hypothetically, what reaction would you have if the next xbox and next playstation did not have a serious hardware gap with the wii u?

what are your expectations out of the next xbox and next playstation? what reaction would you have if those were not met?

Wii U is doomed to a life of mediocrity at this rate. It will sell ok and just be meh.

Once the other next gen consoles come out people will ignore it even more unless Nintendo figures out their target market. It isn't as inovative as the Wii or as core as the Gamecube, it's just meh.

I like this. I hope they are successful for the sake of the industry.. lol Where would we be without the Nintendo?

Well I feel the Wii U will sell a good 40-50M consoles so whilst it isn't doomed I don't feel it is going to be an outrageous success. So yeah, another N64 style console.

Hmm, not doomed, because it's only been out a month in the holiday season so we don't know how legs will stand up. In addition, the 3DS had a rocky start, but is now a world beater, so never count Nintendo out.

I swear I've written something like this 20 times this week. This is even worse than the Vita launch on a console that was doomed!

 I was talking about the aforemententioned nintendo consoles (and I was mainly referring to n64, not gamecube) as being successful in terms of software sales. In the n64 era, the userbase was much lower than that of the competition, no denying that, but n64s 1st and 2nd party games sold quite well regardless, as nintendo had attracted a smaller but more dedicated following... several titles selling between 5-10 million which was good for the day. Given that the video game industry is really about selling software (those clunky machines we hook up to our tv's are really just a platform to help accomplish this goal) it has to be said the n64 was a success. I'm not suggesting it was the once and future console to rule them all, but it was far from a failure finacially speaking and did make money for nintendo.

Got the figures to hand?

The PS1 still outsold the N64 over 3 to 1. Saying the user base was much lower isn't viable - the PS1 has sold more then the Wii. If you want to hail the N64 as a success, then what will it take for a console not to be a success?

Indeed the sudden surge in WiiU doom threads is astonishing (without me even making one).

But look, Nintendo already used many trump cards : low price, 2D mario, Monster Hunter, exclusives (ZombiU, Bayo2, NG3RE), party game, new controls and yet they weren't capable of creating a dynamic during the busiest time of the year. Now that holidays have ended and that Nintendo's main target audience has left the shopping malls, sales will only worsen. And WiiU has little margin for improvement as third parties seem to leave it out of their plans beyond spring 2013.

Dream Cast, XBox 360 and other consoles launched first in their generation  but failed to win their console sales war. Launching first does not guarantee commercial success.

Lots of consumers are awaiting for PS4 and the Next XBox arrive to see how they compare in comparison to Only die hard fans buy systems at launch or when there are no competition on the market. ?The XBox 360 only managed a mere 5.5 million in its first year without 7th generation competition and it was outsold by the PS2 by around 4 to 1 in its first year.

Eh. I dunno if the Wii U will be a success or failure. Frankly I can't begin to care. It has nothing to offer me, thus failure or success has little impact on me other than the possibility of limiting resources to mediums I do care about. I say mediums rather than games or consoles because at this point it is not only the genre (RPG mostly) that I care about but also the input method of said genre. I refute wholeheartedly the complete bullshit that is motion control and any said RPG that uses such is plebeian crap such that I can but barely even acknowledged its existence. So, my position is that if others like it fine, I just hope that these games that I like are created on consoles that I can at least use _traditional_ controls.

That is all.