No, that's not a fact. If we talk about the USA specifically, this year VGC has been off by 30-50% on several occasions.

As for your idea of abandoning ship, that basically equates bowing out of the home console market. Then what? Third party, handheld only or a home console+handheld hybrid to send the handheld business into oblivion too?

Let's say by next March they've shipped 9m units LTD.

The Wii U is obviously a failure at that point and it's clear that the PS4 will pass it eventually, and the One possibly too. The token support from third parties will be gone before too long as well.

Why do I say this? Because a best case scenario doesn't change anything either. So what should Nintendo do?

Games that are already in full development will obviously be completed and released as planned. The home console business will be put into survival mode, meaning that drastic price cuts are out of the question, but $50 in the fall of every year is still feasible. At least for 2014 and 2015, because once it's $199 with a bundled game, price isn't really an issue anymore. At that point people are either interested or they aren't.

As for games development, games that demand huge teams won't be greenlit anymore (although the Zelda team isn't capable of finishing two games in one generation anyway). Instead the focus will be put on reasonably sized teams putting out quality titles. There's absolutely no point in investing into shiny graphics when the Wii U won't be able to match the PS4 and One anyway, and people who want Nintendo games don't care much about graphics either. There will be increased focus on the digital business, finally exploiting the immense back catalogue. This means an account system that allows people to carry over their digital games from one Nintendo console to the next, and everything else that works as incentive to make people spend more on digital games. For example, the one-size-fits-all pricing approach gets canned; not all NES games will cost $5, but only the best ones; same goes for other systems that are part of Virtual Console. Nintendo already has sales data from the Wii Virtual Console, so for many games they should already know if they need to be offered cheaper.

Do you realize what I am getting at? The Wii U having worse margins on hardware than the GC won't make a difference for financials, because the Wii U has a digital business (where almost the entire price a game sells for amounts to profit) while the GC had not. You don't abandon the ship, you change the course of the ship. You make important decisions that should have a positive impact on your next systems. You don't deny people Virtual Console games, you embrace them. You tear down all artificial barriers and make GB/GBC/GBA games available on the home console as well. You make pro-consumer decisions instead of all those stupid pro-industry decisions that led to the Wii U disaster. You grow your games library at a low cost, but still make it increasingly more appealing.

And all the while you are doing that, you begin to plan for the next generation and build strong launch games for an affordable system that launches in time for the holidays of 2017. What the big third party publishers demand won't matter one bit, because Nintendo can be successful without them. Nintendo needs to build a console that consumers want to buy (like the Wii) instead of a console that developers might want to develop for (like the Wii U). Also, it doesn't matter what Sony and Microsoft are doing at that point (2017). Since the industry doesn't want Nintendo, Nintendo is free to do what's best for them and best for their customers. Specs comparisons, what will the big third party publishers do, those are questions that have no relevance. Nintendo's success is not measured by what other companies do and say, but by what Nintendo's bottom line shows.

1) Should do and will do are obviously two different things. Even if Nintendo doesn't change their VC pricing, performing some or all of the other things would still be huge improvement over the current state of things.

2) 2017 will be mostly empty for the Wii U, just like the GC's 2006. A 2016 launch for N7 would cut the Wii U too short with only really three years worth of games, if N7 is supposed to have a strong start. Plus 2016 could be the launch year of their next handheld, it's just going to make things too difficult by launching a new handheld and a new home console in one and the same year.

3) Zelda U won't be out in early 2014. We'll be lucky if it comes out in 2014 at all. One more reason why N7 is better suited for 2017, because otherwise it will feel like ages before it gets its Zelda game.

4) You just want to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Nintendo doesn't need GameCube 3.0. If Nintendo sells their hardware at a profit, sells boatloads of their own software and creates new IPs on a regular basis, then their business isn't going to be on a road that will inevitably lead off of a cliff like you suggest. You say Nintendo needs those big third party games, even though you have the proof right in front of your eyes. The Wii U already had more of those big third party games in one year than the Wii had in all of its lifetime, yet it's the Wii U that isn't selling. You need to separate personal desire from your analysis to make your analysis worth a damn. Nintendo only needs core third party support, because you are a miser who doesn't want to buy a second console or a better PC. That's how you arrive at a ridiculous conclusion.

5) And I'll continue to say that that is hogwash. The more effort Nintendo puts into getting there, the lower their sales will be. That's because these things come at a trade-off where the price of the hardware increases. I don't even need to address media capabilities, because third parties alone already require a $400 box to even consider if they might want to develop for it.

6) Except that the 3DS doesn't have all that. It has Nintendo games, of course. But it only has some Japanese third party support and its media capabilities... heck, why do I even humor you on this? Nobody gives a damn, if the 3DS can do something besides playing video games. Hence why the 2DS was created, to remove all the unnecessary trash and focus on the only thing that matters: Play great video games at a great price.

7) You do realize that the Wii also had almost no third party support and wasn't far above the sixth generation consoles in terms of processing power? There were some delays of Nintendo games on the Wii U, but that alone doesn't explain the difference in sales performance between the two Nintendo consoles. What you call an anomaly, I call audience expanding games. New IPs that reach out to new consumers. That's what's causing growth for Nintendo, not tired third party core franchises that people can play on other systems too. The Wii U lacks audience expanding games that go beyond Nintendo's core. Nintendo Land was a new IP, but it has Nintendo's core attached to it everywhere you look. Wii Sports and Wii Fit didn't, they were blank slates. It's not that they sold despite of that, but rather because of that.

8) Seriously? Media capabilities and third party support would have easily doubled Wii U sales up until now? You are telling me that people would buy a Nintendo console for non-gaming and games they can play on at least two other systems? And you are telling me that there are more of those people than there are people who buy a Nintendo console to play Nintendo games? You know, that's the point where even you should realize that your Nintendo core + third parties + media capabilities argument has jumped the shark.

My premise is sound. A Nintendo that keeps hardware and software prices under control while introducing new IPs on a regular basis will experience growth in both, revenue and profits. And when I say new IPs, I don't mean something like "another game that is like Zelda" like so many people claim they want. Let Zelda offer Zelda's experience and create something that isn't already there. That's how a company can keep growing.

We'll see soon enough if the 2DS fails. Retailers in the UK offered the 2DS for 10 pounds less than normal and the system topped the weekly UK hardware charts (internal GfK data) immediately. I don't think it will share the GB Micro's fate which had no substantial advantages over the GBA SP.

The Wii didn't die in 2009. Well, it showed decline initially, but it shot back up when Nintendo released Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit Plus and NSMB Wii in the second half of the year. Coincidently, during the period of decline (first half of the year) Nintendo had only released Punch Out!! and the NA-exclusive flop Excitebots, so your recollection of events doesn't hold up. The market didn't change, the basic logic that software sells hardware still holds true. This was further emphasized in the later years by all those comments that Nintendo hardware sales had become more seasonal which really just came down to Nintendo stuffing the holiday quarter with releases while leaving the rest of the year mostly barren. Lastly, your line of logic that "that market" switched from Wii Sports to Angry Birds and never looked back is simply disgusting.

Your Wii U analysis is hilarious. How can you not notice the glaring contradiction in your words? Here's the rundown:

1) Wii U was equipped to cater to the core and the massmarket.
2) Wii U lost third party support, because it lacked the processing power that third parties wanted.
3) Wii U failed to sell to the massmarket, because the price was too high.

If you fix point 2, then point 3 becomes a bigger problem. If you fix point 3, then point 2 becomes a bigger problem. Therefore, point 1 has to be flat out wrong. How could you not comprehend that while you were writing it?

Last point, how come that you conclude I am talking about an N64/GC-like console when I made it clear that Nintendo has to create audience expanding IPs? The N64 and GC lineups were full of sequels, spinoffs and new IPs that were derived from already existing IPs. There was nothing like Wii Sports or Wii Fit in there. If you read and comprehended my previous post, then your conclusion should have been that I am suggesting that Nintendo needs to make another Wii. I have to wonder if you are flat out trolling at this point.