"Abandoning fans is not in Nintendo's nature."
just imagine the look on 100m wii owners when you said that.

zelda U NEEDS to be next year.
2015 will be too late.

Lol this. I bet half the games in the OP aren't coming in 2014.

You'd know to be more wary if you've been expecting Versus and The Last Guardian for the past 5 years.

The Wii U reminds in many ways of the Dreamcast, and that lasted for only 1 or 2 years, even though it sold pretty good.

Strong first party games- One of the reasons the Dreamcast is so loved by gamers is the creative output by SEGA in that era.  You had Sonic Adventure returning the Blue Blur to form, Phantasy Star Online was the first console MMO, Jet Set Radio and Space Channel 5 had style to spare, Crazy Taxi was a perfect arcade conversion, and then the oddball weirdness of Samba de Amigo and Sea Man.  SEGA was on fire, beyond the examples shown here.

Nintendo, of course, is the king of first-party content.  Even if you grow weary of their franchise-overkill, they have Mario, Pokemon., Zelda, and Pikmin all available to Wii U.  That's nothing to say of Wii Fit and Wii Party returning for encore presentations this fall.  And Mario Kart and Smash Bros are on the way in 2014, hopefully keeping up the momentum.

No EA support- SEGA learned the hard way from the failure of the Saturn.  EA was a publisher well burned from low sales, so they stayed clear of the Dreamcast.  That's OK, as SEGA had their evidently awesome SEGA Sports line-up that rivaled the quality of EA Sports.  The problem was, Madden sells big, and people noticed it was missing from Dreamcast.

Wii U has had all of four EA-published games on Wii U.  That may be all she wrote, as EA has pulled out support due to weak sales.  Hopefully, EA realizes the reason their games didn't sell on Wii U.  It's not because of the games in of themselves, but the games were mostly inferior to the other system's versions.  No Mass Effect Trilogy, only part 3; Madden didn't come with its new physics engine, a major selling point for version 2013.  Now, the Wii U will miss out on all EA offerings, the first time this has happened to Nintendo in forever.

Online network unable to keep up with rivals- SegaNet was an awesome proposition in 2000, as the first dedicated online network for a home console.  Its reliance on 56k modems bundled with all Dreamcasts was something that made it look bad once Xbox Live became a known proposition.  Not to mention it came too late to save the system.  But it was sure better than Sony or Nintendo could do to take their systems online.

The Wii U's online functions far surpass the Wii's efforts.  Miiverse is the Nintendo take on a social network, giving players their own network id for the first time on Nintendo hardware.  The problem is, Nintendo hasn't learned enough from the other hardware boys on how to make the network truly awesome.  Your profile is locked to one console, no unified voice chat, and a dogmatic list of restrictions on the Miiverse.  Nintendo should've paid attention to our needs.

Controller has a screen in it- The Dreamcast had this as a pure option, but the VMU Memory Unit came into play in many games, taking the experience beyond the TV.  You could raise a Chao from Sonic Adventure games on the go!  Otherwise, it displayed cute, 8-bit graphics as you played: a nice touch.

Wii U is all about the second screen.  The Game Pad has all the control input you'd ever need, plus a touch screen and gryro sensors.  And like the VMU, the battery life is atrocious.  Developers have to figure out how to best use the Game Pad, as it is the main feature of the system.  It's best use has been off-TV play, letting you play a console experience free of the TV.

Hardware less powerful than the upcoming systems- One of the major reasons for the Dreamcast's failing.  Everyone knew how the Playstation 2 was going to be powerful, and capable of DVD-playback.  Dreamcast didn't have this, not even through an add-on.  So, everyone who would've gotten a Dreamcast sat back and waited for PS2.

The Wii U is already barely stronger in specs from the 360 and PS3 today.  But its problems are exasperated by the PS4 and Xbox One, both of which are far stronger that Wii U.  As time goes on, this could lead to inferior ports of AAA-games, just like with the Wii.  Or nothing at all, also like the Wii.  It already is struggling with third-party support, and the specs race isn't helping it.

Strong start turned into slow crawl- The Dreamcast set records when it sold a million units in 24 hours at the North American launch.  This was thought to translate to a healthy life for a long time, but it was not to be.  The system did benefit from boosted sales the holiday of 2000 due to PS2 shortages, but, by that time, SEGA had already decided to go third-party (internally).

Wii U sold all of 3.6 million units worldwide over the holiday of 2012.  After that, a severe lack of software and marketing push ensured sales would fall off a cliff.  By March 31, 2013, they sit at 3.45 million.  That's a pathetic showing for a major new console.  It's up to future Nintendo software to turn things around.

Um...they both have Sonic on it- Who would have thought it, but yes.  The Dreamcast marked the come-back for Sonic the Hedgehog, starring in two Adventures and party game Sonic Shuffle.  On Wii U, he's featured in an All-Stars Racer, and the upcoming exclusive Sonic Lost Worlds.  The latter looks exciting, certainly.  But the exclusivity is an admission by SEGA that they don't know how to sell Sonic anymore, so they've handed him off to the most kid-friendly console out there.

Nintendo supported Wii for what? 5/6 years? Normal amount of years consoles are usually supported for. Reading your post, you'd think they abandoned the thing after a year or two or something.

Smash Bros and MK are coming out in 2014. Zelda in 2015 will be just fine.

When you look at the Wii, Gamecube, N64 etc, by the first couple years, a most of the bigger games released, and we knew about many of the ones that didn't.

Mario Kart Wii, Smash Bros, Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3, Wii Sports, Wii Fit, and Twilight Princess all released within the first 2 years the Wii released, and we knew about XenoBlade in 2007, 2 years after release

Metroid Prime, Pikmin, Smash Bros, SM Sunshine, Wind Waker, Eternal Darkness and others all released within 2 years, and we knew about other games.

Sure there were surprises, we didn't know about Skyward Sword & Galaxy 2 for Wii (sequels), nor did we know about Baten Kaitos and Resident Evil 4 when Gamecube first released, but....it's not like the Gamecube and Wii suddenly got a ton of exclusives mid-life and beyond. Wii actually got kinda abandoned the last couple years with very few games (good ones though) releasing post 2009.

I don't know whjy people claim this; 2010 was Wii's best year for games; Mario Galaxy 2, Donkey Kong Country Returns, (which btw wasn't revealed until E3 2010) Kirby's Epic Yarn, Tatsunoko vs Capcom, Monster Hunter Tri and Sin & Punishment in the West, Red Steel 2, No More Heroes 2, Sonic Colours, Goldeneye 007...

I meant Nintendo kinda abandoned the Wii, but you're right it's more like 2011+ it got abandoned. 2011+ it was just Project Rainfall, Skyward Sword, and Mario Party 9. Pikmin 3 was suppose to be a Wii title, but got ported to WiiU last minute.

What they could do is drop out of the console race period. Then they could put their games on Ouya and on PS4 and Xbox One. then smartphones. that would be the wisest option at this point. Sorry Nintendo you did your best...

You just said Nintendo should put their games on Ouya.

Please tell me that was a joke.

Please O_O

Yeah, 2011-2012 was the dry spell. Thank God for games like Skyward Sword, Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Project Zero 2 Wii Edition, or it would have been unbearable.