It sounds crazy I know, this isnt a troll thread. Just pointing out some things that seemed odd. Yes Wii was a sucess story, but IMHO I think it did not help Ninty's future console prospects i.e. the Wii U. 

I say this, becasue a system that is following one of the most popular systems and Ninty's best selling home console should NOT be doing THIS badly. No way it doesnt make sense. Its not like Ninty made as much mistakes with WIi U as say, Sony did with PS3, but even then PS3 was doing better in the same time frame. Hell PS4 broke records and although PS3 did turn around it wasnt near the popularity of PS1 2 and even Wii. 

So that leads me to believe that a good chunk of people were not satisfied with their Wii, which is why so few are jumping on the follow up. The WIi was revoluationary, but it was far behind in tech, online, and flat out games. When i say games i mean all the stuff that the other systems got. And lets not forget that it got discountined support some time ago, now apologists would say that it was within normal life cycle. Even then so what? That doesnt mean anything when the other two are STILL getting supported and in the case of 360 it was out longer. 

It comes down to perception, brand and games most importantly. Now some will argue that its not Ninty's fault that they miss game, evil 3rd parties are too blame. For the sake of argument, lets say thats true. So what? I assure that only some forum dwellers care about that. In the reality nobody cares why a game isnt on a system they only care that its NOT on the system. And that has been the story for Ninty home console's since N64, GC almost got it right, but still missed some key stuff (GTA) 

What does that have to do with Wii? Well for as good as it did sales wise, that didnt translate into support that core gamers cared too much about, hell Wii missed even more stuff than GC and the stuff it did get was so far behind the HD versions it might as well not exist. But with GC at least and N64 there was some parity. Neither of those systems were weaker than the comp and could run games that devs did put on it, and had some of the best looking and playing games on their systems.  Wii had none of those things. Well the games were good, thats opinion. But one got the feeling that Ninty wasnt even trying to keep up with the joneses so to speak. Which is their right to NOT do so, but their are consequences for that. And to add a cherry on top, Ninty just said screw the last couple of years on Wii, with minimal support. 

What does that have to do with Wii U? If the general pop doesnt believe you are taking this whole thing seriously then people won't buy the console. But how can they? the online is still behind the others and the WIi U has missed out and will miss out on a bunch of games.  Those are problems they've had for a while but now their is no wiimote to hook the blue ocean, which IMHO was never that great function wise and I believe thats something alot of people figured out. So now Blue ocean dont want it, and core gamers back to just dealing with Sony MS and PC mostly. 

To drive my point home, I'll use PS4. No way should it be doing that good and thats coming from a PS fan. Its launch was no better or worse than the other two, thats just how I feel, but it broke records coming off of Sony's least selling home console(but still sold well). Faith, when it comes to games. I think people take Sony alot more seriously, they have proven that they will get the games and they will keep up with the joneses as best as they can even when they are getting stomped. I think that's Ninty's biggest problem right there, people dont take them seriously in the home console space. How can they change? I have no idea.

Some very interesting points. I do certainly believe that building up the customer's faith in your brand can pay some very long term dividends. Even though the PS3 may not have been off to a great start, it was their continuous support of it that made the customers who bought the console (and who didn't) realise they could trust Sony in the long term to deliver. Hence everyone jumped ship to PS4 en-mass.

I don't see how that could be the same case with the Wii, having owned one myself. Or you could just say the buyers of Wii don't even have that kind of thinking since they never cared to come back to a new console as they've found cheaper alternatives, like smartphones and are satisfied with those games. In any case Nintendo need to support the Wii U well so as to build up that momentum and maybe go back to the drawing board for the next console.

Nintendo did it to themselves by ignoring the Wii for the last two years and not at least having some specs on the thing where the graphics were outdated a year after it releases and has no chance securing 3rd party titles.

Bottom line, Nintendo had no foresight in 2005 hardware wise and no foresight in 2009 software wise (or hardware wise if they wanted to stop supporting Wii in 2010 then the Wii U should have launched that year with SW and Nintendo should have had it planned in 2009).

What the Wii did was set unrealistic expectations. I still say that it was an anomaly and that the baseline for a Nintendo console, assuming that it lacks full-fledged third-party support, will be closer to Game Cube levels. However, because of the Wii, the Wii U looks awful instead of average.

There is also the possibility that the Wii turned Nintendo into a company intent on finding the Next Big Thing. Gambling on hardware is a risky endeavor. Yeah, you might hit the lottery but the odds are greater that you won't. When that gamble raises the price of your console by a significant degree, then things might turn even more dire.

I also believe that the abandonment of the Wii did some damage, though I think much would have been forgiven had the Wii U come out of the gates with a cornucopia of great software, which I think a lot of people were expecting. The difficulty transitioning to HD (which should NOT have been that serious an issue) might have dealt serious damage.

To a degree yes. A good number of people who owned a Wii got tired of it after 2-3 years.

It's one of the downsides of being in the fad-chasing business (just like there are upsides to it).

Nintendo home consoles have been selling worse every gen. The Wii was simply an exception to this trend.

Nope, the N64 did, it's curse reached to the Gamecube, the Wii was a special groundbreaking product that connected with the masses, those who had never played videogames before, then that era ended and they never played videogames again, we resumed with the N64 curse and now is Wii U's turn.

Yes the Wii did harm to the Nintendo brand, however it was a risk worth taking. I think what we're going to see this generation is that the graphics everyone is so hell bent on chasing are going to kill more developers.

The lack of third party games hardly did any damage really. Most people who cared bought both the Wii and a second console. The low cost of the Wii was one of the key selling points of the console. Nintendo might have actually done better to give the Wii U lower level graphics so they could also price it at 250 dollars.

However, now that a new generation has come, everyone has spent the last 6 years hearing "see, I told you not to buy that thing." so now they aren't buying it again. It's more that negative word of mouth has hurt it than anything. Nintendo has the best console this generation but nobody cares anymore.

It doesn't sound crazy. In many ways I feel Nintendo won a Pyrrhic victory with the Wii. They made the most money... At the cost of everything else...

No it wasnt the Wii. It started with the N64. It worsened with GC. This lead to Wii and continues to Wii U. This is due to the 3rd parties. They dont support anymore Nintendo consoles because they are threatened which cause the gamers to feel that Nintendo consoles are disadvantaged. This caused gamers to drift away. This is why the NESand the SNES were successful. They had all Nintendo games and Multiplats. Plus powerful hardware. Over the years Nintendo fans adapted to having no third party support so they dont buy them anymore. Even if Wii U was like PS4 but Nintendo, third parties still wont develop for it. I blame third parties and gamers nowadays.

The only way Nintendo consoles can get more respect is to release a new console that is super powerful and be named by its roots. SNES 2 or somethin.