The Wii wasn't a "fad." It's lifespan is in line with a normal console lifespan. A "fad" would have been 2 years.

But then again... that same leadership steered the ship after GameCube and created the Wii, their most successful home console ever.  That same leadership also created the DS, the most popular game system ever.  Ever.  That same leadership led to Nintendo banking $10 billion in cash.  They may have had their issues since mid-2011, but you have to give them credit for the years between 2004 and 2011 for being Nintendo's most successful, bountiful period ever.

I think prayformojo was joking...you can't get the Wii U much slimmer than it already is lol.

I want the wiiu to be successful .but the specs killed it and lack of games did not help.

When I said redesign I meant the internals. Bump the memory to 4GBs and the HDD to 250GB, throw in a better battery for the controller etc.

Curl-6, that's possible, but look at the 3DS. It had a huge price drop and Nintendo came out fine. Maybe $249.99? Clearly $349.99 is too high and the $299.99 basic model isn't moving either. Nintendo's never released a console anywhere CLOSE to this expensive.

That's great but this business doesn't give you time to pat yourself on the back and if you're doing that, odds are you are going to be left behind. 

And really, from about 2010 or so cracks started to show in Nintendo's armour already. 

Nintendo just doesn't know how to handle the fact that the casual gaming audience is unpredictable and not responding to things the way they would hope. In "Nintendo's ideal market" people would just keep buying Wii Sports 1/2/3/4, Wii Fit 1/2/3, Brain Training 1/2/3/4, etc. just like they've done with the Mario and Pokemon franchises, but they didn't understand that this audience is very fickle and will move on to the next thing, that's actually what they get a "thrill" from, finding the next thing. 

That they didn't want Nintendogs + cats, but Minecraft and Angry Birds now ... that's something that Nintendo just doesn't understand I don't think. They like things in formulas they can understand, not a wild, chaotic market where one day you're hot, one day you're not, but that's the pandora's box Nintendo opened by banking on casual/non-gamer audiences ... they will drop you like a bad habit once they're bored of you. 

That was one of the many miscalculations Nintendo made. They got blindsighted and rocked by the iPhone and tablet revolution too. 

In pro sports, if you're a coach who's lead your team to a championship 3-4 years ago, but since then you've led the team to horrible finishes every year, no one blinks if your ass is fired. 

Things aren't going to change. Nintendo is powerless at this point. They can't lower the price, they can't release a plethora of games, they cant stop the PS4/720 hype.

It doesn't matter if they have "8 billion in the bank." Nintendo can't fight the fight of 2006. You have to be current or you die. It's pretty standard in the marketplace. Something nintendo is learning the hard way over the past 4yrs.

They could cut price on 3DS because they were makng a huge profit on it; they're taking a loss on the Wii U at present, so if they cut price they'll be losing even more money per unit. Not a good move.

You certainly don't need to be technologically current to survive or even thrive; Wii, DS vs PSP, and 3DS vs ita prove this.

You need to have a killer hook. People didn't buy the Wii because the chipset was weak, they bought despite the chip, because they wanted to experience the whole hulabaloo about motion gaming, which was new and interesting for 2006. 

The Wii U doesn't elicit the same response, especially from the casual style gaming friends I have (and I have a few for sure), they were all trying to hunt down Wiis 6 years ago, today none of them cares about Wii U. 

That's the danger in the approach Nintendo took, if you are goin to do this, then your controller HAS to be the greatest things since sliced bread. It's not and they are in a lot of trouble because they bet the farm on the controller IMO.