Nintendo did an abysmal job marketing the system and distinguishing it from the Wii. A good and unique name itself would have added an extra 5m lt alone, I'm sure of it. Wii U always sounded like a special edition of the Wii or something.
And then there was the games drought the first year or so. Nothing before 3d World a full year into the lifecycle really looked appealing enough to warrant a new system purchase. They got it together by 2014, but by then the system's rep was pretty much shot in the public eye. While Switch technically hasn't had a strong exclusive software lineup either, since BotW and MK8 can both be played on Wii U, the install base for Wii U is so low it essentially makes them exclusive/new games to a lot of people buying a Switch. And they're both extremely appealing titles, unlike New Super Mario Bros U and Pikmin 3, which is all that was really selling the Wii U its first year. Not to mention the very appealing titles like Splatoon 2 and Odyssey we know are coming before the system turns 9 months old, along with the possibility of something else big they might be keeping secret till e3 for release this year.
Finally, the gamepad really did seem like a not fully realized concept. There was no real way to build much software around utilizing those two screens effectively, so therefore the main draw became being able to use it to play off the TV screen. But you couldn't even leave your living room and the signal would break. It really was like a prototype for the Switch's fully realized concept.
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