Wii was a fad based trend in a lot of way, a lot of its audience didn't understand the concept of even iterating upon it like a traditional console (ie: someone releasing the Macarena 2 or Gangnan Style 2).
It would have failed even without the tablet screen IMO. Look at also Kinect was red hot for the XBox 360 and a few years later no one cared about Kinect on XBox One.
The other problem was when they started development on the system, probably a lot of the tablet stuff seemed novel, like being able to use it like a TV remote, off screen, check sports scores, play Netflix, make video calls, in the living room etc. but they likely didn't realize Apple was going to release the iPad which would become a massive success at around the same time and basically make the Wii U look like an also ran.
Then thirdly I guess they thought more mini-game collections (Nintendo Land, which is actually a pretty OK minigame collection as far as that goes) and more 2D Mario would sell the system, but after like 500 minigame titles on the Wii 1 and multiple 2D Mario games that looked similar (NSMB DS, NSMB Wii, NSMB2 3DS, NSMBU), the appeal of that had worn off.
In hindsight their better option would've been to just make a traditional game console successor to compete against PS4/XB1 and then released maybe a "remixed" cheap version of the Wii with HD support and more fitness oriented games and sell that for like $150 for casuals who wanted that.
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