Well, considering sales in January aren't usually that bad, things are only going to get worse for the Wii U in the coming months. February, and the next few months, will probably be sub 50K for the entire month in the US. I'm guessing it will drop to Vita levels in Japan, as well. The only thing that would help, which won't happen, is a flood of quality games AND a price cut of at least $80. Wii U sales may be from the start what the Wii's became later in its lifecycle. Sells poorly during most of the year, but does relatively well during the holidays.

Indeed. I wonder if Nintendo are rushing to get their own games out of the gate as soon as possible.

The initial launch was bad but it came on the heels of Nintendo launching Pokemon Black and White anyway, add in the fact that the system had a variety of different types of games such as Steel Diver, Nintendogs and Cats, a decent portable Super Street Fight 4 port and a Legos Star Wars game, it managed pretty well and its only competitor worldwide was its predecessor the original DS. Add in within four months it had a remake of OoT followed by the price cut and impending releases of a 3D Mario game and Mario Kart later in the year.

Compare that to the Wii U, which doesn't have the luxury of a still successful predecessor as the Wii's luster had faded and due in no small part due to the design of the system's casing, non Gamepad controllers and its own name, it doesn't look that different then the Wii. This combined with the lack of unique software puts the system in a bad position, before the release most were hoping that the Nintendo TVii feature might be a factor but so far it hasn't been and Nintendo really isn't promoting it nearly as well as they could have, although really they don't have much to promote, all they did was serve up New Super Mario Bros. U and nothing else outside of 3rd party ports of game that had mostly already been released.

No original software outside of ZombiU and Nintendo Land really makes use of the system and outside of the Nintendo faithful, no one has really had the need to get a Wii U version over a 360 or PS3 version besides getting a slightly better looking version. Even now, the Wii U is still 2-3 months away from a major release unless we can really think that Lego City Undercover or a update Monter Hunter 3  release will really turn the tide.

Roma is on point. They just playing the waiting game before the success meter arise.

*Delaying Pikmin (which is completed) is a sign that they are onto something. Nobody knows what it is. But they are definitely playing the poker game.

They can't the price right now and not for a while. This was expected though, retailers, especially the specialised ones like gaming stores, don't like to have products that don't move from the shelves.
For a regular store, its no biggie, stop recieving shipments and look elsewhere for something to fill the space, for specialised stores its not that simple.

So long as the stock isn't budging, Nintendo won't be able so ship more consoles either, their shipment projection will be far too high, even in revised and super conservative form. They need to act now and not in six-seven months when the fall game avalanche starts.

I'm alright with a price cut so long as Nintendo does the ambassador thing similar to what they did with the 3ds.

nintendo should do a re launch like sony did with ps3 in 2009. sony even changed the ps3 logos, boxarts and everything.

Price cut can't happen. If retailers still stock Vitas after ~16 months, they can at least stock Wii U for half as long.

Nintendo needs to force a few of their games out by this point. Fuckin Pikmin 3 should have been hurried up and completed by now.The fact that it is taking so long to release is ridiculous. Focus efforts on a franchise that can get current hardware sales out of the ground as opposed to a niche 2 million seller at best.

Gamecube Virtual Console should also have been announced to make up for the droughts which have become a Nintendo Ritual; make money off some games you already finished.

3DS is not a concern, Pokemon is coming; end of story.

Original Wii can still have some life if they drop price later to $99 and some bundled accessories.

The lack of Pikmin 3 is Nintendo playing financial games, unfortunately. Essentially, one game won't make a difference to bad Q4 FY2012-3 numbers, while heading off with a stronger Q1 2013-4 will do better for them on the whole, just worse for them (and us) in the short term.

A price cut doesn't make sense. The lack of compelling software is killing the Wii U right now. The reason the price cut for the 3DS was so effective is that came along side top notch software. Nintendo did a poor job of hyping the Wii U and making the appeal of the Gamepad apparent. They system isn't selling on power and without making the Gamepad appealing you are stock with a bunch of so so multiplat ports.

If the situation Criterion mentions about the dev tools is true, then the reason for the so so multiplats is Nintendo themselves. This adds to their overall ineptitude with the Wii U launch. THey thought that no matter what they did the system would sell out for six months and they could roll out the big guns for 2013 Holiday/Orbis&Durango launch. They were badly mistaken.