A console being different is not a financial risk when you spend no money on developing it and no money on producing it.
There was no path to bankruptcy, or even meaningful financial loss, if the Wii failed.
The market they actually get isn't the point. It's that they never invest enough money for it to be possible for them to lose meaningful money if their gimmick doesn't work. If Sony doesn't sell PS5s, they're diverse enough that it probably won't bankrupt them, but it will hurt bad. Nintendo isn't even willing to invest enough that not selling is a mild inconvenience. They just refuse to invest.
Compared to any other non-Nintendo platform ever made? No, it didn't. They used cheap junk tech, exactly like the Switch, and didn't commit to any meaningful investment in number of units.
The fact that they use hardware not capable of playing modern games is why third parties have very limited involvement with them. It's why they got ports of 15 year old games instead of most developers of new games even considering putting their games on there. And their bad hardware is a direct result of their unwillingness to invest like everyone else does. Even Valve, who has very limited hardware production, invested far more in the Steam Deck than Nintendo did on the switch.
so... what was so groundbreaking about developing the xbox one/series or ps4/5? How are those consoles any more R&D intensive than developing the Wiimote?
You already claimed so much bullshit which I debunked. Do you have any data about the rest of your allegations? like how Nintendo was supposedly fine after the WiiU?
The SteamDeck wouldn't exist if it weren't for the Switch. The Valve VR headsets wouldn't exist if it weren't for the Wii.
Performance is expensive. Building and validating a system around high end custom chips is expensive. They also will not make you units if you don't make serious volume commitments.
Building a very basic system with cheap, bad, off the shelf components is not expensive.
Building a very basic system with cheap, bad, off the shelf components is not expensive.
Sorry, you have no idea about hardware development. Just because Hardware is cheap doesn't mean that R&D is cheap.
Do you think that development hardware drives R&D costs? No, paying engineers does. Do you think that Sony or Microsoft develop their own chips? Again: nope: They use AMD Microarchitectures (Sony won't make the mistake of the PS3 again).
You know what costs R&D? Developing controllers does. And guess who reinvents their controllers every generation! Not just hd rumble, like the dual sense: Video streaming, HD rumble, IR technology, etc.
And Nintendo tripled their R&D budget from 2003 to 2007 twice:
In 2003, Nintendo declared that $34 million was spent on R&D. This figure steadily climbed to $103 million in 2006 and the following year bumped dramatically to $370 million.
Yes, designing the chips is obscenely expensive. Microsoft and Sony aren't using off the shelf $5 SoCs. They're partnering with AMD, using AMD's IP, to make custom designs specifically tailored to their design goals. The fact that you think you can talk about R&D costs without understanding this basic reality is hilarious. Validating high performance custom SoC designs takes a tremendous amount of very limited capacity of small batch test manufacturing ability to get to an end product.
I promise you Sony spent more developing their triggers than Nintendo did on the joycon. That actually is new tech. Putting IR and nfc sensors that already exist onto a controller isn't that expensive. Developing new tech is where costs come from. Sony isn't spending a couple hundred million. They're spending billions, every year.
Even after kicking their investment up for a switch 2 that can't use an off the shelf chip because there isn't one, they're still spending less than half of what Sony does.
Do the search yourself with whatever source you trust. They all have the same information.
Sony spent over 2 billion on R&D in gaming last year, which doesn't count the guaranteed volume that's also required to get leading edge chips. Nintendo still spent less than a billion (which is a big increase from the complete joke of investment leading into the switch, because the switch didn't take any research).
Ah, yes. The good ol' "do your research sheeple" bit. Gotta love it. You've already claimed so much BS, why shouldsI take anything you say at face value?
Also: lol. Do you think that the technology in the Dual Sense's triggers is new? o.O
Do you actually even own a switch, if you're so desperate to dunk on Nintendo?
There are literally dozens, minimum, of sources with the same numbers. They're in annual reports and not secret or debatable at all.
Everything I've said is accurate. You're the one pretending putting one of the worst controllers ever made together with off the shelf parts is somehow comparable to designing custom SoCs on cutting edge nodes.