- Excellent performance at E3 2006

- Amazing games for everyone: Zelda, Wii Sports, Excite Trucks, Wario Ware, Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime

- New and exciting way to play with motion controls and a pointer as the main controller

- Easy to pick and play

- Differents ways to play: Wii Remote, Wii Remote horizontally as a NES controller, Wii Remote + Nunchuck, Clasic Controller, Nintendo GameCube controller for Virtual Console games

- Announced games for the blue ocean to be hyped: Wii Sports, Wii Music (lol), Wario Ware

- Announced games for the Nintendo userbase: TLOZ Twilight Princess (at launch!), Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3 Corruption, Super Smash Bros

- Announced games for the hardest of the hardcore: a brownish Zelda, Super Smash Bros, Red Steel (at that point nobody expected to suck so much)

- Brillian marketing with the "Wii would like to play" marketing campaing

- Post release, more support for blue ocean userbase with Wii Fit and Wii Play. More for Nintendo userbase with Super Paper Mario.

- First year in the market and the console already have Zelda/Metroid/Mario and in few months Super Smash Bros Brawl and Mario Kart Wii.

Will they understand one day?

People have short memories... But maybe with their next console... Or maybe when they come back from their terriable investor meeting...

Sighh I still don't get what they were thinking... Mehh games were shown on the e3 where wiiU launched and then they went for Nintendo Direct instead on the last e3... Its like a fail after a fail...

Agree. E3 2012 was a big dissapointment.

Wii at E3 2006:

- Wii Sports

- Zelda Twilight Princess

- Super Mario Galaxy

- Metroid Prime Corruption

- Excitetruck

- Red Steel (New IP)

Wii U at E3 2012:

- Nintendo Land (fireworks!)

- New Super Mario Bros U

- Pikmin 3

- The Wonderful 101 (New IP)

- Late ports

Oh I do believe that Nintendo knew what made the Wii a success, that exactly why they went with another "Weird" console.
Nintendo needs to find a way to help 3rd party developed games sell well on their consoles. Developers are tired of 2 things,
(1) Most of their games selling like shit, hence not making much profit.
(2) A console that is powerful enough to run their "online features" in their games and powerful enough on a whole.

That casual gamer will come and go, its the hardcore that will continue to place value in your console, Word of mouth spreads the buzz and the casuals jump on for the ride.
Her is the solution, Make a console that's catered to the "hardcore", release "games" that cater to the casuals.
Keep on Gaming.

They did that with the GameCube, or at least, partially.

Some of those points are good but it's also not that simple. Part of the success of the Wii was that it was something new and different. That degree of success would never have been replicated by a "Wii 2". I'm not saying it wouldn't have sold better than the Wii U, just that it would never have come close to equaling sales on the Wii.

Nintendo realized that, I think, and decided to go for another home-run rather than swinging for a single or a double. Of course, when you go for a home-run, the odds of striking out also go up.

First of all, Nintendo needs to throw away that "we don't follow what others are doing" philosophy. That only hurts your customers. When someone else comes up with something awesome, you integrate it into your own work as quickly as possible. Doing so in no way stops you from working on your own innovations, it just keeps you from falling behind. Their online services are at least a generation behind Sony and Microsoft and there is really no excuse for that.

It will be very interesting to see where they go with their next console, especially if they go back to a focus on motion controls. I think they could do well by having hardware that is only slightly behind Playstation and Xbox in power, has improved motion controls with a lot of content designed around it, has solid online functionality, and a more diverse selection of software.

It's too bad they "fixed" everything about the N64 (added optical discs, easy to program for) but then shot themselves in the foot by ruining everything the N64 did well. Enjoyed Super Mario 64, Zelda: OoT, and GoldenEye? We're going to completely change Mario and Zelda and sell off Rare entirely. Here's a slow paced Metroid FPS though with no multiplayer though. 

That and the baffling decision to make it a purple lunchbox. 

Give the GameCube proper sequels to Mario 64, Zelda: OoT, and GoldenEye/Perfect Dark early in its lifespan along with the Resident Evil exclusivity and dump the purple lunchbox design and it probably would've done much better. Mini-DVDs were ultimately pointless too. 

Nintendo needs to forget the Wii. It was a great thing that was timed perfectly, but it's been 8 years now. People have moved on, entertainment changes, trends are born and fizzle out. Chasing the Wii dragon is exactly what got them in the mess they're in now -- instead of making a proper system for the needs of the market in 2012, they made a system looking backwards. 

Wait... you think Smash Bros released within a few months of the Wii's launch? You know the latter came out in 2006 and the former in 2008 right?

It sounded like they never understood how the WII became a success seeing as how they now have a system that is flopping worse than gamecube.

They understood perfectly what made the system a success. Their interviews and statements from 2005-2008 demonstrated a level of insight and brilliance that was, quite simply, dazzling.

Then they started reading message boards and blogs, I guess, and thus the Wii U was born.