Nobody provided a larger audience than Nintendo did on their own last generation. To say that another publisher would definitely do so is not really grounded in reality. Furthermore it takes that control of their own destiny out of Nintendo's hands. It means hoping another company does what's in your best interests, which is never as sure of a thing as you doing it yourself.
Let's not kid ourselves now. Wii was bought by extremely casual consumers hooked by the waggle gimmick and Wii Sports/Fit, it had very little to do with people wanting to own classic Nintendo franchises. NSMB Wii and MK Wii both sold tremendously well because people needed more games to play once they got bored of Wii Sports, Wii Play and Wii Fit and Mario is still a household name from his success in the 80's and 90's.
And another company providing a large install base for Nintendo to sell their games on is "not grounded in reality" ?. How about Sony, a company that has sold almost 450 million consoles in the past 20 years ?... On top of that PS4 is off to an incredible start outselling WiiU's 16 month Worldwide sales in just 4 months. There is nothing to suggest PS4 won't match PS3's 80+ million hardware sales, infact most people seem to think it will be nearer PS1 hardware sales of 105 million.
So first you say Nintendo should go third party to get access to a wider audience, then you say they should go exclusive to a platform-holder, which would then reduce that audience size again. Make up your mind. And Nintendo would have to sell DRASTICALLY more to make the same amount of money. You guys seem to think that's a guarantee but there's absolutely no logic to that.
You have ignored a point in the OP and a point in my post you are replying to. Most third party publishers pay a $15 royalty fee to release a game on a Sony or MS console. Nintendo games would be so valuable to both companies as an extra hook that there could easily be a deal in place which see's Nintendo not having to pay the royalty fee at all or a significantly reduced amount in exchange for Nintendo not releasing their games on Sony or MS's rival console.
Game & Wario, Pikmin 3, Wonderful 101, Sonic Lost World, Wind Waker HD, Wii Fit U, Wii Party U and DKC Tropical Freeze have all absolutely bombed at retail on WiiU. They wouldn't be losing out on money by selling twenty or even thirty times the number of copies of their own first party games that the much larger PS4/XBone install base allows. And please don't parrot the same idiotic statements some people make to justify Nintendo staying on their own console like "the PS/XB dude bro gamers don't want Mario and Zelda", it's an extremely stupid generalisation.
People act like WiiU is still selling like Wii and that by giving up home console hardware Nintendo would be losing billions. Currently they would go from losing money on every system sold to not losing anything.
Let's not forget, 18 months after launch, WiiU is still being sold at a loss at $299 with Mr Iwata recently saying they could not afford to drop the price yet again.
I'm not so sure that Sony's marketing is all that great. Sacrificing goats, weird spinning baby heads in a room, white is coming, it's a nut you can play outside with?
Nintendo's marketing was top-notch during the Wii and DS generation, in the meantime, with "Wii Would Like to Play" as one of the best advertising campaigns I've ever seen, and the DS marketing attracting a ton of the expanded market.
We need to stop looking at the past and instead look at what's happening right now. Sony are killing it with PS4 marketing both hardware and software, they have sold 7 million consoles in just six months, the numbers speak for themselves. All the while Nintendo have billions of dollars worth of unsold WiiU stock sitting around in factories and stores across the globe with the console struggling to hit the 5 million sales mark after 18 months on the market.
But really, the issue is that last gen Sony had bad products they were trying to sell, without a clear message, and marketing couldn't save it. Similarly, the Wii U is a bad product without a clear message, and marketing can't save it. But unless you think Nintendo can never make good hardware again (a ridiculous claim), the point is moot.
Yet PS3 still managed to sell over 80 million units. I also never said "good hardware", I said powerful hardware to make it as easy as possible for third party developers to create games for.
The Wii was the fastest selling console in history without either, though.
Again the Wii was a fluke, the right gimmick, at the right time, at the right price. Look at Nintendo home console sales, ignore the Wii and it's been on a downward spiral since the early 90's. Basing your entire business strategy on catching "lightning in a bottle" again is extremely foolish.
The XB1/PS4 hardware isn't exactly "up to date," it's old by PC standards.
I was obviously talking about home consoles, PS4 could be 5x as powerful as it is and it would still be considered "weak" or "old" next to cutting edge PC standards which now offer 5GHz CPU's, 12TFLOP GPU's and 32GB's of RAM if you're willing to spend the cash.
So instead of "wasting" billions on R&D and hardware, you'd rather them just waste all of that talent and fire them (which costs money, believe it or not) and seriously reduce the size of the company? Just start dumping assets and retooling, spending years to get any sort of efficiency on hardware Nintendo has never worked on before, with tools Nintendo doesn't use?
And when exactly did I say they had to fire anyone ?. The hardware guys would be kept on to design and build the handheld consoles and the software guys could be retrained to work with the different CPU architectures. Going on reports they will have to be retrained to use the ARM CPU architecture for the two new consoles anyway.
The idea that they'd be making Wii/DS profits in a couple years is straight-up batshit logic. It showcases a complete lack of understanding of how business works.
Michael Pachter estimates NES and SNES games on iOS/Android to be worth a potential $3 billion per year alone. Add in not taking massive losses from selling home console hardware at a loss, selling games on PS4/XBone and the potential would certainly be there to do just as well financially as they did in the Wii/DS boom.
The fact that you think the company is in danger of going under anytime soon just proves how out of touch you are with this situation.
Again when did I say the company was going under ?. I simply said some Nintendo fans attitude indicates they would rather see them go out of business that sully their good name by going third party and releasing games on a Playstation or Xbox console which at this stage is a much better idea than releasing another underpowered console halfway through this generation...
