I don't think Wii U will sell 5.5m units by march, but judging by it's sales right now it'll end up between 4-5m, not too bad actually...

Good job on the OP chunkz!

GCN had Smash at launch and that didn't turn out too well for them in the long run.  However, Mario Kart is another story. Nintendo Land and NSMBU are good enough launch games in my book.  Catering towards "hardcore crowd" = suicide for Nintendo. Catering towards everyone = golden.

I voted for maybe because I believe it will probably be a little off.  They just need to drop a bomb next holiday next season. If they dropped Mario Kart next fall then that would be devastating.

I'd imagine closer to 4.7mil, broken down something like:

US-2mil
JP-1.5mil
EU-1.2mil

Just speculating, really. But it's a quarter of the way to the US target, and with a 3rd week WW around 500k+ (I'd imagine) it should be able to hold on to the Wii this first year. It's January onwards where the fight begins.

I don't believe comparisons to the HD consoles are a good metric for judging how well the Wii U is selling. It's well known that the HD consoles had relatively terrible launches. They didn't reach mass market price until 2-3 years after launch and didn't peak until their 5th & 6th years. On the other hand, the Wii peaked in it's 2nd year and afterwards dropped off considerably. If the WiiU has a similar launch-heavy life, then it's launch is of much greater importance than the HD consoles. It's launch has to be considerably greater than the HD consoles for success. If not, it needs to have HD console-like legs towards the end, and I don't know if that's going to happen.

It isn't at mass market price though like you said.  That would be 250.

I always thought $299 was considered mass market price.

Still though, the PS360 launches had weak launches and strong legs. Will the Wii U have a similar life? If not, then it's launch is going to be much more important. It's going to NEED to launch considerably better than the PS3 and 360's.

The Wii U is $100 more and, like the PS360, it is going to be a bit slow to manufacture at first. That is what is holding it back right now - supply. Also, the wii didn't drop off until year 5. It sold like hot cakes for its first 4 years. When PS360 became cheaper and HD TV's became widespread, the wii began to seem low-tech. Also, everyone already had one.

Nintendoland and NSMBU are nice, but not enough to get the Nintendo faithful on board... and you can't deny that Nintendo needs those.

You're right about catering towards everyone, that's why I picked Mario Kart. Install base would grow rapidly, giving 3rd parties an incentive to decide in favor of WiiU projects. Nintendo cannot afford a slow first year - 3rd parties are in "wait & see" mode again, when are they supposed to start working on their big WiiU games? 

They need to save MarioKart to build up some hype a year or two from now. NSMB is almost as big a title and will carry it till E3 when we see something exciting.