Am I the only one who thinks that starting a thread with "Am I the only one who" is just a way to draw attention to their thread. When asking this question to the Internet, the answer is always, No, you are not the only one. With billions of other people on the internet there is bound to be at least a couple thousand that agree with you.
@op - I'm not trying to criticize you specifically, I'm just hoping less people with start a thread leading with that phrase. For some reason it has started to bug me. Just had to get this out of the way.
Good job organizing your thoughts, here are my thoughts:
I don't think the WiiU will do as well as the Wii, but think it will do as good as, if not better than, the Game Cube. Here is why I think that.
a) Though many Wiis now occupy the bottom of a dusty box in a garage or attic Nintendo did rebuild it's brand with a huge audience over the last 6 years. They have built some new fans who will probably want the next system.
b) The WiiU will sell to the Nintendo faithful, who know that they have to get it to enjoy their favorite Nintendo games on a TV. (One example is me. Though I mainly game on my 360 and occasionally on the PS3, I still have a Wii for the Nintendo exclusives. Yes I am a Nintendo fanboy at heart, thought I don't get as much use out of my Wii as my other systems.)
c) Nintendo is a great marketing machine. They were able to push a system that wasn't near as powerful as Microsoft and Sony's and it sold mad numbers. They know how to make their system stand out and grab people. They were able to get millions of people to spend $300+ on a system and controllers just to play Wii Sports. Also look at how they were able to turn the 3DS around, no one thought it would do as well as it is now at any price. As Apple is to Phones, Nintendo is to Video games. They aren't the best, but they know the right way to market their product to keep people running to the stores.
d) The reason I don't think the WiiU will do as well as the Wii, is they waited too long. A lot of kids who were raised on the Wii have already moved on the the Xbox360, PS3 or to PC gaming. The game library didn't grow up with them. They may still want to play the Zeldas and Marios, but they also want the Call of Dutys and the Uncharteds, in terms of graphic and online play it simply wasn't there on the Wii. If the WiiU had come out a couple years ago, they may have retained a lot of these customers, since 3rd party devs are more than happy to port their games from one system to the next.
e) Nintendo only lost a small part of the casual market. Though the Kinect and Move have sold well, together they have not sold even close to half of what the Wii sold. Plus there are always new customers entering the casual market every day, children are born everyday.
Sorry if my thoughts run together, I didn't get much rest last night.
