Rating the E3 2015 Conferences

[A Black Falcon]

The next mainline Zelda being a complete no-show should really tell you all you need to know about Nintendo's plans past early-2016. The Wii U is dead in the water and there's little hope of recovery at this point, the best move for them is to just move Zelda forward to the NX and prep it as a launch title. Otherwise, they're just throwing away money and opportunity.

No, I don't agree. Nintendo says that they did what they did because they wanted to focus on games that are actually coming soon. There's no proof behind the theory you give here, and I don't really believe it. Regardless of whenever the NX is coming (and I hope it's 2017), there will of course be Wii U games releasing after early 2016. Nintendo could, and should, have hinted at what some of them will be, but they didn't in order to focus on games for this year.

As for when Nintendo should release new hardware, it's tricky. What should they do? Release something sooner (late next year, only 4 years after the Wii U) that's more powerful than the PS4/XONE but far less powerful than Sony and MS's next consoles? That's what they did with the Wii U, and it didn't work at all. Really push tech? But releasing mid-generation, even that system would be outclassed by Sony and MS's next machines, which would release quite a bit later. Wait for longer? Tech-wise this would be better, but Wii U isn't selling well... so yeah, I don't know what the best path would be.

But overall, too soon would be a big mistake. I'd say try to hang on with Wii U as long as you can, because the later the NX releases, the smaller the power gap between it and Sony and MS's next consoles -- and as the Wii U shows, Nintendo REALLY needs to stop releasing significantly less powerful hardware if they want third-party support. Well, the other option would be another massive Wii-level hit that would force third parties to care a bit more about their system regardless of power, but there's no guarantee that they could have a hit like that.