So Miyamoto recently did a huge interview with NPR. One of the questions was about if the Wii U's price was the reason it hasn't sold well. Here's his response:

"So I don’t think it’s just price, because if the system is appealing enough, people will buy it even if the price is a little bit high. I think with Wii U, our challenge was that perhaps people didn’t understand the system. But also I think that we had a system that’s very unique — and, particularly with video game systems, typically it takes the game system a while to boot up. And we thought that with a tablet-type functionality connected to the system, you could have the rapid boot-up of tablet-type functionality, you could have the convenience of having that touch control with you there on the couch while you’re playing on a device that’s connected to the TV, and it would be a very unique system that could introduce some unique styles of play.

I think unfortunately what ended up happening was that tablets themselves appeared in the marketplace and evolved very, very rapidly, and unfortunately the Wii U system launched at a time where the uniqueness of those features were perhaps not as strong as they were when we had first begun developing them. So what I think is unique about Nintendo is we’re constantly trying to do unique and different things. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they’re not as big of a hit as we would like to hope. After Wii U, we’re hoping that next time it will be a very big hit."

Really interesting stuff if you ask me. Basically he confirmed that the GamePad did not appeal to anyone because tablets evolved so much from 2010-2012. I'm actually impressed that he gave such a blunt answer and didn't just give usual PR nonsense. What do you guys think of this answer?

definitely one of the reasons.

Game droughts, and no 3rd party are another part.

But im glad hes honest the tablet was a fail, its just plain bad.

I feel sorry for him personally. For a legendary game designed such as Miyamoto-san, even he needs to appease the crowd with what unique features the console has. For the Wii U, differentiating itself from the Wii wasn't an easy task; rolling off of the Wii's success and poor marketing even more difficult. I hope NX will be Nintendo's return to prominence, but we all will have to see.

Good interview.

Though it doesn't excuse the fact they could have done revisions to the WiiU Gamepad itself that could have addressed those problems.

I would guess that's the effort they're putting behind NX now though.

It seems that Nintendo of Japan are coming to grips with issues the Wii U has and the company in general. Hopefully they will be addressed.

Now if Reggie and Nintendo of America can start to come to terms with it. Though I think NoA is generally out of the loop in any and all executive decisions and Reggie is more the damage control guy. He can't talk about the NX, because outside of knowing it was the new home console I don't think he knows anything about it. He pretty much HAD to say Iwata was not giving an apology for E3 because he doesn't have the answers to how Nintendo is going to handle the resolution of not having another terrible E3.

So the idea behinde it was you could use your gamepad for stuff,... while the Wii U was in standby mode booting up.
And it failed as a concept because others started makeing cheap tablets? O_o'

Im kinda not buying that answear. The part about it failing because other tablets where made mean time..... and "stuff" to do while the consol is booting up? Jeez just work on getting the thing to boot up faster instead.

Atleast he knows. Hopefully Iwata and Reggie know too.

How can Nintendo know what to do when they are soooo stubborn and don't exactly know why Wii U has failed?!

Yeah the GamePad concept was definitely too little, too late. It could've been wildly successful just a couple years prior.

Even though that's only one of many, many reasons why it failed.