There’s plenty of prior evidence that design can come late to a company and still succeed, of course; there’s less evidence that design can come late to a platform and still win over that platform’s whole ecosystem.

On October 27th, Nintendo published half year results for the fiscal year ending in March 2012. Management stated that the company lost over $900 million with a negative outlook. Nintendo cited weaker than expected sales of Nintendo DS hardware and 3DS software and Yen appreciation as the main reasons for the miss. Is this the end of Nintendo?