Five years ago, anyone who suggested that Nintendo would be last place in the current console race would have been laughed out of the room. The original Wii was a monumental success for Nintendo, and everyone assumed that would continue with the console's successor. That clearly wasn't the case, as Nintendo's once-dominant Wii gave way to the underwhelming Wii U, and sales have gone from record-breaking to just sort of sad.
Nintendo is in a tough spot: it's created a console that's not as powerful as its competition, and the Wii U is harder to develop games for. There are some great titles in the system's library, but without the support of third-party developers like Activision and Ubisoft, Nintendo could very well be ousted out of the console race.
Then again...would that necessarily be a bad thing? Think about it: if Nintendo was no longer creating consoles, that means its games could come out on anything. Xbox, PlayStation...maybe even iOS:
The above video was created by YouTube user James Ondrey, and represents a very possible future scenario: Nintendo games being playable on an iOS device. It's an incredibly well-made video (and somehow uses Matt McConaughey's rambling Lincoln ads well), but the best part about the whole thing is that it could very well happen.
Everyone wants Nintendo to succeed, that much is given. However, if the company were to leave the console side of the industry and solely work on games, seeing the likes of Mario and Link on other platforms could be a possibility. It may sound impossible, but remember - the same exact thing happened to Sega, and now we're seeing Sonic the Hedgehog games on Nintendo consoles.
Of course, it would take an absolute tragedy for Nintendo to fall that far - after all, the Wii sold unlike any video game console before it. That being said, if the Wii U doesn't turn itself around soon, gamers could see a very different Nintendo sometime in the near future.
