Well, hopefully the games this last half of the year combined with serious price bundling during fall(holidays) will get WiiU to that 8-9m range they need to at least be on par with PS360's first full calendar year.

You got to XBox 360 with Kinect.

Lots of Wii only owners added either a 360 or PS3 over the years, which in a way has rendered the Wii U late and obsolete to most people. They already got an HD console, and can play games like Call of Duty and Batman just fine already.

Wii U needed to be designed moreso to compete in the next 5 years with the XB1/PS4 IMO, either that or they needed to come up with something radically new and different (like Occulus Rift VR or something) to differniate their console.

Either that or the people who were into Wii Sports 5-6 years ago, are just fine playing Angry Birds and Plants Vs. Zombies for $1 a pop on their phone/tablet. Nintendo courted the casual demographic, but I don't think it was everything they expected. They expected loyalty from this audience and that they'd eventually graduate up to playing 20-30 hour games like Metroid or Zelda, but that was never part of the life style these people wanted.

They like to play games once in a while in small and simple doses, and frankly the smartphone revolution fills that niche need in their life easily and cheaply.

I will always believe that they should have just spent all that money wasted on the Gamepad and put it into beefier specs. Then they should have packaged each console with a WiiMote+Nunchuck+Pro Controller. This would have allowed devs to create all types of games for the console, whether they be traditional controls or motion controls.

That and they need to understand that it's 2013 and releasing a co-op game like SM3DWorld with NO online is just terribly stupid. Yeah yeah, i've heard the bogus excuses about "precise jumps" and whatnot, but like I said, this is 2013 and tech can handle these bogus issues. People have for years been playing competitive online games that required quick reflexes and precision and it hasn't been an issue. I don't see how Mario is some sort of magical exception.

They need to get with the program because they are really lagging behind right now. They just seem lost. Come on, they still don't even have a proper unified online account system.

They have a lot of work to do.

Yes I agree with this.

And while the gamepad does add some things (like off-tv play) Nintendo has been very ineffective on getting that message out and it also cost them by increasing the cost of the system and losing the accessibility and 'swing' functionality of the wiimote needed for games like Wii Sports and Just Dance (yes you can still use a wiimote but that's not the selling feature here, it's sidelined).

However, I'll think PS4 to a lesser but still very significant degree will also suffer from this. PS4 games will be prettier no doubt - to the observant eye - but scarcely little else. Once the initial excitement wears off, it too will struggle without 'new' experiences that weren't possible before. It's one saving grace may ironically be PS3's cell architecture. XBO, PS4, 360, WiiU and PCs will all share similar architecture for programming. It will be easy and cost effective to port from one to another (with WiiU with it's gamepad being the least effective) however once games start being designed around the next gen consoles and PS3 user base fades (and it'll be quickest to move to next gen) having to have a seperate team to reprogram for the PS3's unique and not-very-programmer friendly cell processors will quickly become less and less desirable. So I can see 360 getting 'downports' long after PS3 downports have stopped, which only boosts PS4 adoption rates.

XBO can also fall into this but they are looking at doing things like Quantum Break and every system has Kinect now which opens up new possibilities. So for now it's a wild card. Could go either way.

I've actually sat down with friends of mine who were incredibly enthusiastic about the Wii 5-6 years ago and explained to them the concept behind the Wii U and everything about off-TV play and how it's a completely new console and they're still not that enthused by the concept.

It's just not that interesting of an idea, especially in the US, where the median household has 3 television sets. The video game console has co-existed with TV programming for 30 years now, if one person is playing a game while the other person wants to watch a TV program, in most households that person will simply just go to a different TV set in the house. It's not a big deal.

And you know the hoopla over this being the first Nintendo HD console ... well don't you kinda want to experience that on a 50-inch+ big screen set? The idea of playing the games on a fairly low quality SD resolution 5-inch screen (a retina display it ain't) kinda defeats much of the purpose of the hardware bump in the first place.