Lukas Mathis, checking back after a year on the idea that Nintendo should drop consoles and make games for iOS:

Now, one year later, Nintendo just announced that it made a quarterly profit of 24.2 billion yen (about 224 million US$). Ars Technica notes that this is mainly due to strong sales of its first-party titles, mostly on the 3DS. However, even the Wii U is starting to show sustainable game sales numbers. So far, Mario Kart 8 sold roughly 3 million copies on the Wii U, and it continues to sell well. At 60 US$ a piece, it’s not clear to me that Nintendo could make the same amount of money selling games for iOS. Even a platform that’s doing poorly, like the Wii U, might be a better option if you can sell games for 60 bucks a piece, and reach a 50% attach rate.

As I argued last year in Nintendo Vs. Apple Pundits, Nintendo consoles exist to support the company’s crown jewels – first-party games. The kind of experiences that Nintendo is able to craft on the 3DS and Wii U wouldn’t simply be possible on iOS (from both technical and economic perspectives).

As Mathis notes, the rest of the console industry isn’t doing too bad after a year either, with the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 reporting higher sales numbers than the previous generation.