I really don't think their management is idiotic. More that everything that's ever gone wrong for Nintendo is coming to a head. Their decisions with the N64, a culture of conservation of resources and conservatism. The game market changing around them. Heck the burden of having a reputation as being so successful in terms of banking money - I wonder if part of their problem is that the shareholders (who don't give a shit what they make or how they do it) expect Nintendo to always make a great return on thrifty expenditures.
They never operated like, say, Sony. So suddenly behaving the way a gaming public demands (sell premium technology at a big loss just to get it in people's hands, etc), would seem like reckless insanity and unjustifiable to people Iwata has to explain himself to. Especially when companies like Sony themselves are not doing so great with that strategy.
Iwata: "We have decided it is prudent to invest in inroads to the 'core' audience that once associated Nintendo with leading support for software publishers. To this end, our new console employs very advanced technology required to achieve parity in multiplatform software support from contemporary publishers."
Shareholders: "We have recently sold our stock in Sony because such behavior alarms us! Such companies are performing poorly. How can you justify this wasteful product that will post great losses on every unit sold? I have seen many people recently on streets using mobile phones to manipulate computer software. Why are you not developing mobile phone computer software?"
Iwata: "..." LASERS WARM UP
Miyamoto: "Now you done fucked up."
I point you in the direction of them buying a shit ton of land and starting to build new offices there with the sole purpose of next gen dev....
.... They are still putting the buildings up.
So they're looking at 2-3 years lag on getting anything out on Wii U.
Also - Iwata could have went to investors and explained that the reason that the Wii "tail" was so weak was because the low technology spend at the start meant that they could not attract 3rd parties , could not get ports and were unable to keep pace with the competition so this time a more aggressive spend initially would help prepare them for the future.
It didn't have to cost an arm and a leg either to get them to a point where they could have slotted in as the "least powerful next gen machine" - basically hitting that lowest common denominator point meaning that having the Wii U as the base dev machine might have been an option. But no - they went with xbox361 and now it's exploded in their face.
Their management has tried to pull the Wii trick twice - they got away with it with the 3ds (at a huge cost) but the WiiU isn't going to be so lucky
In which dimension do you live, guys?
Nintendo stopped to push the hardware when doing so was meaningless from a playability point of view.
I mean, just NAME a game on Xbox 360 or PS3 that, except for the graphical advantage, wouldn't be possible on the Wii.
The DC/PS2/GC/Xbox generation set a level of performance enough to allow every kind of imaginable game to run on them. Shadow of the Colossus was impossible on a Nintendo 64, it's concept simply couldn't be achieved with Nintendo 64 hardware, but neither PS3 or Xbox360 has shown anything that couldn't be achievable on a Wii conceptually speaking.
Now on this upcoming generation of games (WiiU/Durango/PS4) we will see a smaller step than the one we saw on the PS2/GC/Xbox era to the PS3/360 era, and WiiU (which is a 2012 era hardware in terms of technology) will be closer to PS4/Durango that the Wii ever was to the PS3/360. It seems more and more evident that Nintendo has chosen the intelligent path.
Technology is not a gameplay limiter anymore, now what limits playability is the interface, and this is were Nintendo has been focusing this two last generation. The WiiU pad with it's integrated screen has more possibilities from a gameplay pow than the 8GB of RAM the PS4/Durango will have.
