Back when the Wii U was first announced I was expecting it to reach a bare minimum of 80mil units sold. After the PS4/X1 reveals & initial release my expectation went to 50mil. But the fact this may be its last year before its successor and not even hitting 15 million?! Me from a few years ago would have been VERY surprised

So much this. TS2 was an amazing game. That, along with Eternal Darkness made that kiddie Celda game forgettable. =)

Pretty awful for both consoles, downright embarrassing for the Wii U. Deserves more and less at the same time (more for its game library, less for the awful way Nintendo handled its marketing and release).

Wait, so Ryng does this show that majority of the GCs lead comes from the US?

Awful numbers

Yes. USA was the bigger market for GC, indeed over 50% of sales coming from the US, while USA is only 40% of Wii U sales.

In Europe and Japan they are close, but GC is still head.

Wow, didn't know it was this behind of GameCube. Looks like Wii U will end up selling around 15m... to think when it launched I expected it to sell around 50m (and some friends thought I was crazy).

Few things to keep in mind.

Gamecube launched after the successful PS2 and had competition from the newly launched Xbox as well.
Wii U launched before both PS4 and XB1 were on the market, but off the back of a successful Wii. Wii U lost a lot of third party support early on before PS4/XB1 even.
Gamecube lost a lot of third party support after a couple or years or so.
Gamecube launched at $199 and was $99 after just 23 months (Hence the boost in sales then)
Wii U launched at $299, and outside of a couple of promotional offers, has never been less than that.

Here is a look at Nintendo Home Console Hardware & Software Sales from NES to Wii U.

The overwhelming majority! I thought that this was well-known! Reason for that, might be the boost  by the big price drops of gc in 2002 and 2003, they had a great effect in the usa( but then it faced a steep drop, which means that it simply sold fast, the 60% of gc lt sales were in these two years of the price slash)... Wii u hasn't got any... And probably won't get any, so we might never  see how much brave price cuts, would raise wii u sales. ( Although, at this moment, with the replacement not being away, perhaps is futile)

If there was time( I mean without nx on the way) , wii u  could pass gc, in Japan, (maybe it's  possible if wii u isn't being be replaced this year) of course owing to what  happened after splatoon and super mario maker.

As for Europe, wii u should be doing better in the Uk ( the biggest european market) for the gap to be smaller, In France and Germany (smaller than uk but  a lot bigger for the wii u, especially, France) they are almost on par.

By some data comparisons, I have surmised that wii u might have outsold gc in what we call rest of the world/ america excluding the USA (or at least outshipped it).

 Anyway, Usa represents nearly the 80% of the global gap.

By the way, something similar occurs in the usa about 3ds vs gba but thanks to japan where it kills gba, the discrepancy is not very big as it would be.