Alternate History: Wii U as a standard 8th gen console

[h2ohno]

The system would sell at least Gamecube numbers, but the PS4 would still dominate it.

Without the gamepad, people would be far less confused as to what the system was and there wouldn't be that large contingent who thought it was just an add-on for the Wii. That alone would make things much better.

PS4-level power would ensure that 3rd parties support the system. If porting games that are already multiplatform is easy, then developers will have little reason not to do it. So even if Nintendo struggles with output at first, the console would likely avoid the dreaded drought of early 2013.

Abandoning the Wii's mass appeal strategy would badly hurt sales, and the 'core gamer' crowd would get the PS4 over Nintendo's offering no matter what. Most of Nintendo's sales would come from people jumping ship from Xbox.

The biggest question is how well Nintendo would be able to capitalize on the mistakes Microsoft made with the launch of the XB1 that handed Sony the generation before it even started. Depending on how Nintendo played their cards I could see the system selling as low as 25 million units and as high as 50 million, with the lower end being the more likely scenario.

A holiday 2013 launch with Super Mario 3d World but with early PS4-level graphics along with Wind Waker HD, a reworked Nintendoland, and Pikmin 3, together with 3rd-party games on-par with the PS4 versions would do great out of the gate but wouldn't have the same momentum the PS4 had. It wouldn't lose momentum the same way the actual Wii U did, or how the N64 did, but it would fall to a distant second very quickly under even the best possible circumstances. I doubt even Mario Kart 8 would be enough to have Nintendo keep pace with Sony for long. People just weren't going to abandon Sony even if PS4s were discovered to have a 50% of spontaneously combusting and burning their houses down.