Tell me...when did Nintendo first tug at your heart?

Read this to find out where Nintendo aimed with the Wii.

http://mynintendonews.com/2006/04/19/nintendos-new-target-audience/

Thats vague, I'll stick with Iwata and Miyamotos words (which are far more accurate when you look at sales), thanks. :)

If it still has "Wii" in the name, sales would pretty much be on par with what the Wii U is currently doing. The PC kills all sales that was previously gained through graphics enthusiasts, and the games (save for exclusives) would be the very same. If third party developers hesitate to port games to a console that is "on par" with the PS3/X360, imagine how badly they would resist developing a Nintendo exclusive port with better graphics. Heck, I think third party support would have been even worse than is it now.

Would it be a success? That's hard to tell. With increasing development costs they would need much higher sales for each title than what they had for the Gamecube. Would the console attract people who have previously never owned a Nintendo console? I would say yes, but very few.

This is not even the conversation we are having, I believe that fans were left out in the dust with the Wii, and that they do make some casual focused games, but ultimately they make a lot of games that have a lot of appeal to core gamers. Posting an article from a obsuce site doesn't give your claim any more grounds. Please try to read my OP and contribute to a conversation focused on Nintendo. If you feel like you would rather just talk about how they only make games for families and children, that fine, just start your own thread, because that discussion is not for this one.

I dont disagree that some of Nintendos hardcore fans were left in the dust with the Wii. In my eyes the most core fused Nintendo console was the N64 once a large portion of the third parties left. First party tends to grow when they leave, because as a company they are left to fend for themselves. Nintendo has to stay relevent and they did what they had to (whether I cared for their offerings or not...which sadly I didn't with the Wii). They've seen the error of their ways and are looking to come back to the core with the Wii U, but the problem there in is their launch offerings were aiming for an audience thats already spoken for, which is why certain parts of the holiday season they might have been outsold. Nintendos existence has to be about giving gamers something that cannot be found anywhere, if they stick to this and stick with the core the Wii U will weather the storm of next gen. I do agree that they lost sight of their core audience until E3 2010 when they showed off a slew of games. Possibly their best offering for the Nintendo core that I had seen in four years since their launch.

GameCube didn't sell well because
1. It was marketed as a Playstation for children. Rather than a true Nintendo console.
2. It had an atrocious Fisher Price-like controller.
3. No 2D Mario, worst 3D Mario, the two worst 3D Zeldas, worst Starfox, worst Mario Kart, pretty much the worst effort by Nintendo on the software front in the company's history.
4. No innovation, the only Nintendo console which featured nothing fresh in its interface. NES introduced the d-pad, SNES introduced shoulder buttons and a diamond face button configuration, N64 introduced analog sticks, Wii introduced motion controls, Wii U introduced an LCD touch screen controler.
In many ways, it GameCube was a backwards system since it abandoned the diamond face buttons for a really unintuitive and unusable design, the analog sticks were cheap, it lacked a proper d-pad, and lacked proper shoulder buttons.

In many ways, GameCube was a bigger failure than virtual boy, GameCube was supposed to be Nintendo's second pillar console beside GBA.

I agree with everything you said here. To me, a Nintendo console will be a secondary console. I know it won't have all the third party offerings that I really want to play, but to make up for that, it has to have a lot of content that can't be found anywhere else. The Wii U hasn't shown much of that yet, and that's why it's not selling that well.

I think that this status quo could be changed if they released another console with the Gamecube philosiphy/ third party support.

No, the damage is done
The average 70 I.Q guy will keep skipping Nintendo forever

The presentation was terrible, all those different colors, odd shaped buttons, with a crayola PURPLE base.  If Wii looked like that, despite the innovation it would not have sold nearly as well.  Nintendo at least learned  appearance matters in regards to what matches w/living room tech .  

I really don't understand your Q. Technically speaking the WiiU is a modern day Gamecube