In retrospect, would it have been better off if Nintendo continued to support Wii?

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Shadow1980 said:
No. The Wii was already in rapid decline well before the Wii U was released. In the U.S. it was already past its peak in 2009. Through the first three quarters of 2009 sales were down 22.% from the Q1-Q3 period of 2008. A price cut issued in September that year kept sales for the whole year from being down a lot (2009 was down only 5.7% from 2008), as it drove Q4 sales up 11.7% YoY to a whopping 5577k, the largest quarter for a single system ever in the U.S. In 2010 things were even worse. Sales for the year as a whole were down 26.3%. It dropped another 35.9% in 2011; sales that year were just over 4.5M, which while still a decent sum was down 52.7% from 2009 sales.

We saw a similar situation in Europe. According to VGC sales in 2011 were less than half of their 2008 peak, which is a pretty damn rapid drop. The situation was far worse in Japan, where the Wii peaked earlier and declined even faster. It sold 3.9M in 2007, by by 2009 it had dropped to 2M and by 2011 it had dropped to only 930k.

The launch of the Wii U in November 2012 helped to further accelerate decline in Wii sales, but it was obvious at this point that even without a replacement on the horizon the Wii was going to have terrible legs. The system never had the strong third-party support the PS2 did the previous generation, and even Nintendo was releasing increasingly fewer games for the system. Had they waited another year or two they might have squeezed another few million units out the door for the Wii, but they would have only briefly delayed what was already a rapid decline.

Whether anyone wants to acknowledge it or not, the console cycle is primarily a function of sales. Nintendo felt that in order to keep sales up they needed a replacement for the Wii. They tried to replicate the Wii's success with the Wii U but that system ended up being a total disappointment sales-wise. They tried to make the best of their situation, but now the Wii U is well past its own peak and in need of a replacement, hence the NX's impending launch (<9 now).

Basically you're just pointing out how fast Wii sales dropped after Nintendo stopped supporting it. Basically Wii sales died when Nintendo shifted focus on 3DS and started Wii U games development. Thing is, that Nintendo expected 3rd parties to pick up where Nintendo left, much like they did with NDS, but it didn't happen. If Nintendo had supported 3DS and Wii, they could have had better software output on both, handheld and home console side.

Even that you're correct with the generational change serving the purpose of selling much of the same for the same people, it totally ignores the fact that Nintendo is currently unable to develop the number of sequels to support the purpose of console cycle anyway.