Isn't that how they always did it though? The hardware guys would make the hardware and leave the software guys to figure out what to do with it. Now that they have their new headquarters the hardware and software guys can coordinate their efforts better.
Not really. It doesn't seem like it today, but sidescrolling on the NES was a big deal, and games like Super Mario were pushed to show it off.
Gunpei Yokoi's team was pushed to deliver software that could convince people (both developers and customers) that the system could deliver portable gaming, so they made Mario Land, but then Tetris came along and reminded people to consider the uniqueness of handheld gaming.
Miyamoto was pushed to make Mario World on the SNES the best sidescroller ever, against his will because he felt he had just perfected the sidescroller with Mario 3, because Nintendo needed to show that the SNES was solidly better than the NES. And they had games like F-Zero and Pilotwings showing off the new scaling and rotation features. I remember some considerable boasting about the fact that the SNES had
stereo sound.
The N64 had Mario 64, showing off the polygons and analog, and they even put forwards arguments in favor of carts over CDs.
The GameBoy Color needed no explanation. It was glorious color, where once there was only black and white (or different shades of puke green, if we want to call a spade a spade).
The GameBoy Advance, I don't think Nintendo did very much to sell people on, because they didn't have to.
The GameCube was absolutely proving itself via it's developers pre-launch, with major franchises from Nintendo and Rare showing off amazing graphics and implying an abundance of games, and newfound levels of maturity from Retro and Silicon Knights. They were doing their job to say that Nintendo had learned and grown and fixed everything that was wrong with N64. And then Nintendo sold Rare because that was good for their bank account, started beating the "graphics aren't everything" drum (undercutting the efforts of their own devs like Factor 5), and blew their own wheels off with the "Celda" controversy. They went back to being the N64 era company that did whatever they wanted to do, not what they needed to do, and to hell with anyone who doesn't agree. That was part of why they failed.
The DS went a little crazy with the features, but Nintendo worked their butt off from day one to show that these things were important.
The Wii would undoubtedly have failed if it weren't for Wii Sports. Nintendo needed that game to define what it was they were doing.
The 3DS needs no explanation. It's 3D. You can get a headache watching Dances With Smurfs... but this time
without the need to wear ill-fitting glasses. Yay! Oh and, you can't watch movies on it. Only games. Yay?
Iwata threw costly features at the Wii U, and the best thing anyone can say about it is "Off-TV play." They're not there for any reason, they're just there because Iwata thought the Wii U needed unique features, like DS and Wii had. And even Nintendo's first party can barely argue against that assessment.
The complaint against Nintendo was that a compelling argument in favor of these features should be been there from day one. Now Wii U is doomed after two years and it's third year is looking like the walking dead. But Iwata has tasked Nintendo to (in hindsight) come up for a reason for the Wii U's features to exist, and have them ready by it's fourth year. That's way too little, way too late. At this point, all Iwata's asking Nintendo to do is make sure that it's next great games are fundamentally unportable to the 3DS or QOL or PS5 or whatever it is that Nintendo ends up working on in the future.
