Nintendo has always been going strong, knows exactly WTF they're doing, executes with precision more or less, and is pretty much always successful. A resurgence in attention has nothing to do with the company.
Perhaps, but I'd definitely class the Wii U as a misstep - sold poorly and clearly wasn't the right device for the market at that time. I really don't think Nintendo was sure at all what it was doing with the Wii U.
I've seen some theories that the reason the Switch has been so great is that given the relative failure of the Wii U they didn't have time to screw up the Switch with the usual supply of badly implemented software features that Nintendo have a bad habit of doing. Unlike the Wii, 3DS etc there is no step counters, web browsers, virtual console, streaming services, audio recorder, pointless low quality stereo cameras etc at launch on Switch - just a simple, lean focus on fun games. The 3DS and Wii were especially bad for pointless built in extra software. I'd honestly be perfectly happy with my Switch if none of those features, perhaps with the exception of Virtual Console, ever come back.
I also love how Nintendo are really embracing the indie game community with the Switch, a pleasant surprise given the less than brilliant relationship Nintendo has had there in the past.
PlayStation is easy. One, two, three, four. Not hard to tell the difference. Xbox is a bit stranger, but still easy to tell apart because against its numbered and we’re used to numbered things being different from each other.
But Microsoft is headed down a Wii U-like path with the Xbox One... even as a gamer (who admittedly doesn’t own an Xbox), I have no idea if the Xbox One S is newer than the Xbox One X or what the difference actually is, and it’s not intuitive that the Xbox One S is actually appreciably different than the Xbox One other than being smaller.
Sony may find themselves in a similar pickle if people stop buying PlayStation 4 games because they’re unsure if they work on their PlayStation 4 Pro Or vice versa.
Perhaps? Man, the virtual console is a major draw for me. I only have a few games on it, but I view it as integral to the device. Every Nintendo platform needs a way to play the first four Super Mario titles, the early Zeldas, Metroid and Super Metroid at a minimum.
Nintendo owns its survival on handhelds. Pokémon prints money since 1996.
Wii U was probably profitable. Not a success like a company like Nintendo needs, a strategic misstep that didn't impact their fortunes significantly. Hardware-wise it was a very direct descendant of the Wii (and gamecube). Relatively low development cost. The games developed for it are being ported to the switch to great success.
The Wii itself was still a G3 PPC chip, just add a few hundred Mhz
It also had more RAM (which allowed the "Twiizers" attack over a decade ago)
All the Wii-centric functionality (USB, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, SD card, etc) was abstracted away inside an ARM co-processor inside the GPU. Named "Starlet" by the homebrew community
Wii software was then written that would simply poke at the API's it exposed to add that functionality
It might be possible for Creatures Inc and Game Freak to have The Pokemon Company create a Pokemon game for PlayStation (it's not known how ownership/control is divided), but it couldn't use the name Pokemon, the Pokemon logo, or any of the existing Pokemon characters.
And regardless of who owns Pokemon, Nintendo is the one selling Game Boys and DSes to play it on.
It's a complicated arrangement, but they're definitely banking off the success of the franchise directly and indirectly.