On top of that Those consoles had no comp. Wii U launched into a market OWNED by Sony and Microsoft. If im not mistaken the 360, PS3 and original Wii all did very strong through the holiday season. For Nintendo to sell roughly 3 or 3.3 million consoles is simply astounding to me. No they havent failed, doing just fine IMO

Most home consoles are slow starters in terms of sales; in the weeks following the Wii U launch, some reports pointed out that the 360 and even the original Wii were outselling the Wii U by bucketloads, seemingly choosing to ignore that this is completely normal for new consoles, and has been the case for as long as I can remember. The PS2 outsold the PS3 for years, the PSP outsold the Vita, and the DS initially outsold the 3DS.

To all the people saying that I am hating on the wiiU or that I am calling doom for the wiiU, I own a wiiU since day1. I pray that it will be a success but sometimes, I tell myself that I wouldn't mind a gamecube type generation in terms of games.

Ravenkonaim made some really good points.

I would add, that In January 2013 in the US, the gap between Wii U and other consoles (360 mainly) seems to have gotten smaller. So I agree that Wii U was launched at a very tough time. So its certainly not the end dedicated gaming consoles, but I do think it is a sing as to how 'well' the next MS and Sony consoles will perform.

WiiU did not perform poorly. Even compared to Wii's launch in 2006, it did alright. Compared to PS360, it did absolutely fantastic.

I think the sales are adequate up to this point. 2.5mil is far from shabby, if not spectacular. It just needs to not fall too low and maintain interest in the public eye and when the games come, so will sales (or a price cut, of course).

HW sales will be down somewhat next gen across the board. This generation was a one-off for all consoles, thinking that all consumers will immediately "move next-gen" when their predecessors are such great competition is ludicrous. Still, we shall see shortly.

WIIU performed poorly compared to xbox and gamecube and the only reason it did'nt do poorly compared to 360 and wii is because they were completly sold at at launch, wii was selling for 900$ on ebay and 360 for 600$.

Gamecube is wayyy too down there. Personally I prefer if we got a N64 gen. 

Nah , it's not the end of consoles , nintendo just needs to drop the price at around 50$ for the console and 10$ for the games .