I always knew it would sell 30M lifetime since the gamepad gimmick wasn't clear or good enough and the hardware is dated.

Not to sound self-righteous, but I was pretty damn right on the money on a lot of things after their E3 2012 reveal. When they spent most of the show talking about third party support, that pretty much sealed the deal that the console would have a terrible first year. Nintendo pretty much tried to declare that they could just mosey on in and steal the hardcore audience, that they lost decades ago, from M$ and Sony. They released virtually no first party titles, combined with poorly made ports, and pretty much finished it with an almost nonexistent online service. I figured that Mario alone might at least help it at least compete with Wii, but at the end of the day, it just fell short. My guess at the time was about 6M sold by the end of 2013, and that might have actually been being too generous.

I said thirty million but at best forty million.

Yeah, This sums up my feelings as well. Never understood the abandonment of the Wii Remote for the Gamepad. Never thought The Wii U would be a success. But to bomb this hard? I'm not surprised. 

I had a bad feeling about it from reveal (which was a horrible reveal), but I never thought it would go this badly. They had that pre-launch Nintendo event with Bayonetta 2 unveiled and showed of Black Ops 2 and more NSMBU and I thought well OK, combined with the holiday shopping season it should have at least a good start. I also thought Nintendo Land might be a little more popular than it has been and that Zombi U would be more of a hit. 

I would not have expected Sega Saturn/Dreamcast levels of performance though, people say its another GameCube but it actually *needs* Mario 3D World to boost it to GameCube levels, its performing considerably worse than the GameCube.

thought bad but not this bad. thought maybe wii make name people buy but not happen

Agreed. They should have revamped the Wii mote, added a camera and functionality (similar to Kinect 2.0) to the sensor bar and called the damn thing Wii 2. Launch it at the same price point ($299-$399) by making the console slightly more powerful (4gb of ram,etc).

I agree, that would've sold more but I think Nintendo felt obligated to come up with some kind of new controller feeling like that was their ticket to success rather than being pragmatic about the situation. 

I think they still could've even had the tablet controller idea ... just bundle it with Nintendo Land like the Balance Board was bundled with Wii Fit. Basing the entire console around a controller that doesn't change the game play all that much and adds a hefty cost to the machine was a mistake. 

The Wii-mote is one of the most underrated and overlooked products in our time, it could have been great but remained a gimmick simply because very few, and often Nintendo themselves, refused to put any kind of work into developing the concept and actually implementing all the potential features it had.

Don't get me wrong, I personally love the gamepad and the innovation in games like Rayman Legends and ZombiU, reading articles and net browsing. The convenience of the second screen in a household of 5 was also a very big sell for me. Unfortuntely, the value has not been able to be convince  John Q. Public to go out and make a purchase in the way the Wii did.