I completely agree about how bad they are getting at Nintendo. The problem is, they don't need consumers like us, ones that pay attention to the news and their antics. Nintendo has always gone after the younger generation, just happens older gamers enjoy Nintendo too.

They use the Disney business model. Look at how horrible Disney is but they hook kids who grow up, then have kids who get hooked, and well, it is easier to give in than explain to a 6 year old why they can't go to Disney Land/World or watch anything Disney owns. Then it is almost impossible considering what Disney owns, you basically have to set aside your morals if you want to do anything outside of live a dystopian life anymore.

Same for Nintendo.

I don't care what people say, Nintendo owns gaming. The average person in the world knows Mario, they may not know Link, Zelda, Samus, etc but they know Mario. They don't have to be a gamer either.

No other gaming company can say that about any of their properties.

That is marketing, life, power in Nintendo's favor.

Around the time of the Gamecube release I remember there being an interview with the Nintendo of America CEO or whatever they call them. He was asked what would Nintendo do if the Gamecube failed.

He replied, paraphrasing here, "Nintendo has enough money to last over 100 years without laying off a single employee or selling off intellectual properties."

I am sure they have only grown since considering how big Pokemon became in the last 20+ years.

I honestly don't think Nintendo cares about gamers that would have an opinion on their actions lately. If you look at their history, they have never been pro-consumer but we still ate it up and asked for thirds.

Restrictive contracts in the 8-Bit days kept us from getting ports of popular NES titles like Castlevania and Contra or Mega Man and more on Sega Master System or Atari 7800. Nintendo went out of their way to lock down franchises such as Street Fighter II for the SNES - causing the first release on Sega Genesis to be delayed by Capcom so they didn't offend Nintendo (and then the game was adjusted so the SNES release at the same time was better).

They went with cartridges with the Nintendo 64 because they could easily control production and keep revenues coming in off 3rd parties - they were not setup for CD gaming yet, probably still sore over the Phillips/Sony fall out.

Their controllers have pretty much been designed around what works for Mario games, rather than what works for gaming on their console as a whole or what consumers would prefer (no one wanted that Gamecube controller except Miyamoto).

Sadly, Nintendo has never been pro consumer, they probably never will be.