A game console is expensive to launch which is why Nintendo is so conservative with the specifications because the risks are just too high, well conservative and asinine in wanting to put it into such a tiny box. This could be Nintendo's last home console because the console market itself might be a shadow of its former self in 8-10 years.

What does fairness have to do with the assets of two companies? Can you explain?

What the hell is this? Biggest bull**** I ever saw:

"... and made of glossy Nintendo plastic."
Thank god it's made of 'Nintendo-plastic'. That stuff's indestructible.

"But Nintendo’s interface is blatantly Japanese, and it lacks any and all sophistication."
Yes, damn them for being proud of their home country. Damn them for making such easy to use interfaces!

"Our black Wii U was coated in dust merely seconds after unboxing it."
I guess they should vacuum a little more often...

Besides the fact that them advertising the NES as a toy saved the gaming industry and you directly owe your continued gaming carreer to this fact, every console is a toy. Also @ bold:

Mmmm. And here I was thinking all their consoles have been praised to high heaven, their games are continuesly heralded as some of the best ever made, these games completely dominate the Top 20 highest selling games ever made and they as a company made more money off of it than all the others combined. Guess I was wrong then, dumb me!

Oh you mean like how Sony and Microsoft have been profiting giants this generation, yep so much profit in selling a mario game for $2, silly fools at Nintendo. Not sure how anyone can sell Nintendo should stop creating hardware just becuase he it doesn't suit their ideals of what a "next gen" console should be. They make and selling a product and gaina profit thats the base existence of any company.

It burns, actually.

If Wii U doesn't do well in 2013 and beyond, I could see it being the last "traditional" Nintendo console.

They may move on to a hybrid portable/tablet type of product next as others have mentioned.

like how gamecube didnt do well and how nintendo left the console business because they didnt make any money from it...? oh, wait...

They had a pretty incredible idea to succeed the GameCube though -- the Wiimote. Ideas like that don't come around all the time, which is evidenced by Wii U, they couldn't come up with a new idea as compelling as the Wiimote was for 2006 and are trying to sell the Wii U as a more conventional game platform. 

Personally too I think the age of the game console may be coming to an end, beyond the PS4/720, where else can you go? The graphical fidelity will eventually reach a point where most developers simply cannot afford to go higher (even the big Western studios), and I think the 720/PS4 take it there. 

So where else? Virtual reality?

I think the other thing in the next 4-5 years you are going to see a lot of are smart TVs with game capable chipsets built into them (looks like Samsung and Apple are already looking heavily into this), and also things like the ability of tablets and smartphones to wirelessly sync to the TV (the reverse of the Wii U concept). You get a Bluetooth wirelessly controller and its quite possible an iPad can drive the graphics on your TV with it. 

but they didnt know it would sell gang busters, now did they? and for all we know they might be working on the new wii right now. 

but do we really need better graphics all the time tho? what was so fantastic about wii and the ds was the way they played, not the graphics. thats where we will go after ps720, to find new ways to play games. and better ai oc!

Who says new ways to play neccessarily have to come from Nintendo? There are a lot of rumors that the next XBox will have some kind of projection based/higher end motion sensing technology to it. 

A.I. generally benefits from increased horse power too. 

There's no rule that says graphically-gimped hardware can be the only one that provides new control/interface experiences.