You obviously knew what I meant. Even then, your logic is contradicting. Just as the Wii was a fad, the top-selling games were ALSO a fad. Notice how 90% of the Wii games you mentioned had "Wii" in the title, a part of the brand recogniztion. When the likes of Wii Sports and Wii Fit had their iteration on the Wii U, they failed. FAD intensifies.

Doesn't mean the Wii U would've still failed as miserably as it did with Pokemon, Animal Crossing, Zelda...you know? Games with established fanbases? Pokemon never sold well on the Wii simply because it didn't get a proper game on the Wii. Animal Crossing sold decently enough to warrant the title of being a system seller. Historically the series has set records. Zelda? Always been the critic's sweetheart. Didn't sell on the Wii based on it being overshadowed with the casual audience it attracted, who weren't gamers.

It would be pretty ignorant to claim that Pokemon wouldn't sell on the Wii U if it got a traditional game. Just like Minecraft, there are plenty of Pokemon exclusive fans, who would buy a Wii U just to play it.

Actually I don't think Pokemon/Animal Crossing would've somehow doubled Wii U's sales or something. Would it have helped? Sure. Would it suddenly have made Wii U a success? No. 

Making a Wii without the hit mini-game craze to drive hardware adoption is like having a strip club ... with fat strippers and hoping the restaurant part of your bar is going to bail you out if you can just get the hamburger's on the menu to taste great. People don't go to a strip club for the lunch/dinner menu. The associaiton is obviously tied to something else, "Wii" as an idea is something tied centrally to the idea of mini-game-a-thons that your fat aunt can join in and play. 

When the masses got sick of motion based mini-games, Wii and anything associated with Wii was screwed. 

Name=brand (close enough in my eyes)

I understand what you mean, but I dont view it as so black and white, all or nothing. And those Wii party U, Wii fit U are a prime example of confusing the customers. They also highlight one important thing, Nintendo didnt try to do anything new and interesting (at least apart from nintendo land), they didnt try to create a new fad, but instead tried to ride the old ones. They could have simplyfied nintendoland and focused on asymmetric gameplay and so on and made that the new thing. Now it was too complex and tried too much.

New wii sports equivalent (not wii sports 2)and wii 2 name could have made it succesfull :/ or simply launching it with a great Zelda game.

The Wii U had its own thing (gamepad,asymmetric gameplay etc.) that could have been nice enough to gather some interest and it would not have been "waggle with grandma" again.

But yeah I think that one huge mistake and wrong aproach to things overshadow the wide array smaller mistakes and problems that kept on piling. At least they didnt name Mario kart 8 as Mario kart Wii U :P

50/50 I will say. For me Switch is not expensive at all, because u get 2 console forms for 350$. Handheld+home console bundled. Like Wii U 2 + 4DS in one.

Also, the handheld form has no competition + it is the most powerful handheld,these are the pros that overshadows the Wii U.

Games ? So far it's all about Wii U ports. 

If 3DS games arrive on Switch, the situation will change.

Underpowered as a home console, unfortunately.

The rest is the same as the Wii U. It's 2017, not 2013, that is the biggest problem that plagued Nintendo since ever.2013;s consoles have better solution than Nin 2017's console and that is the real fact.

One more thing - I will add "better 3rd party support than Wii U " for Switch already.

you definitely got a good point

while I believe continuing the Wii brand was the right thing to do, they did it all wrong, focused too much on replacing the gold Wii selling point - the Wii-remote - with a huge useless controller, instead of investing on improving the Wii-remote and nunchuck accuracy and features, this way not even people who still love party games liked it

not many people were willing to pay that price for the low-appeal controller, with the hidden option of paying even more for another controller or using the loved but 6-year old controllers...

this caused low sales which is why 3rd parties left shortly, and Nintendo giving up too soon

still, the WiiU is a great console, has a serious quality over quantity library by now, which unfortunately took over 5 years to built

1. Disgustingly bad name; I mean really? The first time I heard them proudly announce it I was like, WTF is this for real?

2. Terrible marketing (if at all).

3. No games, or more correctly not providing the system with games people actually wanted. At a point where 2D mario was everywhere and saturated, we got 2. Then we got a sequel to Mario 3D Land. Almost no 3rd party support didn't help either.

4. Weak hardware. Switch is not that powerful either, but it can be justified on its portability capabilities, as evident by software sales.

5. Most important by far, TERRIBLE CONCEPT AND DESIGN. As a product designer myself, it baffles me how they seemingly got no user feedback AT ALL. 5 minutes with a proper person would speak volumes about the usefulness of that Fischer-Price controller. Even Nintendo themselves could not explain the concept to people in presentations and such. A MESS.

Third party support is important, but it's not a defining factor.  Those problems affected PS3/360 like you said, and that's why they flopped for 3 years or so, but since they had third parties and both started releasing more important first party titles, they started growing. But make no mistake, PS3 still ended being the worst selling PS despite being on the market for 11 years.

Sorry, but the Wii brand was not anywhere close to dead in 2012. The Wii sold 500,000 units on Black Friday in 2011, despite there being practically no games other than Zelda all year. And the Wii was outselling the Wii U during much of 2013 despite Nintendo trying to push the latter. Wii was still a hit with consumers in the 2010s. The Wii U's problems are not because of issues with the Wii brand. They are because the average consumer didn't know what it was and those that had heard of it were confused.

Would a Wii 2 have sold 100 million units like the Wii? Probably not. But it would have still sold well and the lack of the gamepad would have allowed Nintendo to make the system more powerful to begin with.

It was decling by large degrees before 2012. 

The thing with fads is there is a decline though things will look ok, usually preceeding a very catastrophic bubble burst. You see this pattern in many fad like crazes ... see pop bands like Backstreet Boys, you usually see a decline in album to album sales and then suddenly after one album they can't sell for shit any more. 

Games like Zelda never really sold the Wii anyway ... Mario & Sonic Olympics sold the same as Twilight Princess on the Wii, lol. It was casual fare and Wii was still getting plenty of those titles like 18 Just Dance games a year, Zumba Fitness, Wii Party, Mario Party, uDraw, etc. etc. etc. 

There should not have been a decline at all just because Nintendo wasn't releasing like Metroid Prime 4 for Wii or something. 

We see the same thing with Kinect too ... Kinect was red hot for MS even through 2011, 2012 you see some troubling signs for it, by 2013 the craze is dead. 

I think a Wii 2 maybe would've sold like 25-28 million units ... better than the Wii U sure, but not a huge success. When people got sick of mini-game-a-thons, the whole Wii concept becomes pretty bankrupt. 

Three things. The bad name + bad marketing + the 2013 sotfware drought. The Wii U name is a bad name, the bad marketing and that retarded E3 2011 reveal ended up confusing the people, and then there was the drought. No one wants to buy a console without games, many people didn't even know that the Wii U was a new console and there was no third party support, etc etc.

The good part of this Wii U mess is that Nintendo learned their lession. The Switch reveal was good and showed the concept clearly and objectively, the marketing is fine, without family friendly console garbage, and right now, there's no software droughts like the Wii U.