If the Wii U had been named the Wii 2/Nintendostation/Anything that would make it clear it was not a Wii add-on, and they had launched it at $250 with a game, and they had quadruple the third party games, and they had a decent marketing effort, etc.
It would have only helped so much, selling about 30 million consoles lifetime.
That is how bad the concept was.
Nintendo themselves never made much use of the gamepad, third party developers saw it as a mini map dump space.
And, only having one per console hampered anyone desiring to share the same experience with someone. (i.e the gamepad pad player would have to do the chores, seen as the lesser role while everyone else played the more fun role… or vice versa depending on the game.)
Wii U was destined to fail by design (or because of design rather), but it is what Nintendo needed to truly push them to create a home console and handheld console as a single device.
And they are better for it now, even if getting third party back is taking a bit of work (i.e. having arguably the absolute best 1st year lineup in console history).
