I thought it would do about 40m at most after playing with it at E3 2011. There was no reason to believe something so much less intuitive than Wii, with higher break even costs for publishers was going to be a mass market success. All the things that helped Wii (economics, intuitive design, marketing) were not apparent with the Wii U. The relative success in Japan (1.7m in Japan is like 5m in the US) implies it could have been more than it is, even within the reality of how it was designed with a couple of different decisions.
It's probably still possible for Wii U to have an extended streak at some point where it sells 50k-100k a week globally, but that's still less than 6m in a year, even if that 75k / week pace sustained for 12 months. Wii did 6m in it's best month.
People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.
When there are more laws, there are more criminals.
- Lao Tzu
