For those of you who think Nintendo botched up the Wii U, I have a few questions.  Now, the most common two complaints that I hear are this (and this is both from fans and haters of Nintendo).

1.  Nintendo launched too soon, its games weren't ready and so it lost its launch momentum

2. Nintendo launched too late, if it had been 2011 or 2010 it would have gained enough sales to be very relevant against the ps4/720.

Now there is also another fact in this situation, Nintendo really dropped support badly for the Wii in its last 2 years, which means that their studios were very focused on the Wii U in this period.  Another thing is, compared to most Japanese companies, Nintendo's studios has a pretty good start to finish schedual with its games.   With Zelda being the exeption, very few Nintendo games take longer than 2-3 years to develope, which means they started as early as they could in order to get a head start on the Wii U.

Now keeping all of that in mind I have to ask this:  What were they supposed to do, #1 or #2?  And, how can you justify that argument under the opposite situation?  Keeping in mind that there is a difference between "THEY F'D UP", and "it could have been better".  Please specify and tell me your reasons for each.

Thanks ^^.

it doesn't matter what they were supposed to do... on this site nintendo is always doomed..

As a Wii HD, it launched too late. Wii was losing momentum in 2010, and if console power and graphics were a reason for that [I don't believe so, but if], then a console of this power in 2010 would be a nice upgrade. The chipset is similar enough to be a Wii HD exactly: play your Wii games in HD and games come out that work on both. SMG2 and Zelda SS would have been great HD launch-window games.

As a new console, it launched slightly too soon to be competitive in power with PS4/720 for a price Nintendo is willing to charge, IF THE AIM IS TO RECIEVE ALL THIRD PARTY GAMES as it is. This doesn't matter at all if it was another Wii, relying on non-core audiences to carry it, but they bet heavily on actually winning some battles vs the other two consoles.

For the two aims Nintendo had for it, it is both early and late, yes. If Nintendo had adopted more of a Wii 2 than Wii HD strategy, the timing is irrelevant. Thus the big issue is with strategy and not timing or hardware spec.

Wii had also a drought after launch, tought it never touched the lows Wii U is facing. Games are a problem, but also the marketing and concept they are trying to sell.

Time has nothing to do, Wii launched last past generation (2 days after PS3) and still managed to create a buzz.

They just need to learn to have a steady flow of games since they cant rely on 3rd party like the other 2.

I think the issue is more related to hardware choice, but I suppose software release hasn't helped them. These things are related.

hmmmmmm You've made the most thought provoking post yet.

Had they anticipate this opening disaster (I thought Nintendo learned from the 3DS, guess not) the right way, they would've launch it Q1 of this year, like mid Jan and actually got most of the stuff they fumbled on done, day one. Hence why to me, they released it too soon...

As Soleron said.

I'll add that for the novelity of the gamepad - the WiiU's hook - it's two years too late (if not more). There is absolutely nothing novel about a touchscreen now that we all own multiple such devices. Same for HD. Nothing exciting about an HD console in 2012. In both cases, it's merely meeting a bare minimum expectation for any new electronic device.

Also to maintain the momentum Wii had, it was far too late. WiiU needed to be out in 2010 or 2011 at the absolute latest, or Nintendo needed to do a whole lot better at supporting Wii's momentum in the meantime.

For games library, it appears, despite the dearth of quality Wii games (outside Zelda:SS and Xenoblade) over the last two years than Nintendo still has nothing ready for WiiU (and NSMBU probably took a few months to do) and there's are ZERO next-gen games (what anyone would consider next-gen anyway) on WiiU and there won't be until PS4/720 come out so in this regard, too early. Although in my mind this is an non-issue because no game on WiiU will truly be consider next-gen because any WiiU game can (and almost definitely will) be played on last gen systems (PS360) outside of Nintendo titles of course.

Regardless of any of this I don't feel that these are WiiU's core problem.

The dependance on the gamepad as WiiU's main feature is the primary fault. It appeals to noone neither casual nor core. The system itself is too underpowered to compete with PS4/720 and Nintendo has long dropped their focus on their casual Wii/DS crowd and winning them back from iOS/Android now will be impossible to do with that overly complicated gamepad, expensive games and (comparitively) non-existant game library.

The only way the WiiU concept would fly is if it was full-on tablet (Android) device that also allowed you to play your favorite Nintendo titles both at home on TV and the go on the gamepad.