Agreed. I think Nintendo has hit its stride with the 3DS so I'm not really worried about that. For the Wii U however I suspect Nintendo will hold its cards very close to its chest especially when it come to games like Metroid and Zelda that will likely sell Wii Us. Mario has alreay been released, so it's almost inevitable that something big, other than Mario, will be annoucned at E3 2013 for end of year. I read somewhere that Nintendo was planning a Zelda end of 2013 realease to compete with the launch of 720 and Netbox, but they scrapped that in favour of a 2014 release, which I think is wiser.

N64 was quite successful and profitable, it didn't beat the ps in terms of console sales but it had many 1st/2nd party games that sold in the multi millions...even the gamecube was profitable for nintendo to a degree, in that nintendo's games sold well for it, they didn't over manufacture the console, and it was cheap to produce. So, yeah, both consoles made money for nintendo even if they didn't dominate their respective generations. It's not always about the amount of consoles sold after all.

How exactly are you measuring success if you are not comparing rival console sales? Also are you considering net or gross profit? You seem to be ignoring R&D costs if you think selling a small volume of a console counts as success. You also seem to be setting the bar for success very low if you think that simply selling 20+ million consoles is a success when the opposition is selling x4 that number. 

Either way that Nintendo cycle picture is just a complete lie as neither the GC or N64 "printed money". 

No the Wii U is not doomed, it's way to early call it that at the moment, the generation has barely started and only 1 out of 3 consoles are out. lets re-assess this once the PS4 and 720 have been on the market for 1 year, then we will have a better picture of how things will go.

I will say this about the Wii U and Nintendo.

Nintendo have gone from being a leader in innovation with the Wii motion controls which at it's time did not exist, to being a follower with the Wii U tablet controller, in a time where tablets are popular and the choices abundant.

I understand that the Wii U tablet control is not a proper tablet, but most will see it as much, and this is the problem, because people who don't frequent forums nor are avid gamers in the know, will simply assume it's a tablet and in that mind set the default choice seems to be the Ipad. As popular as Nintendo is it can not compete with the mind share Apple has. Nintendo needs to do a hell of a job to educate it's target market otherwise they maybe in trouble.

I guess time will tell.

The fact that this is like the 4th Nintendo is doomed thread today shows what VGChartz is all about.

I'll make an observation here and share it with you, VG chartz forum community is a shadow of it's former self, and I've been here since day one. Threads like this keep this forum buzzing a little, otherwise it'll be dead....this forum is not like Neogaf which is always buzzing with life, so perhaps, rather than make comments like this, you just go with the flow and contribute to the forum. your choice what you do, but food for thought.

The WiiU is destined to fail, last gen technology trying to fool people into thinking it's new gen technology. PS4/720 wont even look over its shoulders as it leaves the WiiU in the dust.

Destiny is calling...This gen we will see Nintendo buckle like we have many times before.....They will survive but only because of the 3ds....Save this qoute because I will not be proven wrong.

That is so 2012. Wii U is Irrelevant!!!

Are you being serious or are you joking? I honestly can't tell...