What are you talking about?  Plenty of people thought it could dominate and perform like the DS.  Even a few months ago people were still championing the "selling faster than the DS" mantra despite it only being true in the US, and even then only because it hadn't hit the 2006 holidays yet.

Last year (in the prediction thread) only 3 people predicted lower than the actual sales.  And when I say lower, it was 14m/14m/13m, compared to 14.4 million sales.  Compared to 57 people expecting higher sales.  28 of them expecting 20 million or more.  Even for this year, the average prediction is 15.66 million.  If the 3DS manages to blow things out of the water this holiday, there will still be at least a few who predicted higher.

The 3DS hasn't even hit a single one of Nintendo's forecasts.  I don't know where you get the impression that every single person thought the 3DS would do worse than it is.

I won't call domination this year (obvious reasons).  However, I expect Wii U to dominate PS4 and Xbox one next year once MK and Smash are released.

N64 was considered a very successful system in its time. Not as big as the PS of course, but still successful. I did not know until a few years ago that the PS sold so much more than the N64. I thought the N64 was way more popular. I guess people just had a lot of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark Parties, so it seemed like everyone had one.

Anyways. When the Wii U does better than that, people will finally be somewhat satisfied.

I just think you're assuming much. You are thinking the general consumer cares about having a really big HDD and is willing to pay extra for it. I dont think that is the case.

I can buy all sorts of games on the cheap on amazon aswell. I dont need to pay a lifetime ps plus sub to do it. Also online play is free on the Wii U while its paid on the PS4. That is another piece of monetary motivation you are underestimating.

The Wii U will be cheaper and have more must-have titles next year. Of course, that can change the following year but with the current information that is the case.

I will remind you that Microsoft also assumes consumer will want the more expensive Xbox one because of the kinect. As someone said, assumption is the mother of all f*** ups.

That's what I wanted to say. Vita has shown similar patterns, good boosts only single big titles but fell back after some time. Anyways, as the end of the year looks a bit better games-wise I think the WiiU can stabilize on a higher niveau. But not high enough to be a substantial hurdle to the PS4 or XBOne to overcome in sales.