Simple really wii was a fad like pogs,yoyos,and loom bands. Like all fads its now forgotten no one wants to play wii anymore and because Nintendo marketed wiiu as a wii accessory and people still think it is one. My boy is 6 and non of his school friends know what his wii u is. And that is why it is selling bad because kids don't even know it exists

One thing I find pretty interesting is that Pre-Wii/DS, the handhelds have grown at close to the same rate as the consoles have dropped.

NES-61 million, Game & Watch-43 million

SNES-49 million, Gameboy (Apr 89-Mar 96)-54 million

N64-33 million, Gameboy (Apr 96-Mar 03)-64 million

GC-22 million, Gameboy Advance-81 million

Each generation sold roughly 100 million, perhaps this is simply a coincidence or maybe it shows that as console gaming became more complex, people started to move onto handhelds which still predominately offered smaller/simpler, pick up and play style games which have historically been Nintendo's biggest selling games.

That is interesting. Did Nintendo's audience migrate to their handhelds. Or was it just the market itself continually growing? Or is it that the majority of Nintendo users had their system purchased for them by a parent, and handheld was a more suitable choice as it didn't take up the TV and allowed kids to be occupied whilst out of the house too?

I certainly think accessibility has been a key factor in the Wii's success and it will no doubt be something they are very seriously looking at again now. The more accessible their software is, the better it seems to sell. Which is why 2D Mario sold so well vs the much more complex 3D based ones.

They marketed to the same audience as the Wii which died out toward the end of its life cycle, moving to smartphones. They gave it a bad name and caused undue confusion at its launch, same happened to the 3DS which suffered early in its life. 3DS sales now do not erase what it went through and they took several steps to alleviate that problem. They lost 3rd party support due to its hardware choice and level of power, essentially losing out to stronger and more developer friendly competition. They did not have strong titles at launch and the new development time windows for Nintendo making HD games for the first time threw them off and created software droughts.

Trends are dictated by teenagers + most teenagers have questionable intelligence = Current gaming situation. Simple.

Jack of all trades... master of none is falling short, disaster at all of them sounds better, add bad marketing and a ''transition'' time for its parent, imagine you're saving for a new house WHILE going through rough times and your wife tells you she's pregnant... you got it; Some of the best games of the gen, like always, like the N64 and Gcube, but it didn't worked for them, nor it did for Wii U, also would help if nintendo realized they are competing with other companies that are going mmm, i don't know, after the same market as them!! casuals are not gonna cut it, not now

I think Wii U is one of, if not the best console Nintendo have done to date.,It pains me to see it selling so badly. Nintendo have made so many mistakes which have contributed to the Wii U downfall, which is a shame because the Wii U is a quality product with quality games that doesn't deserve to fail as hard as it is.

People still believe that the weak hardware is the problem? my god. How many big 3rd party titles from november 2013 till now are available for last gen consoles?
Nintendo releasing a console in the same power level of the ps4 and x1 would work so well, just like when they released the gamecube

Two reasons:
- kids & casual players are fickle and have fled to gaming on smart phones and tablets.
- Nintendo did a poor job trying to appeal to the Playstation/Xbox market. They were able to attract some third party support at the beginning, but they weren't able to offer any real intensive for Playstation & Xbox gamers to purchase third party games on the WiiU.

The majority of people buying the WiiU are core Nintendo fans.

-Nintendo doesn't have many hardcore fans left, when you look at Gen over Gen, they've sold less and less. The amount of hardcore Nintendo fans that bought the Wii is between what the Gamecube sold and what the Wii U is selling.

- People are tired of gimmicks, they just want to sit down and play a game. It's the reason Kinect 2 also failed.

- People are tired of weak hardware, especially with PS360 specs after 10 years, the WIi U is very close to those systems in terms of power, this in turn also leads to fewer 3rd party games becuz the system isn't powerful enough

- The name: people didn't know whether it was a new system or an addon for the Wii