lmao... use your damn head. The reason he came to the conclusion he did... is because what Nintendo did with the Switch by making it a hybrid LITERALLY CONTRACTED THE CONSOLE MARKET. And there's no Vita/PSP anymore either... hmm wonder why that is??
And your point about the Series consoles dragging down the market doesn't change the fact that it's happened. Did you ever stop to consider why the market isn't buying Xboxes? Xbox not creating compelling content? Sure.. but maybe it also has to do with the fact that all of the consoles now share so much of the same library that an aging population of console gamers no longer sees the point in buying all of them? Hell, they're basically the same hardware at this point.
These aren't oversights or a misrepresentation of the data... it's literally the state of the market now... People are misunderstanding the difference between the amount of people who buy devices such as these (the market)... and the quantity of devices they are selling to those people. Yes... they are making more revenue... but finding ways to increase monetization of the player-base.. is not the same as "growing the market". They need people who weren't buying consoles before... to start buying them.. and that group of people no longer exists in NA to any substantial degree. The people that buy these devices are already buying them. Thus if they want to reach MORE people... they have to sell things on devices which aren't consoles.
Nintendo consolidated their portable and console hardware business was due to many factors but the major issue was catering to both audiences with a constant stream of quality and quantity of software and content. And avoid the major content drought during many month for both it's portable and console consumers.
As you are aware, the majority of content consumed by the audience that buys Nintendo hardware are buying them for Nintendo software, and 3rd party content are just icing on the cake. The proof of this are the software sales figures where Nintendo 1st party content dominates the charts, as opposed to the opposite with Sony and Xbox where 3rd party software are the bulk of the sales.
So Nintendo releasing 1st party software for both the portable and console with a relatively small team of developers is no easy task, especially to satisfy the damand of both markets at a satisfactory level, and with the increasing competitive market in the console space with Sony and Playstation.
How do they solve the problem? How do they cater for both audiences at the same time and decrease both development time and cost, and consequently reduce overhead cost? Yes you guest it, consolidation. Making a hybrid console that caters to both markets. Their decision proved a success and their sales of both software and hardwares speaks for themselves.
However, we do know that there is demand for a dedicated handheld space with the Steam Deck. Its priced as a premium product, and it caters to a different target audience than Nintendo. It targets gamers who wants to play their PC games on the go. It's reletive success and existance proves that the demand for such devices exists.
Sure the mobile phones exits, but the majority of its software are free to pay trash with micro transactions and shit. Same gaming on the go market, but different target audiences.
With regards to Xbox, anyone with half a brain knows that they have lost alot of their audience to other platforms and PC due to release their exclusive games on it rather than keeping it exclusive to their own platform. You don't need an Xbox. My point is, it's console sales won't be such a disappointment if they focused on 1st party software like Sony and Nintendo, and created demand for their on platform. The maket would have looked very differently from how it is now with 3 major healthy platform holders. And instead, MS with its XBS failure, managed so drag down the market.
I forgot to mention that the pandemic also severely affected the supply chain, especially with the PS5. I'd imagine the market would look very different if Sony had managed to satisfy the demand of the PS5 during the initial 2 years of its launch.
Finally you seem to neglect the fact the all consoles are priced nowadays at a premium rate instead of the mass market price of the previous generations to maximise profits, versus unit sales. Both Sony and Nintendo are currently more successful in terms of profit and software sales than in 2008, and it's not even close. This is in my opinion the barometer for success instead of hardware revenue.
Mat making a statement like this without context is extremely disingenuous, and the majority of us here knows better than him with regards to the actual market health.