I imagine it will help, but not sure how one quantifies success or not for the Wii U. If it sells 50 million+? If it turns a profit?

MKDD was still financially rewarding for Nintendo. Roughly half of the GameCube owners in the world bought that game. That's a higher attach rate than any other Mario Kart game since.

Not true. Last chances will keep on coming. Just wait and see for yourself.

I see it the other way around. Mario Kart 8 will miss out on millions of sales because of the small Wii-U install base. It's not how much good it can do for WIi-U sales, but how damaging WIi-U will be to Mario Kart sales.

We are talking about saving the Wii U's sales numbers, not Nintendo's pockets (which are in good shape). While the game might (probably will) have a nice attach rate, it will take a herculean effort to dig the Wii U out from where it is atm.

I really don't care. As long as I get good games, Nintendo just needs to keep doing what they know how to do best. They've got more money than they know what to do with and they're in 0 debt. They owe everyone nothing, unlike other companies. So, the Wii U may fail but it won't dent Nintendo that much. Hopefully Mario Kart will pull through but even if it does, I'm optimistically forecasting about 4-5 million copies.

Unless I am wrong, I hope I am. The Mario Kart brand is stronger than any other of Nintendo's franchises right now so I guess it is up to that franchise to save the Wii U's skin for now. We still have Smash Bros. and the New Zelda. After that damage has been done, we'll be able to make viable conclusions about the Wii U.

If this doesn't work then the WII U will be finished for the most part and it will continue to go on the path of irrelevancy just like the vita.

I really think the only chance it has to be a big difference is if it's bundled. The Mario Kart bundle was huge for the Wii, granted that it was already doing much better than the Wii U is before the bundle.

Yea because fuck smash bros, right?