Why are there so many Nintendo apologists?

[yancakes]

I feel like it's worth mentioning that Nintendo isn't doing poorly at all in the market that is the most important to them, their home market: Japan. And they're doing better in the US than Microsoft is doing in Japan. Like, in the states the WiiU is still moving tens of thousands of consoles. On average, in Japan, the XBox is selling... maybe a couple hundred?

[krelyan]

Sure, the console sales have been dropping, but I think there a lot of other factors accounting for the fact that console sales in Japan in general are at an all-time low.  Still from what I've read is that they've never had a loss on a console and certainly not on the handhelds.  I don't try to think about companies' financials that I don't have anything to benefit from knowing, so it doesn't matter to me whether they're making x or y dollars.  They keep making great games, however.  I used to argue with my buddy when we were in Jr. High as he had always purchased Nintendo consoles and I went with Playstation, but that was over 15 years ago.  I bought a GameCube in college and have never looked back on Nintendo systems since.  I'm not sure what people expect from them as I see complaints when they go after the "casual" market with the Wii and then complain about the reverse approach on WiiU (which to be fair has a lot of legitimate issues).  But I'd still sell my PS4 before my WiiU and the device I've spent the most time gaming on the past decade has almost certainly been the DS and 3DS; and looking over my anticipated games list the majority are on Nintendo systems.

They're certainly in a weird spot right now, but I'd like to see them continue to just do their own thing than to try to compete with Sony and Microsoft in garnering big AAA 3rd party support.  That's almost certainly a fools errand now.  And honestly, I'd be perfectly happy to continue to buy WiiU-like systems just to play the latest iterations of their franchises.  At least for now.

[dondetti]

But it doesn't mean I can't look past their flaws and recent business decisions. Heck, they screwed up with the Virtual Boy, which WAS their worse system. Not the Wii U. People often forget that.

I remember reading about the "upcoming" Virtual Boy back then (obviously never happened in the EU in the end though). It was a brief essay about Virtual Reality in general that ended with a rather veiled slam preview about the VB reading like "the idea is cool in general but what the heck is this thing!?". I thought it was pretty funny and didn't even think they actually released it until much later.

But with the failing VB their main products SNES & Game Boy were still going strong and the N64 was in talks already so that mishap was probably easier to disregard.
I might be talking a bit out of my ass on this one now because I'm not that invested in new systems in general anymore and don't own either one of these, but the Wii U & Nintendo 3DS is all they have now and they both do get some nasty flak for various reasons so that's more or less worrying to some people including me. They still seem to have some pretty good ideas like Splatoon and most of their main series seem to be more or less solid still, though, but their competitors just never were so strong before.

Two main reasons they appear to be limping with these systems: For one, I agree, they seem to really lack good third party support. Like Konami, Capcom and Squaresoft for the NES/SNES or Rare for N64, these third parties were one of the main reasons the systems sold reasonably well back then. The GC barely had as much to offer, that's why it more or less flopped and the same seems to be happening again.
Two, the massive Wii success was mostly because of the ingenious marketing and implementing of the motion controls gimmick as a generation bonding family gaming system and less about the quality of game selection as a whole - because let's face it, 75% of Wii's library consists of eye trainers, budget minigame collections and other garbage. The introduction of the Wii U left me confused and many others as well, more as a peripheral for the Wii than a new system. It also didn't seem to cater to the family bonding gimmick as much yet with the (even more stupid) name it still appeared as a continuation of the previous system. It's like they didn't know if they would like to dare cashing in more with their previous smash hit idea or try something new so it turns into some sort of missing link.

Wii U & N3DS just seem to have neither good marketing nor a strong game developing roster behind their belt. So I guess that's why their future appears to be dim compared to their competitors.