Looking back at why the Wii U failed

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OlfinBedwere said:

The gamepad was a mistake, but had that been the only thing wrong with the system then developers would probably have just mirrored the TV's output to the gamepad screen and called it a day. Likewise, the whole kerfuffle about the console's name was something Nintendo had been through before with the 3DS; they'd turned it around there, and they could probably have done so with the Wii U.

No, the thing that really doomed the system was the hardware choices. I can't remember any other console from a major manufacturer where the hardware design was just so inexcusably bad on every conceivable level. The GameCube proved that developers would port to a Nintendo platform in cases where it was quick and easy to do so (at least until the storage space of its mini-DVDs became a limitation), but the fact that games originally developed for the 360 and PS3 often turned out worse on the Wii U was frankly a total joke.

The ports often are worse than the originals if done cheaply and there's no big power difference. That being said, the problem wasn't the hardware, but the software. Miiverse was constantly running in the background gobbling resources that had otherwise been in use for the games.