I wonder if part of the initial demand, especially with pre-orders, was heavily pushed by people intending to resell. Because of the Wii, the Wii U might have seen atypically large amounts of sales to people who wanted to turn around and re-sell right away. This would account for the low price on eBaby. I would love to know what percentage of the original shipment was purchased for this purpose.

I believe that consumers are onto these "resellers" which don't add any value to the package and are driven purely by greed.  The day after pre-orders opened up for the Wii U, I saw a listing on eBay for the basic set with a "Buy It Now" price of $1,100.  I wrote the guy and told him his price was a bit nuts as most others currently on eBay were in the $500-$600 range.  He seemed confident that he'd get his asking price, so I marked the item to watch it and it didn't sell.  Why people think that the hour it took for them to go to Game Stop and pre-order something is worth $800 I'll never get....it again boils down to greed.  If Nintendo had a first wave shipment of 400,000 and then there were gong to be no more until after Christmas, then I think you'd see these people getting more for the systems.  Thing is, they aren't that hard to find.  That is in part to the fact that it didn't get the buzz that the original Wii got and the price is higher. The Wii was sold out around me for the first three Christmas's which I've never seen anthing like that

When the PS3 was released, there were long line for them and people were trying to sell them for thousands on eBay and just a few short weeks later (before Christman) there were stacks of them in our local Best Buy and Game Stop stores just sitting there and they didn't sell out agin the rest of the year.  One month after the 3DS released in the USA, I saw them for retail on eBay and worse yet was a month after release of the Vita in the USA, I saw them selling for less than retail.  I think that most people now know it's stupid to pay these "resellers" highly inflated prices when the manufactures are still making more units.

In comparing the wii and wiiu resale value on eBay there are few things need to consider. First, how many were available of each up for bid and, second, at which date were the high bids for the wii sold (a few days before Christmas?) although consumer confidence is up I doubt it's as high now as it was back in '06 when people were buying houses they couldn't afford and spending credit like no tomorrow

The concept of motion constrols struck a chord with people.

It's hard to see now, but people really imgagined gaming fundementally changing. A new gaming world with lots of new genres born and immersive, fun gameplay.

And then Nintendo didn't deliver of course.

So true. The potential is still there though!!

Considering launch day/week had 400k sold and there was only a couple thousand on Ebay... I think not.

Relatively easy, the people thought it was a fun novelty gimmick and bought it to satisfy their urges to play games in a simple manner. The Wii U is trying to battle with the Xbox 360 and PS3 which are a different and more stable crowd. The Wii was a hot ticket mass market item that had massive casual appeal.

It was never a gimmick, it was a revolution of an idea. Peoples' minds were blown with the applications this had. Nobody in the mainstream called it a gimmick, nobody.

Maybe Nintendo "learn" their lesson with the Wii an decided to ship more units this time around. But maybe by doing so they over ship units and the demand is not as high as the Wii.