But Nvidia has had high-profile industry partners for decades. Nintendo isn't "venture capital and hype" nor is PC gaming and HPC datacenter workloads.

That line is purified cope.

But Nvidia wasn't able to compete with Apple for capacity on new process nodes with Nintendo volumes (the concept is laughable; compare Apple device unit volumes to game console unit volumes). What has changed in the semiconductor industry is overwhelming demand for AI focused GPUs, and that is paid for largely with speculative VC money (at this point, at least; AI companies are starting to figure out monetization).