It's pretty much set in stone the the WII U will be Nintendo's worst selling console but I thought it would be interesting to notice that every single console released after the Nes ( apart from the WII ) were at one point considered to be Nintendo's worst selling platform only to be outdone by the next Nintendo Home Console. Let's look at the facts:

Nes: 61.91 Million 

SNES: 49.10 Million ( - 12.81 Million )

N64: 32.93 Million ( -16.17 Million )

GameCube: 21.74 Million ( -11.91 Million )

WII: 101.52 Million ( +79.79 Million )

WII U: 9.54 Million ( -91.98 Million )

Hence if we had to plot all of these values in a bar chart ( as seen below ), we can see that ever since Nintendo entered the console business their sales have been going down in an almost perfect like Slop with the only exception being the exceptional console that is the WII.

So could this possibly mean that the NX ( If it's a home console ) has a chance to actually sell less than the WII U?

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=204883

The Wii U will sellest so littlest that the next one shall outsellest it.

In other words, I doubt Nintendo hasn't learned from at least SOME of the mistakes of the Wii U and will improve and sell more units than the Wii U.

First things first, they should not use the "Wii" name anymore. No Wii U 2, no Super Wii U, or anything related to Wii. Not even the Wii Sports games and Wii Party.
Second, they should use a decent controller that's not strange and unapealling. Just the Wii U Pro Controller and it's fantastic.
Third, marketing.
The recipe for non-failure.

Ahh, the infamous Nintendo cycle. The thing is that people is lookin at the wrong direction: It's not the consoles the ones that change, it's the competition: The NES had barely any competition, and it would have sold more in a healthier market (remember, the NES came after the crash). The SNES competed against the Sega Genesis in one of the biggest console wars of the industry, it lost a lot of people to Sega. The same happened with the N64. Both Nintendo and Sega fans switched alliances over to PS, and that trend continued with the GC. The Wii was a monumental success not only because of the casuals buying it in hordes, but because Nintendo's main competitor, up until that point, PS, had a ton of problems that gen, and their fans moved to the Wii and the 360. When the WiiU arrived, not only Nintendo made every mistake posible, but both the PS4 and the XBone offered a much more attractive option than the U.

Sure, Nintendo made a lot of mistakes, but their biggest weakness through the generations has been their inability to keep most of their userbase. But you have to consider that Sony and MS are two of the biggest corporations of the planet, with more resources than Nintendo: they can make their own hardware, have better distribution around the glove, have more money to share with 3rd parties...

I dont know about Wii Party, Wii Party U wasn't a major flop. If they dropped the Wii name I could see them keeping the Mii characters and making a Mii Party.

Ahh, the infamous Nintendo cycle. The thing is that people is lookin at the wrong direction: It's not the consoles the ones that change, it's the competition: The NES had barely any competition, and it would have sold more in a healthier market (remember, the NES came after the crash). The SNES competed against the Sega Genesis in one of the biggest console wars of the industry, it lost a lot of people to Sega. The same happened with the N64. Both Nintendo and Sega fans switched alliances over to PS, and that trend continued with the GC. The Wii was a monumental success not only because of the casuals buying it in hordes, but because Nintendo's main competitor, up until that point, PS, had a ton of problems that gen, and their fans moved to the Wii and the 360. When the WiiU arrived, not only Nintendo made every mistake posible, but both the PS4 and the XBone offered a much more attractive option than the U.

Sure, Nintendo made a lot of mistakes, but their biggest weakness through the generations has been their inability to keep most of their userbase. But you have to consider that Sony and MS are two of the biggest corporations of the planet, with more resources than Nintendo: they can make their own hardware, have better distribution around the glove, have more money to share with 3rd parties...

The NX will sell 1 billion consoles, playstation and xbox will be so pissed they leave the console market, nintendo buys disney and rules forever with amazing metroid games and zelda games .

The reason, imo, Nintendo's core consoles (Wii is not apart of this argument) have continued to dip is because they refused to compete directly. Instead of buying studios to make mature rated games like Sony, they rely on their own studios to make great, E for everyone games. Ever since the Genesis, companies have continued to capitalize on the mature audience. Nintendo, for the most part, has ignored it.

This trend will continue until either they're out of business, gamers decide they don't like mature, darker, adult originated games, or they acquire a bunch of studios and put some huge Uncharted like games on their console, coupled with third party support.

Those are the only three scenarios that I see possible. There is no fourth.

I think for the new console, Nintendo just needs to go with simplicity. I hope this console is a hybrid, not sure if it was confirmed that it was/wasn't already though. I doubt the NX will sell less than the Wii U since I'm betting Nintendo will be putting all their eggs into this basket(NX). I'm more curious to see the power behind this, the features(if it doesn't have voice chat its an immediate red flag to me) and exactly how third parties will react to this(waiting game?). This console to me, is a proof of concept for Nintendo to third parties.

Of course the NX has a chance to sell less than the Wii U - we don't need a graph to know that. If they release a toaster and call it the NX, it will sell less than Wii U. It all depends on how they play the game, and I think it would be fair to say that with N64, Gamecube and Wii U they very much misplayed it. They need to be bold and aggressive this time, like they were with the Wii.