There is going to be some much crow to feed in this thread lol. 40m is absolutely way to low. 70m is my low end and 100m is my high end.

70m low end? Haha, prepare for disappointment. Much crow indeed.

Those circumstances factor in here as well.  WiiU is only 50$ cheaper than the 360 was at launch and in a worse economy, with the basic SKUs for each equally priced.  And people are waiting for Sony and Microsoft's next moves as well before deciding.

The only thing that the WiiU has going against it in comparison here is that it is coming off of a hugely successful predecessor, whereas the 360 was not.

Regarding Pachter's statement, I agree that the mass consumers were not part of that first 2m, but that strengthens my point further.  There is still plenty of time for that group to gravitate toward the WiiU; the system barely launched, is at its highest price right now and has the smallest library it will ever have at the moment.

In any case, holiday of 2013 will be a very telling period for WiiU, and unless Nintendo completely botches it, I think it has the potential to do quite nicely.

The problem with the Wii U is it doesn't have an audience.

The non-gamers won't go after it because of no motion controls, and Wii was more of a fad to them. They don't care.

Casual gamers would rather play on Xbox or Playstation.

Hardcore gamers do not like Nintendo that much. There are Nintendo fans but they can only do so much (see GameCube), and even then, this system launched with a Mario game and it isn't doing well.

The Wii U was unnecessary. It is basically a Wii HD without the revolutionary controls. The touch screen serves no purpose; it is useless. The Wii U was a failure from the start.

What does "LTD" mean?

Pachters opinions on Nintendo are irrelevant. He ignores the fact that Nintendo prioritises the needs of the Japanese market and expands those to the west. It doesnt engage on tech wars wich is a westerner thing.
That is actually very clever, as they would be busting their company in a costly battle that would be difficult to win.

Pachter is also the same guy that says the portable market is doomed while the 3DS sells as hot cakes.

Unlike some are saying, this is not a system that doesnt have an audience. It just needs some games and a price cut that makes it irresistable, much like what they did with the 3DS.

2D Mario also doesnt seem to be as much of a system seller as a 3D mario. Also 2D Mario U came on the heels of 2D Mario for the 3DS. It wasnt very well managed by Nintendo. The maket became saturated with 2D mario last christmas.

If you read people's predictions for these systems, there is a delusional belief that Sony and Microsoft will produce a $1200 system and sell it for $300 and have 100% of their biggest IPs available soon after launch; and (while you didn't give specifics) there is evidence of this in your post with the comment "these systems are gonna make the wiimu look really dated".

Nintendo isn't losing money while selling the Wii U at $350 because they're dumb, they're losing it because producing a system with that much processing power and an "advanced" user interface device (Wii U tablet, Kinect, 3D move camer) is not cheap. If Sony and Microsoft make the Wii U look dated it is highly likely that they will also make the Wii U look remarkably inexpensive.

Ehm... no. It will sell way more than that.
But no surprise here.

You and Pach must know the wiiu game lineup for the future. Do tell!  lol...  It's way too early to know real projections but if you guys are correct Nintendo remains in business.  40 to 50 wouldn't be bad and would likely force them to stay focused on the core Nintendo fan.

I dunno, there's a lot more core nintendo fans these days than when the gamecube was around, so they can probably do quite a lot more than you expect. The wii brand name and nintendo are also bigger these days, so wii u still has potential to find an audience, even if it never quite succeeds at capturing the so-called 'casual' crowd. ...and, as people are pointing out on this site regularly, the wii u has had a better launch than other consoles, so saying it isn't doing well is possibly a bit premature (or wishful thinking).