I've actually sat down with friends of mine who were incredibly enthusiastic about the Wii 5-6 years ago and explained to them the concept behind the Wii U and everything about off-TV play and how it's a completely new console and they're still not that enthused by the concept.
It's just not that interesting of an idea, especially in the US, where the median household has 3 television sets. The video game console has co-existed with TV programming for 30 years now, if one person is playing a game while the other person wants to watch a TV program, in most households that person will simply just go to a different TV set in the house. It's not a big deal.
And you know the hoopla over this being the first Nintendo HD console ... well don't you kinda want to experience that on a 50-inch+ big screen set? The idea of playing the games on a fairly low quality SD resolution 5-inch screen (a retina display it ain't) kinda defeats much of the purpose of the hardware bump in the first place.
