Maybe they didn't put it out cause they could "get away with it", but rather because they couldn't afford not to.
Share holders probably didn't like the idea of "lets wait two years, while out competitors get more money, and while we continue to lose market, so that the tech is all the way there for this thing." Nintendo was in a hole, it went into survival mode, and did what it does best, and innovated...to the best of it's ability. There's deadlines on these things, I'm sure a lot of the design team would have loved to waited it out, and I'm MORE sure they would have loved to continue to feed their children. So they did what they had to, and released the thing. It didn't work out like it should have, so two year later they fix it for 20 bucks. Would have rather they went ahead and put out a new console to fix it? Or do you prefer the situation where we were playing gamecubes up until last July? Or would you rather have the situation we have now? I know none of them are ideal, but I think that where we're at is probably the best one.
Wario Land had some neat achievements. So did Metroid. I play a lot of games on steam, and they have achievements, it's kinda cool. I like to check my community page occasionally and see that "oh, neat, he finally got hunter punter in l4d" but it's no big. I've never bragged about it, and nobody else has either...I hardly notice them. I like that in team fortress 2, getting achievements unlock things. The thing is, achievements lose meaning because people farm them...so it doesn't even matter.
Yeah, Wii online is kinda bogus. But, tetris DS is one of my favorite games to play online, it's a faceless battle, but it's nice to know that I'm playing against a person. Mario kart had good online, and let you bring a buddy, plus leader boards and stuff. I usually play my Wii alone though, or with friends in the same room. I don't expect a rigorous online experience out of any dedicated console, I expect that out of my PC.
DLC would be great if every game that used it followed Team Fortress 2's example, and let you have it for free. In that the team continues to develop content even now, 2 years later, and gives it to you for free. They make big events out of big updates, have free weekends, and get even more people to buy the game. Valve takes the approach to "add new content, make more new customers, and word of mouth sells." vs. a lot of other developers who say "get money from current customers." I also like Tripwire's approach in Killing Floor, where they have huge content updates for free, but make character skins you can buy for a couple of bucks. They use the extra money from those to help fund more content updates. In addition to free weekends, and word of mouth. DLC can work, but most developers have the wrong mindset. I think it's also more difficult to approach on a console. Microsoft enforces rules to where you can't give stuff for free on the marketplace, so valve charges the bare minimum for its content updates. Currently for tf2 they are just saving up the updates until they feel that it's fair to charge xbox users for it, putting them in one big pack.
HD games are pretty unimportant to me. My housemate has a PS3 hooked up to his 1080p 32' LCD. Most of the game only output 720p, and most the games don't even look that great. Uncharted had great graphics, and the character animation in the second one was good, but I mean, it's a video game. It was weird to see everything so realistically rendered and still have him do normal video game stuff. Same with killzone, and metal gear solid. For the type of game that the ps3/360 are trying to make it's important to them to have that horsepower behind them. For the types of game that Nintendo is making on the Wii that horsepower just isn't as important. Does Mario really NEED to be in 1080p with however many millions of polygons? No, and I understand that it wouldn't hurt it, but it also doesn't really help it. Most of the time I watch my roomie play PS3 games I just think about how completely uninterested in playing it, but how nice the pictures were.
Motion controls are WAAAAAAY more innovative than achievements, I'm not sure that I understand how this argument is even happening.
Just my two cents, probably wont argue any of this. Because it's really just about whats important to you or me as a customer, and our expectations as a customer. So I mean, I don't want a PS3 because I don't feel it does what I want it to as a customer. And my Wii exceeded and fulfilled all of my customer expectations, which were "plays nintendo games so I can feel like a kid again". My PC does everything else.
sorry, no tl;dr