They (Nintendo) must be banking on that "Quality Of Life" to prolong the life of the Wii U. Honestly, if they added a few more features to the Wii U...I believe it could sustain a longer console life than expected.

Damage control.

Just make sure smash is solid on every front including online play.

Depends. If they can turn sales around to at least GameCube levels and get the machine profitable, they could go five years. If not, they'll run a replacement by 2016 (2016 is DEFINITELY the year that the 3DS successor will land, and such a successor will likely be capable of outputting Wii U-level graphics at handheld resolution)

Just don't see it. I look at Gamecube, a system with bad sales but a great library aimed at core gamers, and support dropped after 4~ years. I look at Wii, huge audience yet support dropped after 4 years.

WiiU has neither a huge audience or the backing of core/gamers/nintendo gamers it had with GC and Wii, so why support it for ages? (Not that I think they will.)

Think it's perfectly acceptable for them to move all their devs onto new hardware after the fall of 2015 to 2016.

If Reggie says Wii U has a very long life ahead of it, they're going to announce a new console in the next week. That's what happened with the 3DS when they said they won't ever release an XL. One week later they announce the XL.

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Wii-U-Memory-Bandwidth-GPU-More-Powerful-Than-We-Thought-62437.html