A handheld strategy requires a handheld price. $149-$199 from the start. I cannot see Nintendo being able to do that when they will have a controller that could easily retail for $99-$149 all by itself.

I can't stop you.  But I was also the odd ball out that predicted Wii would have a 20m first year when everyone thought it would fail.

However, my point is Nintendo diehard fans aren't as numerous as people on forums like this tend to think.  Core Nintendo series (Zelda, 3D Mario, Donkey Kong Country, Metroid, Star Fox, FZero, Kirby, Pikmin, Fire Emblem) tend to only sell 1-8m.    Brawl managed 10m on Wii.   Mario Kart, NSMB, sometimes Animal Crossing and Pokemon are really the only mega sellers and they have more cross appeal with casuals.  Otherwise Nintendo's big guns are casual titles: Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Nintendogs, Brain Age, etc.

Nintendo is launching WiiU with several titles to appeal to casuals: NSMBU, Wii Fit U, NintendoLand, Game and Wario.   Problems are:  People think WiiU is a new Wii controller.  The gamepad reintroduces everything the Wii eliminated (excess knobs and buttons, complexity, more focus on solidary play).  They just released a NSMB2 on 3DS, and NSMBWii wasn't that long ago.  NSMBU and Wii Fit U look far too similar to their Wii counterparts.  The gamepad doesn't seem to add anything really enticing to them.  So why pay $250-299 plus new versions of the same games?    NintendoLand is the best thing they've shown.   But I didn't see anything with that that will really make people take notice.    There's nothing revolutionary like touchscreen was for DS, motion for Wii or Kinect.   If this came out 6 years ago, it'd have been huge.   But we all own smartphones, ipods, tablets, 3DS, DS, Vita, etc. already.   It doesn't 'feel' new.   Asymetric gameplay.... That's a hard sell.  It's not an obvious plus.

Nintendo will have a hard time invigorating people's imagination with WiiU.

Regardless, Wii, Kinect, indeed even Apple have expanded the market and some of that must go to WiiU.   So add some percentage of the casual market onto the 20m Nintendo fanboys WiiU is sure to get and that's WiiU's likely lifetime sales.     Figure 30-60M    

Other factors:   Apple could enter and greatly disturb the home console market.  New tech could make Cloud gaming a mainstream reality a lot sooner than expected.    

I agree with a lot of what you say, but 30m as a possibility for WiiU still seems too low, IMHO.  Perhaps with some really bad game droughts or an exceedingly high price tag or something completely unforeseen happening.  Closer to your high end prediction, however, (45m-60m) I can believe, but I hope it does more.

I could believe $99 for the WiiU controller, maybe with added software, but more than that is highly unlikely.  Not a chance it'll retail for anywhere near $149, at least not without Nintendo adding new features.

And you think $99 is a good price for a glorified controller?  What does that say about the overrall price of the WiiU? It just does not fit at all with a handheld strategy. It's still the same old Nintendo console strategy.

Ah, your claim wasn't too unlikely to bein with. Now you added much ifs, that makes the risk even lower. Although I think the WiiU will not be the runaway success the Wii was, I also think the WiiU will have a baseline of sales. I already predicted at this point, it will have 50M lifetime min. (that was a little risky, I hope for a little price and NintendoLand pack-in, and I hope that Namcos launch-titles lead to better Nomco support over lifetime). So yes, 15M are possible at $299, especially as long the competition isn't on the market yet. Nah, too risky to bet at this conditions.

Doesn't say anything.

I'm a 'core' gamer, and of the 'core' Nintendo franchises I've only bought Zelda and 3D Mario this gen, I'm still going to buy Donkey Kong Country Returns so I'll count Donkey Kong too. I'm never interested in Kirby, Pikmin, Fire Emblem, or Metroid and the last time I bought Star Fox and F-Zero were on the N64.

My point is, there are more Nintendo-fans than the sales number of those franchises show. ;)

Even if the WiiU GamePad went for €/$99.00, the price of the console wouldn't be 'console price + $99'. Manufacturing the controller is probably not that expensive, because it doesn't really use any technology that is state of the art. Buying stand-alone accessories are always way more expensive for consumers than buying them bundled with something else (in this the console).

Case in point: Here in The Netherlands, the Circle Pad Pro for 3DS costs €20.00, but my bundled Resident Evil with Circle Pad Pro was only €10.00 more expansive than the stand-alone game. This means that the accessory was only half the prize.

considering a ps3  dual shock 3 controller in Australia is $78, i think $100 is not unreasonable. 

The WiiU is likely to launch at 250-300$, bundled with Nintendoland. The handheld strategy I was talking about refered to the games and HW user interface, not as much price.

The only thing in common with the handheld strategy in terms of price is mass market price. Ie, for a new home console, 250-300$ is very affordable. Not so much for a handheld.

So, using the handheld strategy for most other things and pricing the WiiU at 250-300$ is a winning formula. Worked for the Wii, will work for WiiU.

Plus, you don't need to buy a 2nd controller, and imho they are not expensive to manufacture. Nothing in it is anything special when Nintendo has been mass manufacturing handhelds for years, they will be able to optimise manufacturing of the controller in no time. If the 3DS with all its parts is breaking even at 150$, I see no problem in this controller breaking even at half the price. After all, it's a regular controller with a screen and some on-board logic. Nothing really expensive.

It doesn't really matter how much the controller costs to manufacture... it's still a controller. X360 controllers have nothing special in them at all and they RRP for £30/$50