even if it fails it will still be around, they always make money no matter how many consoles they sell.

I am sure they are hoping for lots of money though lol.

Iwata gets fired. This will happen with the next quarter of disappointing results, since he already screwed up 3DS and caused the first losses in company history.

Business side of Nintendo takes over (Iwata is a former developer). They make more of what sells and on a yearly treadmill. More NSMB, more Wii Sports/Fit, more Pokemon, more casual type games. All of the games the devs currently don't 'want' to be made get made. e.g. main console Pokemon.

Future hardware doesn't contain expensive new tech like 3D or Tablet or even like Motion Control used to be, until those things become commodity.

We see DLC, online subscriptions, resale restriction, and the other things that third parties do to increase margin without regard for customer reaction.

It is still way to early to make any big predictions about long term sales performance of the Wii U, but it is fairly safe to say that the Wii U will not be a "failure" in the way you're talking about ...

In the United States the Wii U is selling at 88% of the rate of the Wii, 140% of the rate of the XBox 360, and 275% of the rate of the PS3 after 2 weeks; in Europe we will have to wait for a few weeks to see whether the low sales were lack of supply or demand; and we have yet to see sales numbers from Japan.

In the coming weeks, I suspect we're going to see the Wii U sell at a rate that is halfway between the PS3/XBox 360 and the Wii which can hardly be called "failure" territory; and (in many ways) that is because the Wii U falls somewhere between those strategies. The Wii U is more expensive than the Wii was, with a less exciting controller, greater support from third party publishers, an earlier release date, and (potentially) less of a graphical disadvantage over Sony/Microsoft's next generation platforms.

I agree with Kowenicki, but will add that it won't fail.

If the Wii U is a failure with the numbers it's pulling than what does that make the Xbox 360? Granted, the gaming market expanded, so the sales should be stronger, but in a tough economy I don't think or wouldn't expect Nintendo to be selling a million units per week.

I don't think the Wii U will be #1 as the Wii was. If Sony doesn't collapse, I think the Gen8 market will be pretty close in units sold.between all three companies. Unless one of them does something so spectacularly right that they control the market.

Wait, what. Is Wii U failing with numbers?? Did anyone genuinely think that Wii U could do as well as the Wii? :s

I am going to say that Wii U will take time to gain momentum, like the 3DS. NEED MOAR GAMES (esp 3D mario + zelda) for massive sales!!

It can only fail if Nintendo sees it as a failure. This is fully dependant on Nintendo's expectations of the system.

Can we please just wait? Is that so difficult? Why does everything need to happen at once? Third parties have not yet commented on how they think the games performed themselves for crying out loud.

It's official...360 & PS3 failed because they didn't sell as many units as the Wii did....

He never said that... LOL. He said not selling like Wii ISN't a failure.

I for once agree with kowenicki.

I'm not going to make any predictions about how the market will look until Sony and Microsoft show their systems and announce their prices ...

With how Sony and Microsoft responded to the Wii in the last generation I wouldn't be surprised if they were also going to try to make a system that appeals to both "Core" and "Casual" gamers which could be successful or alienate both groups. If you simply add a casual strategy onto their previous generation strategy, you end up with systems that will be $500 or $600 at launch; and if they take a more accessable strategy to appeal to both they may have difficulties differentiating their system from Nintendo's.

Essentially, while I'm beating on a dead-horse to some extent, Sony and Microsoft face a similar challenge that Sony faced with the PS-Vita. They have to figure out a way to position their systems in a way that it is still accessible to the broder market (read: inexpensive and easy to use) while still producing something that excites the hard-core market (read: powerful and usually expensive hardware) and still meet their business needs (for Sony this means not going broke).