Is the Wii U a failure in concept or execution?

[Soundwave]

I think really though, a lot of the problems with the Wii U stem from the reasoning that it's likely designed for the Japanese market first, a market that doesn't want home consoles anymore (I don't think the PS4 will do great there either, part of the reason Sony is considering not launching there this year at all).

Why a tablet controller? Because off-TV play. Why off-TV play? Because in Japan people play handhelds as their primary game "console" even in the home. Most Japanese homes have fewer TVs than Western homes and "privacy" of playing on a game handheld is valued. So I think Nintendo's hope with Wii U was that it would "reclaim" the gaming-at-home concept to a console in Japan, while the 3DS could remain the on-to-go game machine.

Why 33 watts? Surely, AMD could have given Nintendo a much higher performance machine probably for not even much more money at all. Yes probably. But in Japan, especially in the post-earthquake/nuclear meltdown, I think Nintendo was concerned with power consumption on a home console. As a result I think they capped the console's hardware at just a bit above the PS3/360 level performance but opted to spend their R&D on making sure the system was power efficient.

The system being so small is another Japanese centric design choice. The Wii/Wii U make the Western NES look bulky by comparison. But the West has never had problems with larger consoles.

I think if Nintendo recoginized that home consoles in Japan are basically going the way of the dinosaur as handheld machines (and cell phones I suppose as well) can provide more robust gaming experiences today versus 10 years ago, then Wii U would've been better off.

Wii U would be selling better right now worldwide IMO if the above design choices were tailored more to the Western markets than Japan. But I think they made it for Japan first, hoping that in the West the success of the Wii brand + Mario + more third party ports would be enough to sell the machine over here.