It blows me away that Nintards think that any Nintendo console or handheld will be powerful. The last Nintendo hardware that remotely tried to compete with other consoles was the Gamecube, which came out in 2001. For the next 15 years, Nintendo has relied on low power + gimmick approaches for consoles and handhelds. Not sure why people hoped this time would be different. Nintendo has some decent finances but there's a reason why it's only gigantic corporations that have viable consoles. The risk for Nintendo to come out with some PS4 killer is too great. If the PS4-killing NX sold as much as the Wii U, Nintendo would be out of business.
Given Nintendo's history for the past 10 years, this isn't really surprising. At the same time though, their strategy going forward was a big question mark. While I don't think the power gap between the Wii-U and the PS4/Xbone was necessarily the biggest problem, it was still a pretty big impediment to getting third party ports. And unlike with the Wii, the Wii-U didn't have the benefit of receiving massive hardware and first party game sales to cushion the blow.
So what does Nintendo do now? Do they try to make another gimmicky underpowered console? Or do they go back to what they used to do and compete on the hardware front? It probably might be a bigger risk as this would probably mean higher production costs but they'll be in a better position to get ports. It could be a greater investment than the Wii-U, or maybe not, since that stupid game pad contributed significantly to the final price. Best case scenario, this theoretical NX would be as profitable for Nintendo as the GC was. Not a great position to be in, but at least they'd be in the black.
So the other option is for them to do what they seem to be doing (again), building a system that's roughly equal (and also infuriatingly inferior in some aspects) to their competitors previous' gen consoles. As we've seen the Wii-U, this is pretty risky as well. Though unlike that system, the NX (at least at this point) doesn't have an expensive gimmick that'll eat up production costs.
Like I said, observing the past decade, this isn't really a shock. But at the same time, I don't necessarily think going down this route was either the obvious or proper solution for Nintendo.
