i have failed you, i only read the last 3 sentances.

I'm sorry, quite a few things stand out here;

Firstly and most importantly, your text is a hot mess, its unreadable in that format even though its better than anything you've posted before (which isn't really saying much though).

Secondly, where in the seven hells did you get the notion that the PS3 sold only 1.41 million for the entire first year on the market? It sold almost one million units in one single day in Japan alone, it was devastatingly strong over there from the start and had blistering launches in North America and Europe as well. You seem to imply, by using grossly false numbers that is, that the Wii U might go on to sell brilliantly in the future, perhaps as well as the Wii or better. You need to stick you finger into the solid ground and catch a feel of reality. You also need to learn to do some research, your numbers are off by a staggering measure. Your budget estimates are also way off, citing 100 million dollar budgets as a near standard is completely ridiculous, there are only a handful of games in history that had budgets close to that, GTA IV being on of them. 30 million dollars is considered a huge budget today.

3 million Wii U's sold by December 31., as reported by Nintendo, are shipped numbers as always, not sold to end users. Most retailers have a massive surplus stock of units from the holiday season which is why 1st quarter shipments for 2013 will be likely be paltry indeed.

You claim that 35 million Wii owners were the real "casual" kind, where did you come up with this number? What is this folly? The most prominent games, counted in sales and acclaim, would suggest closer to a 50/50 split or perhaps even 40/60 in the favor of casual owners, the poor sales of almost all core titles besides Nintendo's own would support such an assumption, as would low attach rates and small amounts of gaming time per system. However, I'm not going to make that assumption, because it cannot be proven and I can't honestly claim insight directly into it, its all purely speculation. The general assertion seems to be that you're way off though.

You throw out even more senseless speculation when you go on to report on the exact percentages that console rebuys and replacements would constitute in the overall growth, all the while seemingly ignoring the incredible increase in software sales and revenue, records being broken right and left. Again, this is weak and unfounded speculation, to deny massive growth for the 7th generation in any way, shape and form is beyond ignorant (pardon me).

You go on to ask; "can the Wii U pull off the 8th generation?" and proceed to answer your own obtuse question with "the most simple answer is likely yes". Not only are the parameters of "pulling off the 8th generation" setting up a real fringe question, but the most simple answer by reading the current market and not to mention seeing Nintendo missing so widely with the projections is by no means "yes", its quite the opposite unless your reading glasses have an almost comical Nintendo-esque tint to them when you analyse the situation.

"A true gamer owns more than one system", might ring true. But smartphones, tablets and PC's are bound to take up the majority of this segment as a second or first choice in addition to a home console. Besides, it sounds like a tables turned version of the rather naive Microsoft muttering from the 7th gen where they stated that "Wii gamers would upgrade to the 360".

"Obviously, my favorite systems have everything to do with Nintendo. But I also own a 360 and love the Halo and Gears of War franchises, which are 360 exclusives. I have no problem owning more than one system to make sure I have an opportunity to play a wider range of games. This gamer loyalty that people have is a false persona. Yes, like myself, one may lean more towards one system but is still very much interested in other games."
This is the typical "I own another system, thus my arguments are more valid", another beginners mistake. Not only that, but talking about misplaced loyalty and false personas does not become you when one looks through your post history and threads, they are incredibly one-sided (and one dimensional), this one is no exception.

"For most people, the PS3 and 360 are similar enough that some may find no reason to buy both." This same argument applies to the Wii U, which strives to be similar to the PS3 and 360 and to get the same games and online features up and running, hardly an argument in Nintendo's favor and a part of the reason why the Wii U is having problems moving from shelves, Nintendo are playing catch-up and it clearly shows, by the time the next playstation and xbox arrive, the Wii U will be established as the PS3/360 look-alike that arrived late to the party by a whole lot of people and there really is no incentive for a PS3 or 360 owner to purchase a Wii U at present and, seemingly, in the near future. The basic lack of the Wii U's appeal is also evident in the extreme reluctance the Wii owners are showing in buying one, one of the chief reason why the PS2 did so well was that the PS1 had established a market for it, the Wii U has none of this power, basically for lack of appeal to either markets (core and casual).

You mention specs being irrelevant, this is first of all false. Secondly, when you say that "the Wii U is more capable than both PS3 and 360", this is completely irrelevant based on your own argument one sentence before. You then go on to say "that may not matter", in regards to Wii U being weaker than the PS4 and 720. Make up your mind, either specs matter or they don't. For the record, I happen to think that they do matter, when the difference is big anyway, the hardware discrepancy between the Wii U and the future consoles won't be anywhere near the Wii and PS3/360 though, which is a good thing for Nintendo (one out of only a few good things for them lately).

"Much like the excitement of Zelda making the transition into a 3D world, Zelda fans will celebrate and rejoice to see this beloved franchise in HD." The whole 7th generation was spent by Nintendo zealots downplaying HD and overall technical advances but you expect the HD transtition to be as significant as the 3D transition was for the Zelda franchise? There are absolutely no grounds for making such a bold claim, 3D was a true revolution and was actually new when Ocarina of Time arrived while HD is the standard format for cinema, cable TV, streaming services and, of course, consoles and has been for some time. The big ooooo's and aaaaaa's will be somewhat muffled. 3D was a vastly bigger change than HD, no one in their right mind can deny that. Besides, pleasuring old Zelda fans won't help expand the sales of the franchise or the hardware sales ceiling potential.

"Arguably, Pikmin could be one of Nintendo’s least recognizable franchises, but talk to any Pikmin fan and they will tell you how excited they are for this HD version of the game." Of course, fans of a franchise will be excited about new games in their favourite franchise, hardly groundbreaking insight there. This means that existing Pikmin fans will buy the next Pikmin, it does not suggest that Pikmin will suddenly grow into a massive franchise and have a bigger overall impact. It will remain one of Nintendo's smallest main franchises, being HD will do nothing to change that. This whole point won't have any impact on the hardware sale.

"Ask any Metroid fan how awesome it will be for a HD FPS Metroid game on the Wii U. When you are done with that, ask anyone who played Super Mario Galaxy how great a Galaxy type game would be in full HD. This isn’t even talking about Brawl or Mario Kart." Hmm, the biggest fans of these games were mostly avid in their belief that HD was not necessesary for a game to have great visuals and generally cared very little for high resolutions. Again, I fail to see how this will impact anything, old fans will keep on buying the games, the fact that it is displayed in HD resolution won't make the franchises better since graphics was never the main concern of neither the games themselves nor the gamers who enjoyed them. Another moot point.

I'll grant you one thing; its too early to discount the Wii U. But, that leaves a lot of room for interpretation, what does discounting it entail? If it means implying that it won't win the 8th generation in terms of hardware sales, I'd say that that is fair surmission for anyone to make at this stage, certainly as fair as a lot of people's surmisson that the Wii would continue posting 20 million sales per year into 2013-14 and even 2015. Its hard to determine due to so many as of yet unknown potential variables and one could say that one expects the PS4 and 720 to do poorly on the market, which is a fine opinion. However, we have already established that the Wii U is doing poorly on the market right now, measuring its current performance, it won't be very hard for either of the two new consoles to outperform the Wii U unless things change drastically. I'm not saying it can't, I'm known for my views on using the past, launch alignments and graphs to prove a future point, especially in a market like this.

In the end, I believe that the Wii U will turn Nintendo a decent profit but not ripple the waters much in terms of 3rd party software or legacy, I can't see any circumstance where it sells more than 50% of the Wii's lifetime numbers, I really can't, and anything above 40% would be a great success given the circumstances. Worst case scenario, it ends up around N64 numbers 32-33 million). People talk about the PS3's comeback but the PS3 was never this low, not even close and it was always destined to have at least good 3rd party support to aid it along the way, and they talk about the 3DS, which never dipped anywhere near this low either and also had decent support along the way, it also belongs to a very different market, one that Nintendo has always dominated completely. Its simply not the same. The PS3 and 3DS were also fairly cleverly designed at their core (for appeal, the PS3's cell architecture and rigid RAM solutions were not smart but not something that would deterr gamers from buying or using it), something I cannot say for the Wii U, the Gamepad was a huge mistake and it seems to be headed for obscurity, a sort of whacky alternative to PS3 and 360 with fewer and more expensive games and a controller that is bound to be even less realised than the Wii-mote was.

You claim to have been reporting on the industry for seven years, yet you appear to have learned nothing about how the market has evolved, specifically the extreme growth of the smartphone/tablet market, how demographics work and who they are or where they are, the overall growth in the industry as a whole and, last but not least, you have certainly not learned anything about making a well reasoned argument, in depth analysis, projections, technology and its impact (or lack thereof) and least of all formating a text in any way.
I realise that this is all your opinion, it even says so in the thread title, but I just can't help but think that your opinions are... strange, naive and based on completely false or non-existant grounds.

I like how the wall of text includes a screenshot from a fan made pre-render at the end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=Gf-2Imh6a54&feature=endscreen

Probably the most thought through part of the entire post...

This is why people should worry about paragraphs.

lmao, well played

Too long for me to read, but that fan render of Mario at the bottom looked cool. Hmmm... Super Mario Universe... hope it's good!

LOL! Even if you did read it, which I doubt, I found that hilarious for some odd reason.