Its a nice theory, but where's the evidence to back it up.  Third parties sold almost nothing on Nintendo consoles.  The few games they released across all platforms bombed hard on the Wii because everyone who were interested in those games, had the other consoles and bought them there.  Then the few developers who did make serious triple A games developed exclusively on the Wii didn't do so great either.  

Mad World was a great game but got mediocre sales.  No More Heroes, Manhunt 2 and many others tried bringing mature titles to the system but people just weren't interested in them.  Even if they did bring more of those games, would you have bought the system?  Would YOU have played Grand Theft Auto on the Wii rather than the PS3 or 360?  Do you know anyone who said, "I would have bought the Wii if it had GTA, but I bought a 360 instead."

So many people are claiming that third parties excluded the Wii because it lacked graphics, but they were already excluding it even in the Gamecube era.  Don't kid yourself.  They simply knew that competing with Nintendo games on its platform was suicide.  Even now on the 3DS, outside of a few select titles, I'm good just picking Nintendo games.  Why would I pick up a bad Third Person Shooter game that I would rather play on the PC when I can buy Mario or Zelda both of which are legendary series.  

No, the Wii didn't do any damage to the brand. If anything it repaired some damage caused by the disaster that was the N64.
Wii U isn't failing because of the Wii. It's failing because Nintendo made a successor to the Wii that failed to succeed the Wii in every way. Heck, a lot of people didn't even understand it was the successor, that's how hard it failed. Nintendo also did their best to kill off every last bit of momentum by leaving a huge gap between the death of the Wii and the birth of the Wii U, effectively minimising the chance of a smooth transition.

Not the Wii itself but rather Nintendo's support of it after 2010, I'd say. It ended 2010 as the best-selling home console of the year; it would be another 11 months before Nintendo released its next and final AAA title for the system, and another 12 months before it launched the WiiU (and even then, you could argue it took another year from then before it released its first AAA WiiU title, SM3DW). I don't think the Wii was innately damaging to Nintendo's home console business, I simply think the company's release schedule for its home consoles since 2010 has been self-destructive.

It definitely did. People are touching on important points, but as I see it, back in the N64 era, Nintendo started making some big mistakes that started it down the road it's on now, and the Wii was the nail in the coffin. First, they went with cartridges instead of disks for the N64. Then they went with those weird tiny disks on the Gamecube and didn't do online. This alienated a lot of 3rd party developers, which caused hardcore bases on other systems to really thrive while the hardcore base on Nintendo systems dwindled. When online really took off, Nintendo focused on a novel way to play, which was certainly a great thing, but at the expense of losing a good online system, which was a big hit to the hardcore base. So now, aside from the kiddie image, there was a worse image problem, the image that hardcore third party titles don't come to Nintendo, just minigame collections, that Nintendo didn't have good online, which is not really true anymore but the image is there to stay, and finally by choosing to focus so heavily on motion controls, they neglected games that worked better without them, and the Wii U didn't fix that, because the pro controller didn't come with the system. In fact, Wii U fixed none of those problems, except online, which it's still working on really. It's leaps and bounds ahead of the Wii, and not far behind the PS4 in terms of capabilities, but in terms of ease of development, it's harder, due first to archetiture and second to a general sense it gives developers that they can't just create an identical game for all systems but have to develop a unique feature for every Wii U port, which they don't want to do. The Wii was successful, but the success only worsened things, because it gave Nintendo no incentive to fix things. People hate on Iwata, but it was Hiroshi Yamauchi that set Nintendo on its anti-third party ways, in particular the online issues. He was a great businessman, but he set Nintendo up to fail in the long term. Iwata is less set in his ways, and is trying to undo some things Yamauchi did by fixing the online situation and patch things up with 3rd parties. He just has a shit ton of work ahead of him, since he took it way too easy in the Wii era. Further alienating third parties (at least those catering to a more hardcore audience), fumbling with online, not giving good support to non-motion controls, or even making the most of the motion controls for that matter (seriously, what besides Skyward Sword made full use of WiiMotionPlus?), the Wii hurt the Nintendo brand by thriving off a portion of the market that ended up leaving, giving Nintendo no incentive to better serve the hardcore.

Nintendo needs some restructuring, which it is doing. In particular they're hiring new people to fix the online situation, that's promising. They're claiming to want to make full use of the gamepad. At least it didn't take them until 5 years into the gen to figure that out this time like it did with the Wii. As for casuals, they're creating a new brand for that with the only thing the casuals ever really cared about: the health games, the education games, and the lifestyle apps. This will allow them to cater to casuals on their terms without muddying the Nintendo brand with those things, while advertising on each platform to maximize any possible crossover interests between the two audiences. This gen will be spent improving the online situation, while next gen will improve their overall infrastructure to make software development easier for 1st and 3rd party alike.

No. I would say Wii was a blip on an otherwise downward trajectory. Millions of people bought their first and last console, and a few millions bought Wii then either PS3, or more likely X360+Kinect.

Wii U launches and we're back to GC level sales, which is basically the core Nintendo audience who will stick by Nintendo through thick and thin. At this stage I think Wii U is more or less guaranteed to sell as well as GC, and prhaps, because at least some first timers who bought Wii will have a second go 'round Wii U might sell slightly more.

The only thing Wii failed to do is secure a substantially increased multi-generation fanbase. But it did not do long term damage to the brand. The only thing that puzzles me is why the vocal core Nintendo fanbase didn't see that and assumed they'd have multi-generation dominance when the top 50 games for Wii was dominated by party/casual games, with a smattering of Nintendo stock franchises from previous generations and a couple of Lego games. The only "non-casual / party" new IP appearing in the top 50 are below the top 30. And worse still, Nintendo didn't recognise this as a sign of the one generation wonder phenomenon. Or perhaps they did but they really had no clue about how to deal with it.

PS4 and 360 on the other hand is completely dominated in the top 50 by the sort of IP that long time gamers play, or that people new to gaming play if they've found themselves a new hobby that will last them for years to come. And plenty of new IP in their top 50s, including in their top 20, that are non-casual/party.

The trick is to market aggressively to the core long term gamer but also give casuals a reason to buy your console. Nintendo just has the balance all wrong for a long term strategy.

I feel the opposite. N64 and GameCube were bad for Nintendo with the expensive cartridges and kiddie stuff, but Wii was finally something interesting.

Wii U was delayed a year, and came out without any really compelling software or use of the hardware.

As far as "long term damage" goes. That's bullshit, 5 years is a very long time, and that is how long a typical generation is. That is enough time for a company to rise from nothing to become the top company in the game. Just look what Apple did, and what Nintendo themselves did - they went from irrelevancy to the to massively powerful companies very quickly.

Not to mention, the Wii made Nintendo relevant again after 5-10 years of being irrelevant.

The N64 and GameCube almost killed Nintendo  If the Wii did " long term damage" to Nintendo.

And listing three “niche” titles proves your point why? They made a No More Heroes game for the PS3 and Xbox and it sold worse than both of the Wii titles. Manhunt 2 didn’t sell that much better on the PS3 either (only 4 thousand more copies than the Wii version). Guess 360 and PS3 owners didn’t want “mature” games either.

Third party sold quite well on the Wii (quality aside). Most people who make assumptions that third parties don’t sell well on Nintendo systems at all are quite ignorant. Lego games, Skylanders, Sonic, Resident Evil, Resident Evil etc., just to name a few.

Excluding the Mario & Sonic games, if the VGChartz are anything to go by, there were more than 100 3^rd party titles that sold at least a million copies, on the Wii.

There were even third party titles that sold well on the N64 (Turok, Star Wars Games etc.), and the Gamecube (Sonic, Resident Evil, Super Monkey Ball etc.) as well.

Third party games do sell well on Nintendo systems, they just don’t sell as well as they do on Microsoft or Sony consoles.

I feel bad for them, its like they are expected to look for the next big thing. They cant seem to compete with Sony and MS for the red ocean

this isnt about the PS360 at all. Im not totally blaming Wii , BUT you have to look at it from a gamer perspective. if you bought a system and you were not satisfied with it, you are less likely to buy the follow up. not having anything for the last two years on Wii is going to do at least contribute ot the poor outlook.