According to VGChartz numbers, Vita with 14.3mil units sold, sold 61.7mil software.
WiiU with 13.3mil units sold, sold 81.5mil software.

WiiU, with 1mill less instalbase sold 20mil more software. And since software is what really brings money to a compagny and not hardware, WiiU less of a failure than Vita.

Despite both being failures, WiiU has been more relevant and had successes software wise.

Also three other things to consider.

• -Vita has a 1year headstart on the market.
• -Portable consoles, that are more affordable usualy sell more than more expensive home consoles, so the fact that Vita outsold WiiU with a 1year headstart by only 1mil is really really bad.
• -Finaly WiiU has three competitors (PC,PS4,Xone) while Vita only has one.

Well the Gamecube did have the best attach rate of any Nintendo console to date, including the NES and Wii.  The Gamecube was just shy of matching the N64's software sales (209M GC vs 225M N64) while the GC sold 11 Million less consoles than the N64.

For the WiiU you can't discount that the majority of software sold on the console is 1st party.  Just by looking at the top ten software sellers that Nintendo lists for the WiiU and adding them up you can see that they make up almost 50% of WiiU's total software sales.  And that's just the top ten, Nintendo's other WiiU releases probably add up too.

Looking at physical sales of Vita games and thinking that is where the majority of the consoles software sales is at is pretty far from correct though, it would be like using VGchartz numbers to determine PC sales really, considering how a great number of Vita titles in the past couple of years only come to the west in digital form and just the ease of getting games for the system from the psn store rather than hoping your local gamestop bothers to look up Vita offerings I think you'll find that Digital Vita sales are far far greater than the physical sales recorded on VGchartz.

As for the Vita having just one competitor... I think smart phones would like a word with you, also tablets including specific gaming ones like the Shield would certainly like a word.

I think in terms of similar types of gaming experiences, quality/pedigree of games, price points of games, and distribution, in those ways the 3DS and Vita are more direct competitors than the others you mentioned.

Because it's a handheld and handhelds are judged against other handhelds. When you compare it to what Nintendo has done since Gameboy, it's a failure. Even compared to PSP, it fails.

Software releases? :p

Just throwing these out there.

Vita and Wii U pretty much launched at the same price. (in the UK at least, Vita was £229.99 on it's own. Wii U launched at £249.99 but included internal storage. So 8gb with either system was the same price. Bearing in mind people are prepared to pay more for home consoles than handhelds (as the 3DS demonstrated with it's also abysmal sales until a hefty early price drop) I wouldn't really say Vita had an advantage on price.

Vita has loads of competitors while Wii U only has 3 (iPhones, Androids, Tablets, 3DS etc.) ;)

Most Vita software was digital only, and we have no real tracking for that. Though anecdotally developers did tend to state that Vita digital sales were pretty strong. So I'm not going to say you're wrong on software sales. But just as VGC could well have heavily overtracked Vita in general. It could also be significantly understating software sales. Unless Sony ever confirmed anything which at this point I highly doubt, this can never be used as a fact by either Nintendo or Sony fans.

Overall, as I said earlier, clearly both systems are failures in terms of what their manufacturers expected and hoped from them. But with well over 300 games owned for it, I can't say the Vita has failed me personally.

"It sold more than the worst selling console ever"

that... that is your argument...

yes, there are other consoles that tried, but lets just stop pretending like those matter

Actually a large library of games. They were originally ignored because they were also on PS3/PS4 rather than being niche. Niche stuff came when it became clear the niche stuff wasn't sticking.

As for rear touch pad. That doesn't stop it being a traditional style handheld. 99.9% of games didn't use it at all. Rising to 99.99% stripping out launch titles.

The thing is though the rear touchpad on the Vita can be largely ignored while the gamepad is the central thing to the Wii U. That one can't really be ignored in the same way.