verbatim
[PLACEHOLDER]
Someone please explain to this guy what loss lead means.
Okay I will.
...
For Sony and Microsoft, video games in general are loss leads. These are companies that make their money off of televisions and computer software respectively. Graphic fidelity in video game consoles, not to mention the constant attempts at turning game consoles into "home entertainment systems", is all about image.
Nintendo stays competitive by making good games, and by restricting those games to one console. Until the day comes that people don't actually want to play video games, or until Sony/Microsoft care about making them, Nintendo won't be going anywhere.
I would argue that Nintendo doesn't need to adopt a loss lead strategy in pursuing the Activision/EA/Ubisoft third party games. The big things that drove developers away from the Wii U (and the things that would have drove them away from the Wii if it didn't come out of the gate so ridiculously strong) were ease of access to developers (language, availability of dev kits, etc), and nonstandard controllers. If the NX comes out with the pro controller as the default and a gimmick that doesn't need to be engineered around (think the flashing LED on the PS4) and has games written in c# then Activision and co would be more than willing to downgrade the graphics on Call of Duty in order to port.