This. Each fans respective company just came off of huge wins and they are/were overconfident. The Wii U will not be a commerical failure, but anyone who thinks it will mimic the success of the wii is fooling themselves. (much the same as PS3 was not a failure but was in no way near as succsessful as the PS2)

Gamecube didn't have a whole lot of games. It had some gems sure, but ps2 had all the games that everyone wanted to play.
new games can make a difference. But it's going to take more than just Nintendo's offerings to attract people to the wii u. Or it will end up being gamecube 2.0. Lego City undercover is a good start, but let's be honest. It's not a system selling game. And it also doesn't say a lot when a lego game is your best offering.

Im not bashing Lego City. I am currently playing it and absolutely loving it.

GameCube's lack of DVD playback, kiddy-looking design, and lack of certain major 3rd party AAA games, most notably the GTA series, is what kept it at third place for most of last gen. The Wii would have killed to have the library the GC had.... the only reason it sold as well as it did was because of the motion controls and Wii Sports being a pack-in.

I'd say it's the other way around.

Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 kill Sunshine, Mario Kart Wii beats Double Dash, Twilight Princess Wii and Skyward Sword top GC Twilight Princess and Wind Waker, Donkey Kong Country Returns kills Jungle Beat, GCN doesn't even have a 2D Mario...

Many factors actually:

1. YES Games was one of them - PS2 had: GTA, FF, MGS etc..
2. People conform to what is seen as cool by majority - The GCN was purple and looked like a lunch box, if you owned one you would be considered an outcast.
3. PS1 momentum
4. DVD Player (same for PS3 the BluRay player is what sold the console before the price drops and big games come out, reason I know is because they were advertising the system as the cheapest BluRay player on the market in AUS at one stage, and that is also played games, PS3 - $699-$1000, BluRay Player was $1200-$2000).



Now to say Wii U games excuse is weak is not entirely correct.

A console when it launches NEEDS games to sell it in the early stages of being established, or another feature that makes it stand out (like the PS3 as mentioned above).

I bet if GTA and FF suddenly become Wii U exclusives, aside from the uproar on the internet and threats of mass, suicides, people would shit and by the Wii U,

This happened in the PS1 era, when FF shifted to PS1 and other great JRPGS game to PS1, people followed, hence why you now see many NES/SNES games on Playstation systems.

And that's pretty much the entire Wii lineup worth owning.  GC also had Pikmin 1 + 2, SSBM, Rogue Squadron 2+3, RE remake 0 and 4, Prime 1 + 2, F-Zero GX, Eternal Darkness, Paper Mario: TTYD, Starfox Adventures, and a bevy of major 3rd party games compared to its predecessor and successor.

The overall quality of the GC's software lineup was much greater than the Wii's... especially when you consider the fact that since the end of 2008, the Wii has had only a handful of AAA games released for it... NSMB, DKCR, Zelda SS, and Xenoblade if you want to throw that in too.

The Wii's got superior versions of Prime 1 and 2 in trilogy, as well as RE4, plus Xenoblade, Monster Hunter Tri, Sin & Punishment 2, Tatsunoko vs Capcom, Rayman Origins, Goldeneye 007, Okami, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Kirby's Epic Yarn,  No More Heroes 1 & 2,  Red Steel 2, Project Zero 2, The Last Story, Pandora's Tower, Little King's Story, Wii Sports Resort... significantly better library than GC overall. GC enjoyed more mainstream third party support, (though less quirky unique stuff) but its inferior 1st party  content lets it down.

Most things that you said are subjective. Metroid/Geist/Eternal Darkness/Resident Evil 0 are great core exclusives to me, it looked awesome(IMO) in black and had a nice handle so you could carry it easily around, the controller was the best of its time in terms of confort. It is a fact, though, that it didn't had DVD playback. Still, it doesn't make sense why it sold that badly, I tought people bought VG consoles to play games, not to watch movies.

Are you quite sure?

You mean the 3D Mario that is often considered the worst of the bunch,

the Zelda game that EVERYONE b!tched about being too cartoony,

The continued lack of any kind of 2D Mario,

The loss of Rare and all of their IPs to Microsoft,

The strange gameple of Double Dash that only appealed to a certain segment,

The F-zero games that barely sold,

Metroid prime that......Nah Metroid was awesome and was imeidiatly recognized for being awesome from the beginning, but it has never been a Nintendo blockbuster.

and a couple of third party games.

Even if many of the games I mentioned are looked back at fondly now, their reception was the worst of any Nintendo's games, both critically and from the fans.  The amount of experimentation  with the Gamecube was rediculous and the results are not surprising.  The Wii U will not make the same mistakes, and then there are always the problems of the DVD and internet and everything else mentioned in this thread.

The truth is as great as Nintendo is, buying an entire hardware platform for primarily the software of one company doesn't fly to the mass market.

It's not just Nintendo, I wouldn't buy a $350 console just to play Capcom games or Square-Enix games or EA games tied to mediocre third party support.

Ever since the SNES, Nintendo has put themselves behind the 8 ball with each of their consoles by not securing proper developer support.

That's all there is to it.

The only difference with the Wii was the Wiimote created the perfect miracle combination of "get up off the couch" casual gaming, but that has run its course and isn't unique anymore, and that audience are now getting the limited gaming fix they need in their life from tablets/phones at a price Nintendo can't compete with ($50 for one game or $1 for 5-6 games?).

Nintendo is fighting the good fight, but they have to travel uphill every time by having to carry the entire load of a console on their shoulders. Sony/MS have it easy, they get all the developer support and can chime in with 2-3 good 1st/2nd party exclusives a year (and MS hasn't even bothered to meet that criteria the last few years, lol, but no prob, they still get Call of Duty, Bioshock, Madden NFL, GTAV, etc.).