The thread about the old vgchartz, let me dug up some old threads and brought up some memories. Back at the time, as all three competitors had entered the new gen, basically every Wii Nintendo could produced got sold. That were crazy times. Wii was popular.

But the fans of the competitors (hmm, mostly of the PS3, the X360-fans seemed not THAT optimistic about their console) always were looking for the beginning of the end for Wii, so that their console could start to dominate. So I saw:

• the Wii is a fad
• as the adoption of HD-TVs will grow, the Wii-graphics will look terrible and people will move on to the HD-consoles
• Wii will not get the 3rd-party-support
• the HD-consoles are more future-proof, the Wii will be look old in a few years

I remember, that they looked for evidence, that saturation for Wii was reached. A photo of 3 Wiis in stock in some shop - OMG, Wii has reached saturation, now the HD-consoles will take over. We Wii-fans said: no, it will be soon market-leader (and later: it will hold the leadership), 3rd-party-support will come to the winning console, HD is not that important as games are...

The sales-numbers were supporting the claims of us Wii-fans. The Wii broke sales-records. Nothing seemed to be able to stop it. At some point even the fans of the competitors moved on and started talking about who will take the second place. Wii was nearing 50% market-share. Everything seemed fine.

But then the Wii started to fail. The HD-consoles there increasing in sales while the Wii was stangnating and decreasing.

If I look now at the sales, the PS3-fanboys seem to have predicted right. The Wii stopped selling at some point. Was the fad over? Was adoption of HD-TVs too big, that people now were seeing the bad graphics. Even the prediction about the 3rd-parties: Wii lacks the same 3rd-party-support the HD-twins are getting.

Was the Wii really a fad - that only lasted a bit longer than everyone were thinking? Discuss!

It wasn't a fad,It was something new that none had seen before.Unfortunately it has reaced saturation since everyone has it and there's no more games on it.If there were more quality games from third parties it would still be selling.

Indubiatibilly. When it was huge my dad even wanted to buy it! Word of mouth about being able to control it with your body was monstrous! However, now that kinect has stolen the motion control market, nintendo will really struggle to ever sell anything near the Wii numbers again. They will need a new fad! Like mind control or something.

Expecting a busy and hilarious thread. Just remeber the rules: list wars are a fad.

Seems fairly fad like. Nintendo stopped supporting waggle to an extent and now is looking for the next fad for the next generation.

No... it was just a short lived success. Nintendo should have developed more games for it, in its fourth, fifth and sixth year. They killed something prematurely because they didnt have enough dev teams to support it and the 3DS/WiiU. Also, they completely abandoned it as an online platform, while their rivals became better on that front every day.

In the end, IMO if Nintendo played their cards right, the Wii, could still be selling on par with the HD twins...

Tough I agree, its understandable why some might view it like that. I mean, I doubt that most people are talking about its game library, rather then the hit or miss motion sensor that Nintendo used. I mean Motion Plus got it down pretty well, but again, tech wise the competitors excelled in that area to. People called farmville a fad, and that lasted some time. I think to be entirely fair, we should see what the other to are bringing to the table next gen, and if Nintendos motion legacy will live on (my bet is yes).

i need to see wii U numbers to judge. if wii U fails to get any of that expanded audience to upgrade to their next system then yes, the wii was a fad.

I believe it was a fad because core games failed on it (CoD series, cursed mountain, the conduit, madworld). Twilight Princes only sold a meagre ~ 7 million units, which pales in comparison to the 11 million units Halo 3 sold, and yet the Xbox 360 has sold 30% less units then the wii.
 The game sales in relation to sold consoles, just don't add up for a console that isn't a fad:
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2012/04/talking_point_why_skyward_sword_sales_failed_to_soar

It looks like a large proportion of wii owners are not into core games, therefore we have to conclude that a large portion of wii owners are casual gamers. Casual gamers are attracted by fads, not quality, because they have no history of gaming to draw upon.

What will be interesting is how much this will hurt the Wii U because the majority of Wii owners, if they are casual gamers, will not be bothered in upgrading as they are not interested in graphics or hardware; if they were, they wouldn't be casual gamers. Therefore by grabbing a large, yet finite market, has Nintendo sealed it's fate? I think so.

I think I agree with this. But looking at these old threads I have the feeling the HD-fans were right, only got the timeframe wrong.