Why Captain Why??????? Just give it a chance! Not even a year, everybody needs a chance, i can understand if like all major games would have come out and it had a major price cut! You need to be patient. PSV,PS3,3DS are/were in the same predicament(with minor differences) and they all came out fine right?

Dont pull a Pachter on us pls, thank you

think about why did n64 and GC fail in sales, the problem is just not about power for Nintendo, its also the way they market there consoles and very poor third party support, they hit gold with motion controls, other wise you would have another GC/N64 but with out the power and with out online play, which played a huge role this gen. for nintendo to get back in the console race now there gonna need to come up with something ground breaking and sony/microsoft to make huge mistakes.

You really have to love how the OP opens the thread title itself by claiming "sensible discussion only, no flaming", impling both that he KNOWS he's going to be flamed, and also presenting a paradox, because the very statement "Stick a fork in the Wii U, it's done", when the shit has ONLY been out a few months with NO major first party titles outside of NSMBU , IS NOT an example of "sensible discussion".

Sorry Chet. You lost before you even started. These Wii U doom threads aren't even old anymore, there's just laughable.

The general consensus in the internet is a very volatile thing. If you read my posts, the consensus 4 months after launch was that the 3DS was doomed. Yet here we are. The internet is not a place of inteligence, unfortunely. Its a place where people jump to conclusions and overeact.

Just no... Firstly the range of 15-40m is just silly, they represent completely different levels of success.

The minority (hardcore gamer), who will pick up a wii U+ Ps4 probably in that order if a price cut happens (or just a wii u for hardcore ninty fans), will see the system to 20m units no problem. I'm someone who loves to hate on the Wii U because the hardware is completely underwhelming (specs+the control), I will however definitely be getting the system the minute we've got a next gen line up of 3D mario, Mario kart, smash bros, Zelda, Metroid etc. Also have no doubt that zelda, mario and Metroid will have next gen level visuals and that in itself will make them a huge draw over what their counter parts did on the wii (metroid especially).

Price Cut... The amount of times I've heard people say nintendo can't afford a price cut... Their bank reserves are deeper then any of us can imagine. When they make billions on 1 software title, on a system they had been selling at a profit from day 1 (wii)...believe me they can afford do a really drastic price cut on the wii U. Just as they did the 3DS. The reason why they have yet to implement one is because they have zero games to promote it with. A price cut at this point would just be throwing away money for a few thausand sales in each region.

Mario Kart- When mario kart arrives, so will a decent portion of consoles gamers and parents buying consoles for their kids, along with other initiatives the wii U will likely reach 40-50m

@OP:
The current situation is not rosy, but your minimum prediction is too low:

Ninty, thanks to its classic exclusives, should already have 20M granted, and despite them being extremely casual, and being very pessimistic about them too, we can still think that 5M of Wii users not fans of classic Ninty, but just new Wii stuff, could upgrade to Wii U, and then we can still add another 5M totally new users, so IMVHO 30M should be the minimum lifetime sales.

Also, Ninty, even when having stellar success, always avoids like the plague growing too much and fast and becoming bloated, it prefers temporary HW shortages and periods of sparse SW releases to it, so, as usual, it will be fine even with numbers that would keep MS and Sony in the red.

the WiiU is far to outdated to survive in this current market, the wii only got away with this due to it's motion controller, there was nothing like it, which drove customers to it, while the wii u just a PS3/360 with a tablet..

this wouldn't be a bad thing, if the ipad didn't exist though :P

i predict 19m-35m LT

ninjablade said:
think about why did n64 and GC fail in sales, the problem is just not about power for Nintendo, its also the way they market there consoles and very poor third party support, they hit gold with motion controls, other wise you would have another GC/N64 but with out the power and with out online play, which played a huge role this gen. for nintendo to get back in the console race now there gonna need to come up with something ground breaking and sony/microsoft to make huge mistakes.

zippy
Good post Ninja, you have mentioned something that many people refuse to think possible..Microsoft and Sony may make fundamental mistakes themselves, mistakes arent just exclusive to just Nintendo. If Sony or Microsoft overprice their consoles or have hardware issues again the ball drops back in Nintys court.
There are a lot of baseless predictions going on recently about consoles we know very little about.

Yep, no quality third party games that you can't get for the other systems. Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate is crap.

Flamebait title that then says no flaming.

You then say you recently came to this conclusion and then you go on to list points that have already been made in the past. So you are either slow or you are trolling.

The console is underpowered and third party support will be limited, both of these things also applied to the Wii. The only thing the Wii U needs is software that will appeal to a broad audience.

So it really is too early to tell, it all depends on what games Nintendo releases.