wouldn't be getting royalties off Nintendo Playstation CDs due to a cunning little clause Sony put in.

They pretty much invented the shitty tradition of paying up the butt in kick backs to publish a game on home hardware. The seal of quality meant absolutely nothing outside of a developer/publisher paying their dues to Nintendo.

and yeah, the Nintendo/Sony SNESCD situation is a legendary little "he said, she said" industry tale. Both sides claim the other back stabbed first. ...and thus we have the Sega CD (screw you cynics, that system wasn't that bad).

Conversationally, Nintendo raked in big time off their Pokemon IP and the portable systems during their weakest home system offerings (N64/GBA). If it wasn't for mobile phones now threatening their portable system dominance, I'd say they could do a handful of flop home systems and still be a power house.

Anyone that has dealt with Nintendo from a business end will tell you they are tough as fucking nails. They haven't survived by doing all these romantic "design first philosophy" things people with rose colored glasses will sell you on. These guys are straight up bidness.

Not GBA...I meant Gamecube there. Durrrr

"Doing something right" is pretty much "milking Mario, Zelda, and every other game IP they've been doing since the days of the NES."

About the most original thing they've put out in the last decade that everyone played was Wii Sports. And their new console, while interesting, is just going to be another way to play Wii Sports; few devs are going to make a completely different version of their hit titles so it can be used with that new iPad controller in an exclusive manner.

"presenting the next generation" (cue footage of a new Mario game)

Yep.

I think that's how I got mine, too.