No one cares if your console only consumes 33 watts (especially when the controller sucks 20x more juice than a normal controller).
At the end of the day it's just a poorly conceived piece of hardware and very much out of step with what consumers and developers wanted for 2012. The controller isn't exciting people and power consumption in a console is about the 50th highest priority that a consumer has when choosing between consoles.
What's done is done now though, Nintendo has to best be able to salvage this mess starting now, and I hope they can do something with it, but they have really made it difficult on themselves. Nintendo fans have to come through and start supporting this thing.
Some of these freaking kids that got Wii as their first console need to stick around and not go running to GTA and "Calladooty!" now that they're a little older and trying to be cool. That's a challenge too ... the kid who was eight or nine when he got his Wii in 2006/2007 is 14-16 now and they are thumbing their nose at the Wii U. It's tough.