PS3 and 360 will have some legs for a time yes, probably one or two years and will continue to compete not only with WiiU but also PS4 and 720. When they won't have any legs anymore then WiiU will be against PS4 and 720 and that's when publishers will decide which ones to support or not and this decision will be based a lot on their respective installed base.

I’m truly amazed to see how many people on boards like this one are pessimists about the fate of the WiiU. Even more on a topic like this one:

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=157842

it seems that at least the majority truly believe that the situation of the console can be compared to the Vita. That’s really mind-blowing for me as I certainly have no idea how you can think something like that if you have any understanding about this market. So I’m going to tackle the main used arguments in order to prove that believing the console  is in a really bad position right now is nothing less than totally ridiculous to say the least.

“The Wii U doesn’t sell well right now so its concept has to be bad and so the console is necessarily doomed”.

Few things are stupid about that. First there is nothing more important than games to sell a console. Even a console with a very bad concept like the 3DS which main selling point hardware- wise (3D) appeared to be not attractive at all to the mass market managed to become a huge success and destroy its main competitor. So as long as a console will have great games and killer apps it really doesn’t matter if it has a great concept or not. I think the concept of the WiiU is great by the way but even if it wasn’t the case it would still sell tremendously well if it has the right games. The WiiU lakes games right now, that's really its only important problem.

“The Wii U isn’t selling well so it is in a similar position as the Vita”

That’s again a totally stupid statement. There are two major differences between WiiU and Vita. When the latter one released its main competitor had an advantage in terms of installed based of few millions copies. Now this advantage is even more important of something like 25 Mns. When publishers decides to release a game on a platform rather than on another one that’s the point they are looking at : which of these platforms have the biggest installed base. That’s the main point to consider in order to predict how well a hardware will do in the future. The WiiU on the other hand has still no competitors so even if it doesn’t sell well those sales still represent an advantage that it will have against PS4 and 720. WiiU has also already a lot of killer apps announced or to expect (Wii Fit, Wii Sports, Mario Kart, Mario 3D, Animal Crossing…) while Vita has none.

“WiiU is last gen hardware wise so you have to compare its sales and installed based to the ones of the PS3 and 360”

Stupid argument, sorry, again. It doesn’t matter what is your definition of “next gen”. Whatever it is the WiiU will be a direct competitor for most of its life-time of the next consoles from Sony and MS not of the old “HD twins”. Comparing the sales of the WiiU with those consoles doesn’t matter at all because those will last at best 1 or 2 more years and will be soon forgotten by developers. On the other hand those developers will compare the sales of the WiiU, PS4 and 720 to know which consoles they will have to support in the future.

“The Wii U is in the same situation as the gamecube so Nintendo games won’t save it”.

See what I wrote about Vita because this is the same situation in terms of advantage/disadvantage in terms of installed base. The WiiU in fact is the first Nintendo console that will have such an advantage since… the NES. This is a huge difference. Compare to the GC the WiiU will have an advantage of something close to 10 Mns probably instead of the disadvantage GC had of even more than that so the difference between the two situations will be very important. In terms of games Nintendo has a lot of very big IPs that it didn’t have in the GC area: Wii Sports, Wii Fit, New Mario (already released yes but more is coming with Luigi and this game will sell a lot of WiiU again when the hardware will be at a more affordable price for casual gamers), Animal Crossing (which will sell certainly really well thanks to off tv), DKC… And Mario Kart is much stronger than what it was at this time.

“When PS4/720 will released noone will care about Wii U”

 The whole gaming history shows us that hardware power is not that important at all and some people still think that this aspect will help the next consoles to sell much better than WiiU? Really? Those consoles will for sure released and a very high price and will have no killer apps as big as a what WiiU should have this fall: Mario Kart probably and Mario 3D, Wii Sports to follow in the coming months after that. How exactly can the PS4 and 720 have any chances to sell better than the WiiU in the last months of 2013 and first half of 2014? PS3 and  360 will also compete against those consoles even more thant they are competing with WiiU right now as most of the games those next consoles will have will be cross-gen.

 “The casual gamers abandoned Nintendo and won’t come back”

This is based on nothing than pure pointless speculation. There is no argument at all that proves that many millions of casual gamers aren't going to buy a WiiU just to play Wii Fit, Wii Sports or MK among others. Nintendogs and BT didn’t sell well on 3DS because there are a lot of clones on mobile phones for dirt cheap but there are no competent clones of Wii Fit on any hardware and the only alternatives to Wii Sports are released on other consoles for a similar price. Some people assume that casual got bored about those kind of games and never will buy the next ones but this again is pure speculation based on nothing substantial. If casual gamers were disappointed by WS or WF, their Wii and consoles in general why were they millions to buy WF Plus and WS Resort, but also Just Dance, Zumba Fitness or Kinect?In terms of casual games Nintendo still have by far the best selling franchises so there is no way that Sony and MS will have this market. Even if the WiiU fails to have the hardcore gamers it will still sell really well thanks to that and there is no reason to think otherwise.

“Developpers have already decided to not support the WiiU”

Wii U is certainly not their highest priority right now which is logical because the PS3 and 360 are still an active market but that doesn’t mean it will get worse and worse. In fact with the increasing installed base and the fact that the real competitors aren’t released yet it can only become better and better. Most developers won’t have also to choose between WiiU and PS4 or 720 because most “next gen” engines are already compatible with PS3 and 360 and so can be ported to WiiU too:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=502013

 UE4 is more the exception than a strong trend and even this one certainly will be highly scalable even if most of its graphical but gimmicky features will require strong hardwares.

And I could go on and on. I think that if you think the WiiU is right now really in a very bad position you are just totally missing the whole picture.

By the way my native language is not English so sorry for the possible grammatical mistakes.

Wii sold well because of motion controls. How you can even argue against this is beyond me. That's the whole reason people - casuals and hardcore alike wanted it, because it was different and so easy to use a monkey could do it. Wii Sports didn't revolutionize gaming, it was actually quite terrible all things considered. It was the motion controls that made that game famous.

"Casual IPs aren't released yet" - ZZZzz, nothing is released yet. That's part of the problem. Not enough games!

The casual gamer has no need for Wii U when they can continue to buy casual games for Wii...or their android/iphone/tablet device.

Yes, I personally think Wii U will turn things around but not as much as most hope or want. That doesn't change the fact though that the longer Nintendo takes to act to turn it around the more the Wii U will be damaged. I personally think the Wii U will settle at 45mil but can see myself reducing that number if Nintendo is expecting things to turn around just from their original strategy. Basically, the here and now and way things are looking up the Wii U will turn into a Game Cube until Nintendo reacts (which they have shown no signs of yet) and until then I think it's justified.