Good enough for 3DS, quite bad for WiiU.

No way 3DS will sell that much. It will sell steadily for the next one or two years with good software support but sales we slow down drastically in the end. Other platforms like tablets are taking a piece of the market, leaving less room for the 3DS to sell big numbers. DS and PSP sold about 200 million but that market has to be shared more and more with other devices now so i expect 3DS and Vita to only get to about 90m-100m in total combined.

The Wii-U is in line with my expectation, though i would say 40 million in the end.

We could do that, but then it would be an incredible mess. First we would have to define who on these devices actually is a gamer. Does downloading one free game from the store make you one, should the system be counted? All the consoles tracked here are designated gaming devices, which smartphones are not. I don't think they should be tracked.

Both be disappointing.

I don't expect them to gain as much sales as their predecessors, but I'm hoping 3DS will get close to GameBoy numbers (which is 118m, 3DS at 110m should be a reasonable goal), anything under 100m is disappointing. I think Nintendo feels the same, they're going to want it in the same ballpark as the DS. For WiiU, of course it won't reach Wii numbers, but I think they can have more sales than pre-Wii eras. They should have too, if they still want profits. I think it'll end up at NES numbers. If it'll do as PS360 that'll be good, anything under 50m is disappointing.

as a whole i would say barely a success, 3DS numbers are good but maybe a tad low and WiiU numbers are alright but probably needs 40m+. btw GCN/GBA is the only time i would say they werent successful sales wise

I'm fine with the 3DS-number, although it would feel better if they get over 100 million. For WiiU I expected 50M/N64-sales before launch. I have a bit hope that with a recovery it might get that. 30M would be a disappointment.

The answer isn´t so simple...disappointment, according to my own parameters or Nintendo´s?

Disappointment, as in sales numbers or the profit that can be made in the end?

Anyway, in the OP you specifically ask what I and other posters think, so I´ll go with that, and the answer is now much simpler...well, if we´re talking about market performance, any system that sells considerably less than its predecessor is, by definition, a disappointment in my book.It might be profitable in the end and get great games, but it still remains a disappointment nonetheless, and I´d guess the company that made it would agree, simply due to the large amount of marketshare and mindshare that was lost.

Fair enough. Designated gaming devices only then. That means, with 95 million 3DS's and a lot less Vita's, the market is shrinking so Nintendo isn't doing enough to expand the market like it did with the DS. It might not result in a loss of market share but it will still be a failure compared to what the DS did for Nintendo.

This is a statement I can agree with, the market is indeed shrinking. But if Nintendo manages to increase the software-tie ratio to 1.33x the ratio of the NDS - which I think with the focus being more on the "hardcore" side this time will be possible - they will come out fine regardless.

Not necessarily. If the 3DS sells 1/3 of what the DS sold, it could still improve in market share if the Vita sells less than 1/3 of what the PSP sold, which is very likely.