I honestly believe that the biggest reason for the lackluster sales is the name of the system.  I think using the Wii name again was a huge mistake given the core market for the console.  The Wii was bought primarily by parents for their children.  It was bought by a lot of people who did not previously own a console and aren't considered "hardcore".  When a child asks his parent for a Wii U I would assume that the initial reaction by the parent would be to think, "I already bought you a Wii."  The system would have been more successful if they used a 2 instead of a U, but using the Wii name at all was a big mistake.

None of those. It's selling badly because the non-existant software support Wii received after 2010.

Lack of games.
Software sells hardware, and the Wii U has a serious lack of compelling software.

It surely needs a price drop, at this price point Nintendo can't take off even if more games are available.

Using the Gamecube as an example of how WiiU's future will be is erroneous because the circumstances are different.

And we have no idea how the new consoles will be doing at this stage in their lives. The affordable PS3 and 360 and their robust libraries are tough competition right now for any new, more expensive console, and this could prove true for their successors as well early on.

There`s no point in trying to compare GC to Wii U in terms of franchises.
GC could have the best Mario, the best Zelda, the best Mario Kart and it still wouldn`t make a difference. As didn`t for MS in regards to Halo.

How could you compete when you arrived late to the market to compete with the successor of PS1, a machine that everyone wanted, that had all kinds of games and also played DVDs (was cheaper at that too)? And in Nintendo`s case, it already had lost badly to PS1 because the big franchises simply weren`t there or arrived too late. Not to mention it`s kiddie fame.

What happened in that generation isn`t going to repeat itself.
Wii U might have started on the wrong foot, but that`s something that can be adressed with time. 2 and half bad months and people are already calling it dead. PS3 didn`t start well and look where it is now.

The Wii brought something good and something bad to Wii U.
The good is that it exposed it`s franchises to a very wide audience and people liked it.
The bad is that because AAA 3rd party games weren`t there and Nintendo basically didn`t support Wii for almost two years - very few exceptions aside -, Wii U is also suffering from that. And that takes time to change, to assure gamers that they can find what they are looking for on Wii U aswell. Now and in the future.

Its probably down to a combination of reasons. Regardless I think the main reason is Nintendo napalmed their user base with the Wii.

They did a great job selling the Wii to casual gamers, yet the problem is casual gamers are not the vanguard of next generation console consumers.

Theres probably loads of other reasons, but personally I might pick up the console eventually, it does look really good. They just haven't accrued a strong enough fan base.

Haven't read a single response, just the op. Without question its current low weekly sales are primarily because of the wii. Nintendo's image went from gamers to grandmas with that system and no very little of the HD twins crowd considers Nintendo a serious platform to play on.

Games and everything are much smaller factors this early in a system's life.

And perhaps you didn't take into account that many didn't give a shit about those titles? the only one that got my interest in the slightest was FFXIII, and that was pretty short-lived.

Once again, the Wii sold VERY decently, DESPITE being underpowered. Your argument makes no sense to the original question, which was the WiiU console's lackluster sales.

So tell me, why would it be the "underpowered" reason if the Wii has disproven such a thing? surely such an underpowered console of the current gen wouldn't come CLOSE to 100 million, right? I'd love to hear your reasoning behind this crap.

All the advertisements from Nintendo on the commuter trains are the same, they just show a family using it as a karaoke machine. I see them every day too, they advertise a lot.

OT: I voted the gamepad, because I think the concept behind the console is flawed. Having on gamepad and asymmetric gameplay are very hard to sell to the market that made the WiiU successful. No matter how many games or what games come it will never be as successful as Wii. Plus the gamepad made the console that much more expensive. It's a design flaw.

Of course it goes without saying games will help sales though, but I think they will remain "lackluster".