I hope he isn't being facetious. Saying things will be "interesting" this holiday. I also wonder if those special things are game related or something to do with the OS, services, pricing, or bundling.

The Wii U is going to continue to sell poorly until the holiday season, when Nintendo makes a huge push with their major franchises: Mario platformer, Mario Kart, Wind Waker HD, and maybe something from Retro (Smash Bros probably won't come out until some time next year). At this point, Nintendo fans are going to be partying, talking about how great the Wii U is and how it's all sunshine from here on out.

Trouble is, 3rd party games on the Wii U are probably going to struggle, and despite an uptick in hardware sales over the holiday, publishers are going to be just as wary about the Wii U as they are now, likely leading to another software drought in 2014.

The question, then, is how far Nintendo's traditional franchises will take them, how many Wii U consoles can be sold solely on the strength of Mario and Zelda.

Cool. This summer will be gaming heaven. The games coming out and my already huge backlog will keep me busy.

The only reason they backed out of the media conferences (not E3 altogether) is because they have a more direct means of information dissemination now.

Rumor is that they're 're-releasing' it come christmas with a slew of first party titles, expected ones and unexpected. Hence the focus on the 3DS at Nintendo Direct as of late.

I wouldn't call know franchise 1st party games special things lined up as we know they exists.

New IPs and some exclusive 3rd party support would be special.

that may be the case but gamers christmas is e3 lol.  its like waiting for the sears christmas catalog to come.  yeah i remember catalogs pre internet so what sue me

I never claimed that they used to do soft launches.  I'm saying that they now do softlaunches. It's the 3ds strategy all over again. That much is quite obvious.  The wii was a success a lot sooner than they expected it to be. But even the Wii had several promised features which were not yet available when the console launched.   Thanks to a controller that an idiot could try once and love and the delay of a gamecube zelda game the system was an instant success.

So you are holding out for the vitality sensor and a blow job simulator before you are ready to make the plunge?

They pretty much have a stead flow coming now. Lots of key ubisoft games and this month we're getting Dues Ex and Resident Evil Revelations. Nintendo has also made partnerships on collaborative efforts which they have not yet announce.  I'm expecting a year over year over year improvement in games fro the system from 3rd party developers just like the 3ds.