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What's the distinction, then ? I can't imagine a company can set precedent to their liking on basically any issue by suing someone who has a vague relation to that issue and doesn't have to money to fight back to get them to sign up to some random settlement that says "the company is right, please set a precedent on this issue. - person who didn't have the money to fight back", right ?

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It doesn't set a "precedent" in the strict legal sense, especially that there's no point of law being discussed.

But it does set a "precedent" in that when courts deal with similar cases in the future, they would look back and see the settlement, and it does influence a judges' assessment of whether Nintendo has a case or not, in the sense of "well, the defendants in the prior case forfeited, they must have had an open and shut case, right?"

In a perfect world where courts have all the time and resources to try a case, this shouldn't happen, but in practice courts use all sorts of heuristics (as long as they're not explicitly banned)...

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