The fact that you have come to this conclusion from what I have posted tells me everything I need to know.

I am looking forward to next weeks numbers. Meet up here again and do this all over again?

I've read what you've written.  It is a whole lot of nothing trying to move discussion away from his awful predictions.  His argument was never that the Wii U will bomb but the PS4 and XBO will bomb even harder.  Regardless, they have shown that they so far are not following in the Wii U's footsteps.  A large portion of his OP was about third parties coming home to father Nintendo.  However in basically a single day, the PS4 already has multiple third party games ahead of the best selling third party Wii U game in the US.  We've only gotten UK charts for the XBO so far, but it seems a similar situation there too.  While the hardware sales numbers are still too early to say much about, the sales of third party software certainly are at odds with his arguments.

"If the Wii U sells thorugh 10 million units by the end of 2014 it could still be in a position to dominate the market if the PS4 and XBox One has only sold 3 million each."

How do you get even remotely close to this situation from the arguments in the OP?  If the entire console market is 16 million by the end of 2014 then consoles are pretty much finished.  Or are you going to say the 240 million lifetime prediction was just his special way of saying that the Wii U was going to bomb?

He's also mentioned Apple, smartphones, and tablets plenty of times in his various posts.  Do you think the sales of all of those will be under ~6 million in the next 13+ months?

It's funny that you want to give Lucas a chance to answer his post when you seem to have no problem dictating what he actually meant in his OP and telling others what they can and cannot post.  It has been six years since he made those first predictions about the Wii.  Can you show me all the times he has said his predictions were just window dressing and not meant to be taken literally?  I suspect he certainly wasn't saying that when he got his first one right, but maybe you just have a special insight into his mind.  Maybe you should have told him what his arguments were actually about before he made the 50 million 3DS prediction.

impertinence; to focus on one single aspect, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the following that I've been thinking about today:
A large part of the premise for the theory presented in the OP rests on 3rd parties being forced onto the Wii U due to massive spending and bloated budgets due to development costs, that much is clear to anyone.
Now, since the Wii U is HD and thus technically as expensive to develop for at a base level, what's to stop 3rd parties from simply scaling back their budgets on titles on other platforms rather than adopting a new and potentially unsafe development paradigm and environment?
The budget being the main concern, they would circumvent the need to get in bed with Nintendo, with their poor track record with 3rd parties and sales of their software and their small userbase and somewhat haphazard market aim in the home console market, it would make a lot more sense to go for the unspoken third option.

To me, it's not simply:

1: Go bankrupt

or

2: Embrace Nintendo as thy all loving father

You need to add;

3: Stay on the PS and Xbox but scale back budgets; On unified console architecture, it doesn't matter if the hardware is more powerful so long as the shaders and base chipset structure share the same basic composition and the output resolution remains 720 or 1080p regardless, a softer engine would also run very nicely on PS4 and One hardware, giving good and stable framerates. Not to mention the superior online component, presenting, among other things, a great digitial distribution opportunity, reducing costs further (The Wii U's small storage and inferior online solutions would hamper them in this regard).

The third option makes the most sense from a developers perspective, since a monopoly is never a good thing for consumers or developers, I hardly think replacing a semi-3rd party hegemony with a Nintendo monopoly is in anyone's best interest except Nintendo. This is also the most sensible perspective business-wise.
They might still port to the Wii U but they don't run the risk of falling under anyone's yoke again, like in the 1983-1994 period and they wouldn't be forced to publish on the one platform with, by far, the highest grossing and selling 1st party software.

The Wii had the advantage that it could boast a much cheaper and shorter development cycle, this is not true for the Wii U. Look at the PC, even through the last 3-4 generations of GPU's, development costs have risen only marginally and can likely be mostly attributed to inflation and salary index growth at any rate., and this is even on a non-unified architecture. Console programming is more costly but the massive increase in development costs between the 7th and 8th gen is a myth.

Numbers are precisely the point! If Nintendo is going to dominate, they're going to need the sales. Where are the sales! The PS4 has them, and the XBO as well. You could make a pretty strong case for either of them dominating this gen. But WiiU?! What does it have? It's been out for a year and hasn't even hit 4 million. That's below even the most pessimistic of predictions. 

LUCAS MADE A SALES PREDICTION FOR THE WIIU. IT WAS WRONG. SIMPLE AS THAT. He was so condident over his predictions. He couldn't even acknowledge the fact that the WiiU might fall short. Which it did, and that's an understatement. Now he's adjusting his numbers to ten million by year's end, which won't happen either. Lucas has refused to come out here and eat some well deserved crow so he deserves to get lambasted.  

I think for many studios the option will be to bow out of the AAA race or go bankrupt. I do agree that bowing out of the AAA arms race is not the same as switching to the Wii U. I do think however that if developers scale down their games it makes sense for them to support all three current gen consoles. (Assuming porting scaled down PS4 games to Wii U is trivial to very low impact, I don't know enough about the architectures to assert this for sure). So, in a sense, the idea that Nintendo will force third parties to support their platform makes a little sense if that is  what it comes too. I am not sure that this scenario is very different from what is cureently happening though. The bleeding edge AAA studios will still stay away and the Wii U already gets decent AA support if you will. Of course, there is also the posibility that developers will be shed off to the crimson red ocean of mobile gaming if they can't stomach the high cost of console gaming.

Another thing to consider is the oft referenced diminishing returns. I don't know that we are there yet, but at some point the difference between very very very high production values, and just high production values will be very small. So, even studios that have limited resources will be able to develop very good looking games for much smaller budgets. We're already seeing that some independent studios is putting out very good looking games on reasonable budgets. The cost of making a 7th gen looking game is much lower now then it was when the HD consoles first came out.

Of course, John Luacs' claim is that with third party support the superior craftmansship of Nintendo will erode the user base for Sony and MS. While I agree with him that Nintendo produces much higher quality games that any other developer, I don't share his optimism when it comes to the end consumer. I think the videogame audience is just as quality concious as the music audience or the movie audience. Meaning they will sink their money into the newest, shinest thing with the heaviest advertising. This is why I think the market will continue to gravitate towards very high production value and very low risk projects. If Nintendo is able to stay alive in this market, more power to them. I hope they do since I respect the commitment they have to investing as heavy in the playability of a game as the presentation.

The reason why I don't count Nintendo out of the race is because I have lived too long to make that mistake. If there is one company out there that can ignite the passion of a huge mass market it's Nintendo. They sold an $80 scale to millions of people. They created the game & watch hysteria. The X factor is Nintendo's ability to create phenomenons, which I think they do better than anyone. People say 'the casuals have moved on to tablets', and act as if that's where they will stay forever. There is no guarantee that Nintendo can't create the next disruptive gaming device or software that once again blows everyones minds. I think Nintendo has the most potential to pull out another home run like that, because they have done it before, and because it is not the focus of Sony or MS.

Overall though, finding that viral smash hit is difficult and probably won't happen. I think the 8th generation will see contraction across the board. If it is bad enough to force one, two or three players out of the game though? I don't know. 

The crux of the argument or prediction is that Nintendo will force unity in the market. He also predicts a general expension of the market as this happens. I don't think that is going to happen, but it is possible to have a full crash in the market. If PS4 pulls a Wii U for the next 2 years, what will Sony do about it? They might be forced out of this industry if that happens. Do I think it will happen? No. Do the launch numbers guarantee that it can't happen? No. Does Wii U selling over or under 12 million by the end of 2013 have any impact on this happening? Very little. Keep in mind, I am not predicting anything in this thread. At least not related to hard numbers. If a complete crash were to happen though, and Nintendo emerges as the only surviving console manufacturer, will you still say that this thread was a fail because Nintendo didn't sell 240 million, they only sold say 70 million and ended up with an 85% market share? If you understand what I mean in this paragraph you will understand the concept of the thread.

Also, I have never dictated what anyone means. I have read the thread and I am confident enough in my own reading comprehension to make a bold stetement about the intent of the OP. John Lucas is free to correct anything I have misinterpreted. It doesn't take any special insight into anyones mind to understand what they are saying, it just takes paying attention to what you are reading rather than looking for confirmation for your own ideas.

Bolded: You could. Go ahead and do it. John Lucas already did it for the Wii U, with less ammunition, give it your best crack.

Also, again, I know he made a prediction, I know it will end up being waaay too high. My point is that it's pretty irrelevant. Afterall, if the prediction misses the 2013 mark but everything else comes true, is the original crazy claim now worthless because the Wii U took off 6 months later than predicted? And please, don't take this as me thinking the Wii U will sell 240 million units.

They had the two biggest console launches in history. Hype is through the roof for both consoles. The WiiU is barely a competitor. Titanfall will be a huge system seller for XBO, as will Infamous Second Son for PS4. Unlike the WiiU, they're both going to have solid 3rd party support so no massive game droughts. Add in some indie support, they should easily take the top two spots this gen. Both the PS4 and XBO will outsell the WiiU by April, and that's a conservative estimate. 

There you go. I don't need 800 paragraphs of fanboy drivel to make an argument. 

Yes, you made an aregument for it. The challenge was to make a strong case for it though. If I am correct, your strong case reduces to this:

The PS4 and Xbox One have great hype, Wii U has no hype. PS4 and Xbox One will have 3rd party support. Wii U will not have 3rd party support. This situation will continue forever.

Seems to me this case relies heavily on projecting the snap shot of the launch week for both latecommers and doesn't take into a count a number of possible variables. The way I see it, there are two possible winners of this gen: PS4 or Wii U. PS4 will beat the Xbox One if it becomes a reace for the hardcore. They sell all over the world and is the darling of the mature gamers. If Nintendo pulls another rabbit or two out of their hat it will be last gen all over again. Yes, I assigned that much value to the strength of Nintendo's software that I don't discount the possibility that they might win the gen on the strength of their own software and ideas again. I don't think they will, but I am not going to sit here and pretend that it can't happen.