I believe Nintendo will sell every unit shipped by the end of 2013.

To put it in perspective, the Wii sold roughly 19.5m by the end of 2007 according to VGChartz numbers, and 3DS sold 16m in its first year with only one holiday season under its belt.  And much like the Wii, I believe that WiiU will be limited only by how many units Nintendo can ship to retailers.  With production ramped up a bit throughout 2013, I expect WiiU will amass an install base of at least 18m by the end of 2013 despite the competition.

Thoughts?

Well i don't have any mystic powers and don't ask me if i know something that most people don't but i'm sure Wii U numbers will impress everyone. I say 19.894.366 units sold by March 2nd week.

I doubt it will do quite as well as that. Maybe 15 million.

I don't see it doing as well as the wii.

I agree that it likely wont match the high console sales achieved by the Wii but with (in my opinion) a better game line-up for core gamers it could achieve a much higher attach rate for video games than the Wii did.

And still it's important to remember that it doesn't need to sell as many console's as the Wii to be a success

It's definitely a possibility, because the one thing you gotta remember is that the gaming industry's userbase has grown considerably since the beginning of this gen. Wii was selling like crazy from holiday '06 right on through '08, but today between Wii,360 and PS3 there are more than 220 million current gen consoles out there, which completely dwarfs the totals of all previous generations.

So in theory the Wii U wouldn't even have to completely sell out every single shipment like the Wii did in its first year to top it, because there's millions more gamers out there today than there were just 5 years ago.

I dunno... even if it manages outstanding Holiday sales of 3 mil globally, it would still have to sell more units in its first full year than the 360 or PS3 sold in their peak years. It COULD happen, as it did with Wii, but it would be very impressive.

Mind you, no matter how well it sells, it will be "a disappointment" and Nintendo will be doomed. Suppose it DOES sell 18 mil -- as you pointed out, Wii sold 1.5 mil more than that. So Wii U will be "not as big a success as Wii" and not very impressive compared to its predecessor. If Wii U sells 20 mil in that time period, that's only about 500k more than the Wii sold in the same period, which won't "represent enough growth from last generation" and will be viewed as a failure. If it sells 25 mil, people won't be impressed because the DS did better than that 3 years in a row. And so on.

I think it is going to take Nintendo releasing some very big exclusives this first year to make it happen. Most people have a PS3/360 to accompany their Wii, so third party support is not going to be much of an incentive with the minor leap over current gen.

Personally, I don't see any consoles dominating next gen, and I don't think it is smart to try and do so. Nintendo just needs to make sure and take the time to make great 1st party games, and assure a profitable platform. Competition is going to expand greatly next gen, and making money will be the most important thing.

I agree.

NSMB-U and Monster Hunter will keep the Wii-U sales high and I'm sure Nintendo will have some big first party titles sprinkled throughout the year.

Possible.

I wonder what will the xmas 2013 big title.