It had more games released for it.

The members who are talking about the lower price of GC are completely right,I don't know why there are people who don't mention it!
Gc had two big price cuts in its first two years.199$->149$->99$ and thanks to them it sold fast 13m in these two 6m and 7m years(Imagine if it hadn't gotten these price cuts...)that's the 60% of its LT sales!

Then it fell in its third year and sold 4m,so it's interesting to see the third year of wii u vs gc's as the 4m aren't unsurpassable by wii u,also with a brave price cut in this year wii u could close considerably the gap with gc,
but I'm afraid of nintendo being reluctant to do price cuts,judging by some statements of Iwata...

The problem is the NA/USA,at this territory is the huge gap because in Europe and Japan wii u isn't very far from GC...

I voted Wii U marketing is much worse HOWEVER there's another major reason that isn't on there. At it's time, Gamecube was top quality. It had some of the best looking games on the market, its design and hardware was some of the most advanced on the market, and even though it was aimed at a much more family friendly audience then Xbox and Playstation 2, it was still up to date with tech.

Wii U on the other hand is far behind the Xbox One and Playstation 4 tech wise, which both of those are far behind gaming PC's and aren't the bleeding edge of tech the way their predecessors are. This means the Wii U's tech, while better then 360's and PS3's, is drastically far behind what modern standards are. I mean, heck, the system only has 8gbs and 32gbs of storage making it the worst storage situation of any of the systems this gen and worse then most 360's and PS3's last gen.

To add to that, they promoted the system as being hardcore and having good online features but the online is still severely lacking. Sure the Wii U's online is much MUCH better then Wii's but it still would have been considered worse then a launch 360's back in 2005. Yes, Wii U's online doesn't even have features that were made standards back in 2005...... it's 2015. I mean seriously, Nintendo has yet to have a proper account system where you buy your games digitally and have them indefinitely across all Nintendo devices.... which is absolutely horrible.

Don't even get me started with the fact we're STILL dealing with REGION LOCKING!!!!

Again, yes advertisement is a huge part. Nintendo's bad name choices and how they revealed the systems gimmick rather then the actual system combined with poor messaging screwed them over big time, which they still don't seem to care about bouncing back... BUT Nintendo choosing to go with the hardware they did and still not having proper online features are just inexcusable in 2015.

The other issue is they asked people to buy a system that's significantly weaker then what it should have been, didn't 'have the first party games it needed, has a much worse online service then anything out there at the time, and that they couldn't even properly message to folks for $350. Heck, even at $300, that's a steap price, especially now that most 3rd party publishers pulled out.

They NEED to fix these issues. Drop the price to $250 or less, start aggressively advertising, get publishers back on board, fix the online, come out with new models with more internal storage (no less then 100gbs), and hype up your big games.

Everyone has pointed out some great reasons for why it's not selling well, but I'd like to point out another, less quantitative one. At least in America, it's just simply "not cool" to be a fan of Nintendo or an owner of a Wii U. People here look at you like you're fucking 6 years old if you tell them that you "play Nintendo" (as they like to say it). And for a product to have that type of vibe surrounding it is, I'd say, extremely detrimental to overall sales.

its been like that for a long time even in the Wii years to a lesser extent

Entirely depends on the age group in question. Nearly every parent I know generally only considers Nintendo, ipad, or PC games for their young kids. Once a kid is old enough to start legitimately tell their parents what they want and get it, thats a different story. Even then Nintendo, Ipad, PC games are part of the mix of SONY and Microsoft.

It's generally in later years that people who buy consoles for themselves that Nintendo really starts to fall off. In these days where there are actually a huge swath of  gamers who are not young people or people /w children who soley decide what games to buy that you can get that an age demographic where Nintendo just doesn't fill the need that can't be found elsewhere.

Even then. I still fail to see why this is a huge problem for Nintendo. Take Amiibos' for example. This is a great product, that honestly could be much better but still works, that Nintendo is pushing. Kids are a great demographic, despite what I said above. If you target them well you can make bank despite not selling some abitrary large number to everyone else that other people expect or want.  Remember back in the GC era Nintendo sold less than others but still were a highly ROI company.

I've said in the past that Nintendo has basically passed me by and generally doesn't sell a single product that I want. That doesn't mean they can't succeed doing what they've always done. People need to stop trying to make Nintendo grow up with them. This was a hard lesson for me to learn. You either need to retain enough of your childhood love for Nintendo games or you need to pass the torch to your own children and move on.

This could be a valid point (if more people think like this) but as I see it, the 360 is still unrivaled in terms of online. Even the One lacks standards that the 360 had at launch and they are slowly adding them (no good party chat, no quick friends access, achievements not working properly until today, ...) with their monthly updates. All current consoles are kinda weak and not ahead of its time but way behind.

So based on that, Nintendo has added cross buy so they have some standards implemented but lack others, just like MS and Sony do. But that's the way brands work. As soon as a brand/company has a bad reputation in one out of 100 arguments it will keep it for years to come even if it's no longer true or shared with other companies.

If people "remember" a decent profit from the GC, I'd tell them that 90% of that profit was from the GBA.

OT: It probably helps to be 150$ cheaper, and that it had a better/more varied library.

It had worse from memory. I bought a PS2 just to fill the gaps.

8 months?  Maybe Sony's manufacturing costs had simply gone down that's not exactly a knee-jerk reaction.