Again, Ian is repeating the same things he's been pissed off about since someone called him a nerd in the 8th grade for reading a Nintendo Power in the cafeteria.
To make it even harder to pretend not to understand:
Ignore all past history, decision making, alternate realities, etc. This year, Nintendo essentially has to launch a new console. They could maybe squeak by into 2017, but at even greater risk of cementing their irrelevancy. Right now, in today's world, with everything having already played out as it has, there are about ~30 million Playstation 4 owners and ~20 million Xbone owners, and who knows how many equivalent level PC owners. These numbers will all be up by the time the NX launches in late 2016. At that time, what compelling reason would anyone have to spend $400 on another bog standard current gen console with (in a best case scenario for this asinine scenario) feature parity and equivalent third party support? There is a small core of super enthusiasts who will buy everything that's out, but those same people bought the WiiU, which will probably finish at around 15 million sales.
As Adrock pointed out, you'd have to really, really want everything a PS4 offers, plus Nintendo games as well to an extent that you would ignore the network effects of the established PS4/Xbone ecosystems, friend preferences, etc. Who is holding out on buying into this current generation until Nintendo puts out an expensive and mostly redundant console? And if the NX was a second console for you, why would you buy third party games on the NX instead of the other systems? Would anyone buy a $400 Nintendo box? Very few are going for the $300 Nintendo box. The $99 Nintendo box (with great first party games and comparatively storng 3rd party support) only moved ~20 million units.
Nintendo can't wait toil 2020 to jump in with the PS5/Xtooth and hope that they'll suddenly become popular again with a demographic and business ecosystem they don't even like. Nor is there any sense in pushing out a me-too attempt halfway through this generation.