My point is, if the Wii is already over-saturated at 80 million consoles. then it's well on the way towards death.  I know the  PS2 had more appeal than the Wii did (In large part because of constant streams of quality first party, third party, exclusive, non-exclusive games).   

Where it gets interesting is that Project Cafe in many ways should reflect SNES or the Gamecube model without the appearance of being a copy-cat towards the HD competitors (MS, Sony).  Nintendo needs to keep it's own style however with the power to run all the third party applications and have truly impressive immersive Nintendo only games as well as a robust online system. 

Sure that is enough to call it a gimmick.  The intent of motion controls was to attract attention or increase appeal in the Nintendo product initially even if it didn't necessarily improve gameplay.  It's first goal was to attract attention and increase appeal.   The very definition of a gimmick.   That's not an insult to Nintendo either.

It's PR talk, this isn't reflective of anything other than spreading mis-information against their competitors.  It happens on a daily basis at just about every company.  I think fanboys of all shades and colors are obtuse, competition-bashing.  Sony has their fanboys, as does Microsoft , as does Nintendo.  You will run into all three types on this site alone. 

We certainly hear it from Microsoft, (Possibly even more than Sony) .  

If we don't hear it from Nintendo, it's because Nintendo has publicly come out and stated they aren't even in competition with Sony or Microsoft.  They aren't trying to compete according to them. Which is why Nintendo consoles get a bad rap from some people.   They haven't been trying to cater to the entire games market in years, just their own niche world.  Which is why Project Cafe will almost assuredly fall short of what many of us hope it would be.

"Most of the Wii systems in my friends houses haven't been touched or turned on in months."

Well most of my friends play it ten times more than any other system.

See, I can play the unfounded anecdote game.

As a Wii only owner who just recently bought a high-end PC I would really love to see some more unique, quality titles come to the system. Unfortunately, it looks like even Nintendo is more or less ready to drop support and move on to their next home console. Heck, at this point I'd expect them to move over any projects they have been developing internally to the Cafe even if the Wii could handle them, simply in order to give the new platform more appeal. (see: Steel Diver)

What really annoys me is all the talk coming from Reggie and Iwata about how software is Nintendo's main focus. If I understand the current situation correctly that just isn't the case, or else we'd be seeing a renaissance of software releases now from Nintendo, as this is their biggest home-console audience EVER. On the contrary, it seems like they feel there are no games worth being made on the platform any more.

A few months ago Iwata was saying "there are still many ideas that can be fulfilled on Wii", and suddenly at the recent investor relations conference he was quoted saying "Nintendo has announced a new console because developers feel they are no longer able to deliver surprises on Wii". It's either one or the other, which just means the first statement was regular BS that comes before a new platform is announced in order to not lose sales.

I get this kind of feeling Nintendo were caught off-guard with the success of the Wii and never intended it to be this big. Maybe if they did they would have designed the platform differently, as well as invested more in their online network and services, not to mention better third party relations. What's funny is some of the moves made by Nintendo to support the console have been very good, such as partnering with Capcom on MH Tri or partnering with SE on DQX, but these aren't enough to generate the hype needed for other publishers to make their own efforts to grow the userbase on the console. The only company with any tenacity in this respect would be Activision with the FPS genre and they should be commended for that. Ubisoft as well with the Dance genre, but I still don't like them very much.

I love the Wii but still feel sad about its untapped potential with regards to diversity of genres and new experiences it could have brought. To me personally, up until 2010 I felt like most games I was playing were too similar to GC games from a design point of view. Some of the original experiences brought to the console last year really opened my eyes and showed me how much potential Wii had, if only it would be tapped. Games like Endless Ocean 2, Red Steel 2, Trauma Team, Other M, Crystal Bearers, Sky Crawlers, Zack & Wiki, Fragile Dreams, Silent Hill and others felt like trail blazers to me and deserved to see their ideas expanded on with bigger sequels. I felt like it had taken time for the industry to understand Wii and that now we would see some great games for it, similarly to how DS took 2-3 years to really get a fantastic library going. The announcement of Cafe just cut my dream short, unfortunately. I was hoping Motion Plus would finally open the door for the promised Wii experience but now it just looks like a missed opportunity. Even Skyward Sword is not going to be enough this late in the game since third parties won't try to copy the Zelda formula on Wii no matter how successful it is, not with a new platform arriving so soon after it releases.

It's possible things would have looked less grim if the economy hadn't taken such a hit this gen as publishers would have been more willing to accept the Wii's philosophy of trying new things and finding new audiences. Instead they were mainly concerned with surviving the financial crisis as best they could by deviating as little as possible from what has been proven to work. Or in other words, they were too worried about the market shrinking on them to care about trying to expand it at a time like this. To me it feels like this line of thinking has finally started to affect Nintendo as well, which is why they're moving on to the next platform.

The ultimate irony for me is that had they not decided to end this gen of consoles, it probably could have continued for another 2-3 years as far as MS and Sony are concerned, which would have given us gamers the longer hardware cycles we always wanted. Everybody knows the best games on a platform are usually released in its heyday, and that the quality of releases tends to improve across the board, too. Now once E3 is over everyone will be pre-occupied with next gen, including MS and SONY. Thus the cycle of new hardware - bringing with it the usual 2 years of mediocre early games - will begin again... And all this from a company who supposedly cares more about software than hardware..

Phew! guess I needed to vent

edit: added another paragraph with some examples to back my point.

i read an earlier post as to why the ps2 sold as much as it did. before the ps2 slim the ps2 had to be replaced 2-3 times per owner roughly it had a failure rate higher then the 360 but cause of the games it sold like crazy and replaced and replaced. i figure at least 50% of ps2's were replacement systems which are also counted towards sales. not to mention xbox had a similar problem with faulty hardware. there was a study g4 did well after the tech tv merge by morgan webb that showed how the ps2 only had to take a small shot or hit or even a kick to break. took much more to break a xbox but the thing was bulky and was dropped easily. but gamecube took a full beating and still worked. so given the fact the ps2 was easily broken and had to be replaced  alot would tell me that people would turn around and buy a new ps2 to replace the old one that broke.  i think the ps2 if it stood a beating or even a small kick or a controller hitting it then the replacements would have lowered the total numbers by easily 40-50 % putting it about 70-80 million units.

Personally i think the WII not only won this gen but it also is in more homes then what the ps2 was which is why it was selling more then what the ps2 did in its first 4-5 years. I think project cafe is gonna be a huge success not only cause its the perfect time to get into the HD market but there are now HDTV's just about in every home now then they were 5 years ago. Which is another reason why i think the sales of the wii is decreasing cause of the HD movement. with a year head start i think project cafe will sell lots and bring over not only some of the current wii owners but add some hardcore players as well. no one is going to do what the ps2 did in sells cause no one is gonna make that fragile of a system wiht good games on it again. the thing i like is the whole HDMI port thing which is greatly needed. graphic wise i think most of the wii games will be able to "upgrade" without having to make completely new games.

"Personally i think the WII not only won this gen but it also is in more homes then what the ps2 was which is why it was selling more then what the ps2 did in its first 4-5 years. I think project cafe is gonna be a huge success not only cause its the perfect time to get into the HD market but there are now HDTV's just about in every home now then they were 5 years ago. Which is another reason why i think the sales of the wii is decreasing cause of the HD movement. with a year head start i think project cafe will sell lots and bring over not only some of the current wii owners but add some hardcore players as well. no one is going to do what the ps2 did in sells cause no one is gonna make that fragile of a system wiht good games on it again. the thing i like is the whole HDMI port thing which is greatly needed. graphic wise i think most of the wii games will be able to "upgrade" without having to make completely new games."

That assumed the mainstream prefers content in HD, but the fact that streaming video caught on faster than blu-ray shows that merely making the pictures prettier is not a mainstream want.

Even the other systems don't have hits based on what has the best graphics.