Old News
This is old news. The only way for Nintendo to survive was selling consoles for a profit. Sony and Microsoft both have other business and could lose on both hardware and software and not care much about it. I don't think Microsoft ever made any money off selling the original Xbox. But videogames are Nintendo's only business, and if the Wii didn't succeed then we'd have some HD Mario games.
Nintendo also leveraged their grasp on our childhood memories by means of the Virtual Console: “one console to rule them all, one console to download them, one console to keep them all and into your HD screen play them”.
Now they should sell —for a profit— classic pads based on the original ones. Dusty cart blowjobs won't be missed that much.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
