Of course the Wii U is a success. It's called Cost of Capital, people.
The definition of success for a console is making money. In other words, did making the console make Nintendo more money than buying bonds, stock, or just putting the money in a bank would have, which is usually about 3-5%.
So the Wii U is a failure IF
(R&D + Production costs) *Require Rate of Return >= Wii U sales revenue.
Yeah. The Wii U is DEFINITELY a success from a business standard. It will easily best that figure.
This just goes to show how different hardware philosophies fail differently. A launch like this would have probably devastated Microsoft or Sony because their R&D, production, and inventory costs from launching are MUCH higher and they *must* have third party developers make games for their systems for them to ever recoup those losses. Third party software would have never come if PS4 or XB1 sales were as poor as the Wii U's is now. Nintendo has cheaper hardware, so they're nowhere near as far in the red as Sony and Microsoft will be at launch, and they have a lot of first party studios to push games for the Wii U with or without third party support.
But of course, fanboys aren't interested in required rate of return figures. They just look at sales and come to the wrong conclusions.
