Heindsight is 20/20, but I thought the Wii U strategy was pretty good. Launch with NSMBU (one of your biggest franchises) which is relatively easy and quick to produce and Nintendoland to demo the system. Publish some 3rd party games like NinjaGaiden3 and so on to make sure there are some options for consumers. Then give your more technically challenging titles like 3DMario, Retrogame, Zelda and so on the time they need. Fall 2013 is 3 years since the last console 3D Mario, so the game should be good to go in time to battle the launch of other systems. The strategy seemed to be working well through Christmas as WiiU had solid sales for the 1st launching platform. The whole thing only tanked in Jan-Feb. Part of the problem is the delays of Pikmin and Rayman.
Where I see some goofs on Nintendo's part is in Nintendoland an in marketing. Nintendoland is a stupid name, and the game just doesn't have the instant appeal of WiiSports. The one mini-game in the collection that does it is the ninjastar game. That has very polished, simple, hi-def visuals and looks really neat to see someone playing it. They should have made a cool "WiiPlay" sort of collection of games like that, and given a much better name.
On the marketing side I can say at least in North America, they need to fire their agency. The ads are terrible. Dorky. They need ads like the iPad ads, which make you think if you pick one up you'll be composing music or creating paintings. It's like you NEED one to be modern. Either that or something totally edgy and different.
That said, I think Nintendo walked into a bit of a no-win situation against PS360. I still think it was wise to launch, but it was a bit of a difficult situation to try to win. Cheaper systems with WAY more games is hard to compete against.
