Nintendo has more than just one issue effecting why they aren't a bigger deal within the video games market.
Personally I will be picking up a Wii U eventually, probably when Starfox releases (hopefully later this year), but hardware performance is only part of their issue.
The main problem is that Nintendo doesn't target the 3rd party audience with their games, they need new IPs for the market between casual and hardcore.
They lack titles like Uncharted or Gears, GT or Forza to get those gamers interested in their platform.
They don't have a comparable online network and they don't seem to do in-game voice chat for those gamers.
I can understand protecting younger gamers, but a built in age rating system and only allowing age appropriate people to use Voice chat would prevent any problems from happening.
If Nintendo had capitalized on their early release of Wii U, with a more powerful system, that had desirable games targeted at a bigger audience than their core customers, with a quality online network for multiplayer they could have had the market too themselves.
It mainly comes down to the games, they have to be made for the audience that buys 3rd party, Nintendo could still make the Mario, Kart, Smash, Pikmin, so on and they would likely end up selling even more of those titles because some 3rd party gamers would probably be tempted back into trying them out, not to forget that those games would look far better graphically because Nintendo has put more powerful technology inside of the box and that would only appeal to more people.
Personally I hope NX is a family of systems, with one of it's platforms being a powerful games console because Nintendo could very well put themselves back into poll position and an Apple like approach to the video games business would make them flexible to react to the next generation of consoles from their competitors coming into the market.
That kind of an approach may also end up being interesting to 3rd parties, provided they ask them what level of specs and kind of architecture they want, along with providing good developer support to external publishers.
Nintendo needs to deal with all of their issues based on what the market wants, not what they think people should have, otherwise this is just going to continue on into the future for Nintendo.
