As I always said to myself, those systems were to early out on the market for what they offered. HD tvs were popularized by around 2010, when the got down in cost. Nitnendo is being max 2 years late, but they are not behind the curve. They are behind for what the others are offering, but no one have say that what they offers is what everybody need to follow. Look at the Wii, the Wii was needed, a tru fun experience. The problem is that SONY and XBOX division are following what the Publishers are setting, and that is a big problem. Big Publishers keep asking for cheaper but tehcnologically advanced system,  how is that possible? of course they don't loose money when SONY, MICROSOFT and NINTENDO are selling their consoles cheaper for what their value is. They just want their software production cost to be reduced. How is that? not funny when you see it from a hardware manufacturer, right! So, that is why I think it is for Nintendo's sake to not follow them, they are walking over a thin line, if something fo wrong from Publishers to Developers to hardware manufacturers will fall together. 

You're mentioning way more things than I was referring to.  The bolded statement implies the Wii's success based on its price rather than what it has or does.  

I never made a statement saying it will sell 100m or be as successful as the Wii, but I do think whatever benefits the Wii got for being cheaper will apply for the Wii U as well.  Not only that, but there are a lot of oversimplifications in your last paragraph.  It's also mostly speculation as we haven't even started the next gen yet with Sony and Microsoft.  What's to say Nintendo wont get more 3rd party support?  What's to say Nintendo doesn't have other features that the competition don't have like with the Wii?  How do you measure how good the motion controls are?  There are a lot of questions and a lot of factors.  The best we can do is analyse it and take guesses at what might happen.  

Also, PS4/720(which I really didn't even bring up) price point WILL be a problem to many people.  Saying it isn't is just incorrect.  How much of a problem it is depends on many other factors, but I have no doubt that especially in the current state of the economy, the price of hardware will matter.

Look at my previous statement.  And it is kind of hard to say that they came out to early when they both are closing in on 80 million.  That mean 160 million people will own a HD console by the end of 2013.Depending on how long they keep the X360/PS4 around they have a chance of passing the wii up in Lifetime sells as well.  Doubtful but it is possible.

Just read my previous statemennt.  P.S.  The WiiU is taking a loss for each console sold so dont start with that.

Oh and the Wii was a true fan experience *rolls eyes*  beyond 1st party the console couldnt sell software at all.  Meanwhile the PS3 and Nexbox was not only selling 1st party games well but there 3rd party games was selling fantastic.  Call of Duty made more money on the HD Twins than any title for the wii made for example. Each and every year

You mentioned price so I told you a what it is competing with.  Not to mention that the PS3/X360 will likely drop price as well soon.

Why 3rd party will once again not support them as much as the MSFT/Sony?  Because t3rd parties cant sell well on Nintendo products.  3rd party ends up being better on opponents hardware there for people spend there money on the better 3rd party version.  Nintendo's 1st party games over shadow 3rd party as well. Just look at all of the releases recently that has been ignoring the WiiU.  Now ask yourself why that is?

No need, I have played Batman Arkaham City from my hard drive and it is faster than using discs. 

The transfer rate of a 2.0 USB is about 35MB/s, while the usual disc readers are 15MB/s. Wii U has a 22MB/s reader. 

those systems sold 80% of their current sold quantities after SONY and MICROSFT took a lost on every unit sold. Until the last year and half or so, they started to make money. Around 5 years after their release. That is not a good business model, it could be relatively good for gamers. But the company they support can cease to exist because of those practices. Most of the gamers still uses composite cables for the PS3 and XBOX360, up to an instance that they were mostly sold without HDM cables. I short words, all those cool graphics were mostly unused until lately on the life cycle of the las gen.

I agree with the OP. There should be very minimal initial storage on the system, then an external hard drive(s) should be bought as needed. If you think about it, it is literally the same thing as memory cards for the PS and PS2.

Well 1.2gb is small first off, there's portable games larger than that. But I mean in terms of the ability to load data while playing a game. USB2.0's maximum rate of 480Mbit is slow compared to even ancient SATA 1.0 at 1.5Gbit, let alone the more modern SATA2.0 and 3.0 at 3Gbit and 6Gbit respectively. In practice USB2.0 can only effectively throughput about 300Mbit, and in many cases may even run slower depending on the drive. It's just a terrible system to load huge games like LEGO City onto.

I mean I didn't bring up the 720.  I am mostly just giving scenarios when looking at the Wii U vs "next gen" (I consider Wii U next gen).  Even if the PS3/360 drop in price, they are soon to be irrelevant to many gamers.  It may take some time before the transition is completed, but it will happen eventually.

I also am not saying Nintendo will get more 3rd party support than Microsoft or Sony, I am just not jumping the gun as we don't know exactly how it will play out.  We can try to rationalize why Nintendo wont and they may be good reasons, but they are not conclusive.

Yes optical is slow, but it's going obsolete too. There's a reason why many modern console games install data to the hard drive like a PC, because it greatly increases load speeds for the game.

And I'd love to see USB2.0 drives that can actually maintain 35MB/s speeds during multiple file transfers, a lot of external drives seem lucky to hit 25-30, the USB powered 2.5" drives tend to be even worse...