Return to the glory days of Wii/DS with the Wii U, you mean?...if so, how come you say 'not Nintendo themselves' when, last month (If I remember correctly, right after January NPD and Wii U with 57K), you were saying something like 'that´s what Nintendo gets for abandoning the philosophy they had adopted with the Wii', or something like that (I agree with you on that, btw).

Blu Ray has not reached the level of success either DVD or VHS did, and it never will because digital copies are replacing physical formats.

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/10/30/ps3-has-lost-sony-4-7-billion-may-be-profitable-next-year/

As for Brawl not being a system seller, if you were following the Nintendo side of gaming at the time you'd know just how much hype surrounded it thanks to how intensely beoved Melee was, and that a vast number of 2008's Wii purchases were the direct result of it.

Smash, like Zelda, is a franchise that even people who claim to have "moved on" from Nintendo will run out and buy a console for, I've seen it so many times, both online and in life. For a generation of Nintendo gamers, their teenage gaming years defined by Melee. Nostalgia is a powerful, powerful drug.

Check the link above - 2015 its estimated to overtake DVD and having to reach the same sales as VHS or DVD doesn't mean it's a failure....That would me the wii is a failure as the  PS2 sold more, which is obviously not the case.

Does their gaming division include revenue from the games sold as well or not? The reason I ask is because you usually here the case that the console is sold at a loss, and profit made from the games, which is reflected by the almost same cash loss MS took with the original xbox. Plus it'd be nice to see the next few years of sales to see how the loss was offset, as well as bluray revenue. If at the end of the day all Sony secured was a)bluray and b)a third of the market, if the PS4 doesn't fare better then it could very well be their last console as making something that doesn't offset it's losses quite clearly is a fail. However, I digress. 

Go check out the Wii sales yourself - other than selling about 400k extra consoles, the sales are just not there to claim SSBB was a system seller. Popular? Yes. System seller? Not by the looks of it. If you know anyway of getting the figures I'd like to compare the release dates of SSBM to GC sales as that could be interesting. 

Oh yes nostalgia is a powerful drug, but the issue is those people are growing up and there may not be the same nostalgia-nintendo-infusion going on. During the 5th and 6th gen, gamers tended to have at least one friend who had a Nintendo console. However nowadays kids aren't starting really with the wii, but in their early teens straight away with a 360 or ps3 meaning that they haven't had the nostalgia days of roaming the fields of Hyrule or watching characters ding off the screen in SSB. As much as the wii was a financial success, the achilles heel may be that it broke the nostalgia chain. 

The core gaming drought on the Wii is no kind of exaggeration, and no kind of myth. Nintendo getting its shit together later in the life of that console. Doesn't change the fact that they basically starved their most loyal fans for months, and effectively for years. On a console with next to no third party support. The most loyal bought the platform to play the consoles core franchises. Read this thread every explanation for why a rebound will happen revolves around those same games getting new installments.

So what affect do you think not getting a good, or anywhere near consistent supply of those games had on that player base. Yes they got pissed as they watched helplessly as Nintendo churned out one casual game after another. It might not have been so bad for them if they had bought in later in the generation when they might have had a backlog of games to play, but loyalists are among the earliest of adopters.

Betrayal is exactly what Nintendo did. It didn't take Nintendo to make casual party games, but it would take Nintendo to make new installments in those most beloved franchises. The reason that Nintendo did it was, because it was easy cash. They could spend a pittance on those games, and sells tens of millions of copies. Whereas a core game might cost them much more, and sell maybe five or six million.

It was pure unadulterated greed. They eschewed quality development in favor or quick and dirty, and laughed their asses off, as their loyalists begged and pleaded. It became a running gag on these forums. As the Nintendo faithful got their hopes up for a big core game unveil, and had those hopes repeatedly dashed as Nintendo announced another casual party game. Fans of the brand were already living at their limits anyway without third party support. Nintendo pulling that rug out from under them was just plain murder.

Most of them revolted and switched brands, and yes the other manufacturers do have their answers. It isn't about offering up clones of Nintendo games. It is about having games of the same quality. Yes a game like Halo can be a substitute for a platforming game like Mario. A Uncharted can be a substitute for a Zelda game. Their not being exact parallels doesn't mean they cannot offer up the same level of enjoyment.

Believe it or not gamers can actually adapt to change, and find the good in that change. The point I am driving home is this. Nintendo forced them to change by not providing critical service, and now that they have changed and adapted. To their new surroundings. They probably aren't going to go back, because the platforms they switched to not only offer up the same number of quality exclusives, but they also offer up far superior third party support.

Just look at the members on these forums. Over half the people who actively support Nintendo don't even exclusively play on the platform. They couldn't survive on those scraps. So now for them they buy a Nintendo to play just a mere handful of games. While they spend most of their time playing elsewhere. These are really hardcore gamers that we are talking about. Most gamers can't afford to support multiple platforms. So when they have a choice to make picking up a Nintendo over a Sony or Microsoft console. Amounts to picking up a console that will have one, or maybe two good games a year. Over a console that might have ten in any given year.

I see Mario Kart pulling upwards of 10 million consoles entirely on its own.

There's a LOT of people who got in to that series on the Wii who're left craving more.

New official NintenDomination theme song: "Dark Horses" by Switchfoot.

Uncharted/Halo/etc don't scratch the same itch as key Nintendo franchises; that's what mkes Nintendo brands so powerful, they offer something you don't get from other platforms. There are many gamers for whom Uncharted is no substitute for Zelda, nor Halo for Smash Bros.

Again, the whole "Nintendo churned out casual games and starved the core" is false. The success of the Wii ____ series didn't stop them making 2 3D Marios, 2 Zeldas, 2 Metroids, Xenoblade, Donkey Kong, 2D Mario, 2 Kirbys, Smash Bros, Mario Kart, Excite, etc. They didn't betray anyone, they simply broadened their appeal to support new demorgaphics AS WELL AS their existing fanbase.

This gen will not be 6+ years. Expect 5, devs were pretty pissed about how long this gen dragged on. The reason people are saying nintendo is screwed is because the wii was a fluke. Look at their last few consoles. The n64 obviously was going to lose because nintendo made every stupid decision. The game had the same thing. Also, the ps3 was only down through 2007. 2008 was the year of the ps3, and every year after than was even better. Also, did you notice that the only games you mentioned were first party? That is why a lot of people are saying the wiiu will fail. They alienated every developer so nobody supports them anymore. How many more times can nintendo make the same games over and over before people want change? I'm saying it, every mario kart and pokemon game is basically the same thing. It's also a little worrisome that almost every platform has outsold the wiiU almost every week since its release. They are down, and if they don't change what they are doing, they are out. 

It's not a failure, but Blu Ray isn't the glorious, monumental victory that DVD was for PS2 either.

And a third of the market is a pretty considerable step down from over two thirds.

My point isn't that the PS3 failed, it didn't, but that you aren't applying fair standards of success across consoles. (E.g. Wii U fails for losing a small amount of money, PS3 wins despite losing billions)

Brawl was a gargantuan system seller. There is no doubt at all. If you understand the Nintendo player base, you'll understand that millions of consoles were sold on the promise of that game. A 400k spike on the release date is only the tip of the iceberg, most were sold before that based on hype, and after based on word of mouth and playing with friend's copies. To understand this you need to understand the power of what the game embodies; not only the representation of the childhood/teenage years of millions of gamers thru Melee, but it epitomisation of the local multiplayer casual-core bridging social experience that has been Nintendo's main source of sales since the N64.

And the amount of kids starting with the Wii is huge; don't be fooled into thinking its all senior citizens playing those 30 million plus copies of Mario Kart, or thoe 20 million plus copies of NSMBW.