You guys know that retail has to be cooperative with console manufacture to win right? This holiday x1 and ps4 will have the majority of shelf space and be focal point. There is no way retail will allow huge shipments coming off last year where it took months to sell stock. This will limit the Wii U. Ps4 and x1 will look more impressive and retail will get behind them for the following year too.

if it's nintendo, it will never be called impressive.

I don't know how that DS analogy helps you, cause while, yes of course the 3DS does better than at its release it's still nowhere near DS levels, also most of it's success has to be attributed to Japan where there is still a large dedicated handheld market and one would be very ignorant to say that the 3DS is not the best choice in that department. In the west the 3DS is only barely, if at all outselling the PS3 and Xbox 360 which are both 7-8 year old consoles. But all in all the 3DS never had the kinda problems the Wii U has.

And yes the majority of those problems boil down to the controller, since Nintendo wanted the Controller but also keep the price more or less affordable they made the console noticeably weaker than both the Sony and Microsoft competitor, which didn't garner them any points with the Core or Dudebro gamer, which they tried to appeal to as well, if we remember the E3 where they unveiled the console.

Now the Casuals why do you think they stuck to the Wii? Because it was hip because it was easy to understand and intuitive use for anyone and because the whole thing was new. Does any of that in your opinion apply to the Wii U? No, it cannot in any way be considered hip, cool or anything along those lines. The controller is a tablet with buttons, doesn't seem very intuitive to me. And also it's nothing new either not from the control standpoint and not from a games standpoint, just releasing the games that Nintendo has been releasing for upwards of 25 years now is not suddenly gonna make all the casuals that have already found a new toy come back to Nintendo.

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@bold:  I seriously doubt that.  Even if Nintendo fails to ever deliver a massive, breakout hit that makes the people/market flock to the dynamic that the Gamepad brings, it'll still be more accepted than the 3DS' 3D effect.  Just being able to play many games off-screen alone is far more useful.

Let's put it this way; Nintendo is already releasing the 2DS.  If they eventually release a WiiU SKU without the Gamepad, then we'll talk.

sales are still really poor to be honest. A gain is a gain though so congrats.

BTW - math in OP is wrong. It would bring last weeks numbers to 9,953 in UK

Even i f nintendo wanted to ditch the gamepad they cant. Instead youd just see a new console introduced and the wii u life cut short.

The ipad is hip. It's just a tablet. I mean we can spin hip any way we want to. Do you remember when MS tried to make a tablet and it was unhip and royally failed? I do!

Yes, the U attempted to cater to the core, but it was bad timing. The core needs to be catered to, but only once the platform had established its success. They missed the opportunity on the Wii, they should have waited to make it a reality on the U.

Now, luckily they are remedying that situation. True the controller keeps the pricepoint up, but the low performance keeps it down and I wouldn't be surprised to see Nintendo pull a 3DS on the U to make it affordable and incur a small loss, all the while pushing the U to low-cost so as to return to profitability quickly. The padlet is a necessary value add. True that it being single-touch is a let-down to many consumers, at the same time that reality is acceptable due to the DS' success with similar technology.

As for Japan, that's a completely different beast, but still the market for the U is at least that of the Wii, and given the popularity of 3DS software, with the U following in that pattern we can see a successful U even there. But the true win region of the U will be the US and Europe over time, where home consoles are much more saught after relatively to portables and japan.

I won't say you don't make good points, but yes I see the 3DS and U resurge in the near future due to success with families, good price & good software and the holidays. The price still may be a bit steep on the U, so that may hinder a bit. But if holiday 2013/early 2014 doesn't cause the U to jump back then holiday 2014/early 2015 will. And if that doesn't then I'll say the U is dead.

Cool.

When I went to get my Wind Waker LE pre-order at that very store, I saw a whole stack of pre-ordered Wind Wakers (regular edition, they only had a couple LE's per store which were all sold-out in a matter of hours) on the counter and a decent amount of pre-ordered WiiU bundles behind it. I assume they all got picked up, and that every store had a similar amount. Good times!

Netherlands is a mediocre Nintendo-market in Europe. Not the smallest, not the biggest.