It scares me how Nintendo is doing. A QOL plataform? Very odd and a shot in the dark to nowhere. Could it still be named a videogame console and being in competition with the other major 2? Hard times are coming to Nintendo, just wishing they become somewhat successful with whatever they do

I doubt it will even be a "system" in a traditional sense, probably more like a range of devices with maybe one central hub type device. Extremely cheap to produce, mostly plastic and not a whole lot else, extremely bare bones tech wise, likely a completely new brand with the Nintendo branding pushed down to a minimum.

Which I guess is fine ... the Wii Fit crowd (or what's left of it) doesn't want to play things like Bayonetta 2 or Metroid or even Donkey Kong Country ... why keep trying to force a square peg into a round hole. Let them have their overpriced "health box" if that's all they want and let the game division go back to focusing on actual gamers. 

Interesting article, but I think it's not so bad Nintendo will do something as desperate as completely reimagining the Wii U as a health and wellness product. Like that would work, anyway. Casual gamers buy consoles once every ten years, so they're likely quite happy with their Wii Fit and will be for years to come.

Let me venture my own thesis. The Wii U was destined to do poorly it's first two years on the market.

The Wii U tried to be a hard core console, or at least harder core than the Wii. The problem was, aside from the cute name and the gamepad, most gamers like that were probably going to wait for a Sony or Microsoft console, anyway, and would only buy the Wii U if both were hideous flops. It would have helped if they had launched with more games around launch, but for 80% of the target market, an early sale was impossible.

And of course, Sony didn't drop the ball, so the Wii U couldn't have sold well until summer 2014.

Thing is, the Wii U does fill a valid niche in most living rooms because of the second screen. About 6 months after the competitors have done their hardware and the hype has cooled off is the perfect time to advertise the Wii U as a SECOND console, for people who already have a main console and could use some second screen support. Might need a firmware update for that, but still entirely doable.

And like I've said elsewhere, I think an ad campaign like that is the perfect excuse to ask Sony to borrow Legend of Dragoon.

If X, Zelda, and an ad campaign like that all do nothing by Summer 2015, THEN panic and pull the plug. You've supported the console for a reasonable run with most of your major titles and it has failed to take into a niche in the market.

Yep, that strategy, to offer something different from the others (and obviously that users liked), was the biggest HW reason of Wii success, and it worked because it served well the SW, making a new kind of gameplay possible, easy and comfortable, and affordable too (expensive motion control wands already existed for PC, but they were niche or for research purposes). The dumbest things in the article are actually two: suggesting to split the user base with a tabletless version (a smaller and cheaper to build gamepad could be a good solution instead) and the resurrection of Vitality Sensor, that at least in its current form, pinching a fingertip, would be a pain in the arse for both gaming and fitness (but those sensors are currently so cheap that once finding the correct form factor and part of the body to apply it on, it will be simple and not expensive to include as standard equipment in future products, if fitting to their market strategies, so there's just an ergonomics problem to solve).

.............again. The QoL shit is a side thing they are developing. That is going to be separate from their video game console products. Iwata said this. This is not their "future". It's just one of many avenues they're exploring, such as more licensing, to create more revenue for the company, to satisfy their shareholders. Which is the sad truth when it comes to taking your company public.

It's all pure speculation. Nothing here is grounded in fact (aside from the obvious), and I'm not really sure why he thinks that QoL will be their next "big" thing, because if won't.

With MK8, Smash, X and more coming from Nintendo this year for the U, it's pretty clear they have no intentions of abandoning it anytime soon. Maybe we will see a successor next year at E3, to be released in 2016, making the Wii U last a year less than would be ideal. But there's no way Nintendo are simply going to "abandon" the system, because that just doesn't make sense.

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-Smeags

Flawed argument, and highly selective. Sure, there are some parallels, but Iwata's briefing on the QOL was different to the announcement of the DS. The DS was another videogame console, but represented a step away from the GameBoy brand. QOL represents the first time in more than thirty years that Nintendo have launched a new business venture, designed to increase revenue streams so that the videogame business isn't Nintendo's only source of income.

Further more, in the same briefing cited by the article, Iwata commented that in the long-term, the QOL business was intended to strengthen the videogame business. Iwata also outlined the future of Nintendo's videogame business, with a Network orientated platform accessed via home consoles and portables that would share OS features, for ease of cross-platform development. Iwata has a vision for the future of videogaming at Nintendo, and this is ignored in the article in order to reach a hit-worthy conclusion. Just more sub-standard reporting, really.

The PS4 isn't selling better than what it already does because of limited production. I am willing to bet it will sell over 100 million units lifetime. Sure many people play only on smartphones and tablets but they never were console gamers in the first place. PC gamers however are hardcore and I think its expansion is as good for gaming as the expansion of console gaming. 8th gen consoles overall will sell less than 7th gen consoles because most of the casual Wii crowd have left console gaming. However the hardcore PS3/360 gamers are here to stay. In fact many people are migrating from tablets and smartphones to consoles and discovering the incredible variety and quality of AAA console games. So I think console gaming might actually expand this generation.