That's mainly because neither system has anything of mass-market appeal FOR casuals. Historically, relatively casual titles with core appeal have always been the best-selling games of all-time. This generation is the first generation in history where that hasn't entirely held true, but it HAS held MOSTLY true, still.

And Wii Sports is one of the best and most innovative games of all time. The Wii-series cannot be knocked objectively. You may not like it but that doesn't eliminate any of its genius.

Well, not all consoles are created equal. Nintendo knows how to make money.
Loved by FEW, Severely misunderstood by MANY, but damn well respected by ALL

That's awesome you said Uncharted. On a side note The main reason I bought my Vita way back before it launched in America was Uncharted GA. Drake is why I wanted the game.

Anyway you were way too narrow in your reading. Positive associations exist with all parts of a game, not necessarily just the characters.

Would you buy a bad Uncharted, because it has Drake in it? Or even more interesting: would you buy a future Uncharted, if Drake is replaced with another character? Probably you would buy the game in this case too. Because the character is the least important part of the game - yes, you want a good designed character. But if a game-developer has created a great series, you expect that they give the next part of the series to a good dev-team. And that is the main point here. NIntendo could ruin the reputation of Mario games, with some bad titles. One may the fans forgive, but two or three bad titles would destroy the fanbase. People would no longer buy a new Mario-game, without looking first at ratings and stuff like that. Same with Zelda. Sonic is proof how you can destroy the trust of the fans.

So the main point with Nintendo isn't, that the games of them are the greatest. Some are really good, like Zelda Ocarina of Time. But the main point is, that Nintendo manages for their main series a baseline of quality. Not all games are excellent, but the titles in the main franchises so far are all at least good. That's what brings fans to buy the next Mario or Zelda, without thinking too much about it. They trust Nintendo, that the basic quality is there. If Nintendo ever will disappoint with a game of these main franchises, the sales of future titles will decrease.

That's the appeal of big series, you buy FF, Uncharted, GoW, Halo, Mario, Zelda, because you expect a basic quality.

GTA is proof that character is least important. The bastard keeps changing every game. It is essentially the same fomula and game style people like.

SUre people would be dissapointed if Drake suddenly died and his half brother or something took over. But at the end of the day I still would buy an Uncharted game.

Because the Wii didn't have Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Donkey Kong, Smash Bros, or Sin and Punishment? Because they didn't get Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, Call of Duty, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles? Because they didn't make games like Xenoblade, The Last Story, or Disaster?

What exactly did Nintendo "lose" in terms of core games relative to their previous generation?

Of course, idiot Sony and MS fanboys like to go "Nintendo focused on casuals this generation", but such people are full of it. It was third parties that decided to put more focus on so-called "casual" games on the Wii than normal. Nintendo aren't to blame for third-party stupidity, given that all evidence showed that proper third-party core games would have done very well on the system (as demonstrated by titles such as Monster Hunter Tri, Epic Mickey, Call of Duty 3, Resident Evil 4, the LEGO titles, the Star Wars games, and the Sonic games... oh, and Goldeneye 007).

And who said that Sony hasn't been given a pass for something? The only criticism of Sony I've heard is that they were too arrogant. Recall the "people will SAVE UP to buy our console" comment, the "if you can find a PS3 on shelves, I'll pay you double what it costs" comment, the "rumble is SO last-gen" comment, the "Wii is like a lollipop" comment (Oh shit, an owl), the "Microsoft's failure to launch globally is a mistake we would never make" comment (followed by an even-less-global launch of PS3), the "Xbox lacks longevity" comment. Some other things Sony has said... "PSP will elevate portable entertainment out of the handheld gaming ghetto, and Sony is the only company that can do it." "We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that [developers] want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?" "Unless things go really bad, there’s no way that at the end of a life cycle our competition is going to have a higher install base." "I’d like to think that we continue official leadership in this industry."

I think you get the point.

Other than that, have a look at their financial situations. Sony has squandered the money it made in the PS1 and PS2 eras, while Nintendo has been making money hand-over-fist. Sony is nearly bankrupt, and only just now have they decided to cut management's pay... Nintendo had their first ever annual loss, and even before that was confirmed, Iwata announced that he was immediately cutting his own pay dramatically, and that the rest of management were getting a pay cut - for a SINGLE year of loss when they've got massive amounts of money in the bank.

So it shouldn't surprise you when people nod appreciatively regarding Nintendo, while shaking their head at Sony. But as I said, it's not that they didn't get a pass, it's that they still need to learn what Nintendo learned back in the Gamecube era.

EDIT: And, of course, it continues - seeing the Wii U, Sony goes "Well, PS3 + Vita will be the better experience, because Vita has a processor, while the Upad won't". Really?

Yes, I think that almost all people that bought Wii, will also buy WiiU, but all Sony fans are expecting that Sony announces a PS4 "full of power", if Sony doesn't do that, they will fall down hard on next gen, they will lose hard, Microsoft will gain all hardcore public(and a good part of casual one with knect) and Nintendo will gain all casual public as they did with Wii.

And in the last two gens, the PS1 and PS had many times the number of games with aggregate review scores in the 9 to 10 range than Wii; however, if either console had only had 14 like the Wii, I'm sure Sony fans would have talked about how horrible the games lineup on the two consoles were rather than acting as if its 7 and 8 review score games and lower were much better than they really were, so Nintendo gets a free pass from its fans in regard to the overall dearth of quality games on the console which is even quite low when compared to the N64 and Gamecube. 

ughh OP you gave Nintendo fans a reason to troll Sony section even harder than they were already doing, your OP is bad this thread is bad and you should feel bad

Someone gotta look up "jealousy" in an urban dictionary and link that page to this post.

The vast majority of the 90+ games on Metacritic on the PS2 were multiplatform, while a rather small minority of them on the Wii are. None of those actually count. Critics were also score-happy for the first half of last decade. The greater percentage of games, as a whole, scored above 90. I don't think they were any better at all, though. Your argument, once again, is invalid.