Again, everyone here who thinks Nintendo hasn't noticed that the Wii U is not doing well is being kind of an idiot. Nintendo has not only acknowledged that, but has also begun putting out more videos. I think Nintendo's problem was that they didn't have any major first party titles around because they wanted third party titles to have a chance. Unfortunately, Nintendo gamers generally don't care about these excessively violent games.

Then there are those who are probably even more idiotic in suggesting that Nintendo should just make their system more like a Playstation or an Xbox. We already know from the Gamecube era that changing from an innovator to an imitator is the WORST thing Nintendo can do for themselves and the industry as a whole.

How long has the Vita been with slugish sales and no price cut? Sometimes, it just isnt possible.

The Wii U released 4 months ago and people are already claiming a price cut. It needs games, it needs time. A price cut would only make sense the soonest in the summer with Zelda WW remake in the earliest. For now they need to bite the dust, theres nothing that can be done. Even with a price cut i dont see agreat motivator to get the system (except for MH3 Ultimate and pikmin 3 when they come out).

I don't think a price cut would help. Many stores around here (Germany, region of Frankfurt) are getting rid of Wii U completely (Vita also). Any consoles left are sold at extremely low prices, I saw a Wii U Basic for 190 € the other day and the premium model for 229 €. It still doesn't sell and the huge Wii U towers don't get any smaller. And it's not like it's only one store, it's really everywhere that the Wii U gets heavily discounted but not sold. And if those unofficial low prices don't do anything, I doubt an official price cut would do any better.

I don't know about the US and Japan, but in europe the situation is really horrible, worse than anyone could have possibly imagined. Even the worst haters didn't predict such numbers. Dreamcast, Saturn, Gamecube, Xbox, you name it - virtually EVERY console ever released in europe did better. It really leaves the impressio that the console itself is flawed and not wanted by the consumers, heavy hitters and price cuts can only do so much.

If you ask me, Nintendo should compete heavily with the price. Get rid of the tablet, make sure every game is playable without it and release a Wii U without tablet for no more than 99 €. That price tag alone would move consoles in masses. Sure, it would cost a lot for Nintendo, but they will have to rely on games generating the money afterwards. But if the Wii U dies a slow death, nobody will buy games either and Nintendo will also lose a hell lot of money.

thing is every console has gimmicks now, sony has move and 360 has kinect, nintendo has a tablet and wii chuck, so everybody is copying  nintendo to a certain extent, so a console that nextgen interms of power and online structure might no be such a bad idea, better then your idea which relies on first party games which nintendo has every gen, so why not have the best of both worlds. the tablet is obviously   not a hit, it wouldn't hurt to have the othere feature would it. i'll give you a good example the wiiu, if it was half as powerful as 360 and decent online structure it was have gotten tons of third pary support, more core gamers and a much better future for the wii brand, with more third paty support and more software sales.

One of Nintendo's biggest issues is they don't even properly market the games they DO have.

They've fallen into the trap of if it ain't Mario/Zelda/Pokemon/Metroid, it barely gets any marketing, even if its a great game like Xenoblade (which they barely even got around to localizing).

Roll your goddamn sleeves up and actually WORK for your sales, Nintendo doesn't seem to want to try if they don't think it'll be easy. But you can sell Dragon Quest X, sure. You can sell Wonderful 101. Sure.

You have to believe in your own product, and Nintendo a lot of times is self defeatist. Even games like Kid Icarus Uprising ... IMO should have gotten much more marketing, but Nintendo is too scared to put too much money into an unproven IP.

They need to learn something from MS and Sony in this respect. You look at Sony they basically *willed* Uncharted to being a reasonably well known franchise, the first one didn't sell all that great, if that was Nintendo in charge of this IP they would've just relegated it to niche status and barely marketed the second one. 

You can bet "The Last Of Us" will get a big movie style marketing push from Sony with commercials in prime time and during big sports events. Can you say the same about Monolithsoft's "X"? Or Bayonetta 2? Or Wonderful 101? Probably not from ridiculously stingy and cheap Nintendo. 

Games can be a killer hook in themselves.

No, you don't.  Every console thus far except for the Wii has had a standard controller, and the only way they change is moving the placement of the sticks and adding a couple new buttons each gen.  It doesn't seem fair to criticize Nintendo for not busting down the door of creatviity and blowing us all away two generations in a row, while at the same time with the competition being business as usual.

If you want to sell the whole "last gen tech" (more or less) then yes, you need to have a killer hook of a controller. 

And that doesn't just go for Nintendo, If the Playstation 2 was a moderately more powerful Playstation 1 with an Eyetoy in the box, the GameCube and XBox would've wiped the floor with Sony, because who the hell wants to pay another $200+ to play PS1-esque games with some watered down hook? 

If you are going to lower tech route, then your interface appeal has to be through the roof. That's Nintendo's own fault for putting themselves in that position, if you're not going to give people the rush of a large hardware upgrade, then you have to bring something else that's special to the table. It's Nintendo's job to IMPRESS the consumer, Nintendo fans sometimes make it sound like it should be the opposite, that the consumers need to work on understanding Nintendo, lol. 

That is not how home entertainment works, people have a lot of choices for their entertainment dollar today and have no time for a company that doesn't know what its doing.

I understand your point... basically that because Nintendo no longer participates in the tech-race with graphics that the only selling point their consoles have is through the interface.  I think that's mabye 30-40% true.  Not false, just not the whole truth.  You have to take into account that they have by far the largest number of recognizeable and popular franchises of any modern entertainment company.  In other words, the value of their brands is pretty much unequaled by anybody. 

Since the Wii/DS generation, they've also made enormous gains in spreading their brand awareness.  A lot more people from outside the realm of videogames are aware of what Nintendo is and what they do nowadays.  Thanks to the broad success of their previous two hardware systems, they have a much larger addressable market going into the Wii U/ 3DS generation than they had from the GCN/GBA era before the original Wii and DS.  It's not as if their addressable market has gone back down to what it was during the GameCube era.  Nintendo is by no means a niche company any longer.  Even though Wii U sales are slow, it is not because the Wii U as a device isn't appealing, it's because there's no reason to pick one up owing to the fact that Nintendo announced the delay of significant software releases in January.  Potential buyers are merely biding their time.

Heindsight is 20/20, but I thought the Wii U strategy was pretty good. Launch with NSMBU (one of your biggest franchises) which is relatively easy and quick to produce and Nintendoland to demo the system. Publish some 3rd party games like NinjaGaiden3 and so on to make sure there are some options for consumers. Then give your more technically challenging titles like 3DMario, Retrogame, Zelda and so on the time they need. Fall 2013 is 3 years since the last console 3D Mario, so the game should be good to go in time to battle the launch of other systems. The strategy seemed to be working well through Christmas as WiiU had solid sales for the 1st launching platform. The whole thing only tanked in Jan-Feb. Part of the problem is the delays of Pikmin and Rayman.

Where I see some goofs on Nintendo's part is in Nintendoland an in marketing. Nintendoland is a stupid name, and the game just doesn't have the instant appeal of WiiSports. The one mini-game in the collection that does it is the ninjastar game. That has very polished, simple, hi-def visuals and looks really neat to see someone playing it. They should have made a cool "WiiPlay" sort of collection of games like that, and given a much better name.

On the marketing side I can say at least in North America, they need to fire their agency. The ads are terrible. Dorky. They need ads like the iPad ads, which make you think if you pick one up you'll be composing music or creating paintings. It's like you NEED one to be modern. Either that or something totally edgy and different.

That said, I think Nintendo walked into a bit of a no-win situation against PS360. I still think it was wise to launch, but it was a bit of a difficult situation to try to win. Cheaper systems with WAY more games is hard to compete against.