Considering Nintendo have revised a large chunk of their business plan, I'm not so certain a comparison between Wii U sales and N64/GC sales is as relevant as one might think. Changing a business strategy for a hardware platform 14 months after its release, the way Nintendo has done, is to my knowledge unprecidented. It could either;

1) Back fire; leading to even worse sales
2) Have no impact at all; leading to a sales curve similar to N64/GC
3) Become a success that will revive Wii U in ways impossible to foresee at the moment

Either way it will be interesting to see what happens. I fear it'll be a change too late.

With that said, I still believe Wii U has potential to reach 30 million systems life time if the new business strategy is executed flawlessly. Key to such sales is how fast the new strategy will come into effect. I do see Q1 and most of Q2 2014 a lost cause for Wii U. Nintendo can at the earliest revive Wii U in September/October, in conjuntion with the first signs of an implemenation of their new business plan. Q1 and Q2 of 2014 will be all about keeping the little momentum they have gained, with Q3 as the quarter where Nintendo might gain some momentum thanks to the legs of Mario Kart 8, and Q4 more like a possible "re-launch" window of the Wii U. The question is, does Nintendo have the resources to buy themselves that much time?

Nintendo's problem right now is software drought, related to a bleeding lack of third party support, in combination with restricted internal resources. I think Nintendo has adressed that problem in their new business strategy by licensing their franchises to thirdparty developers, as well as merging software development for 3DS with Wii U. However, this is something that won't come into full effect untill 2015.

Nintendo's next problem, and their absolute BIGGEST problem as I see it, is to keep retailers onboard long enough to introduce the new business strategy to the market. This problem isn't even adressed in their new strategy, which is alarming. I believe it'll be a costly affair to keep retailers interested in a product that doesn't sell. Quite frankly I'm not so sure it's even possible. This is the true achilles heel of Nintendo seen in a short term perspective.

Yeah, it's unlikely the Wii U will become a success at this point. 15-20m lifetime looks like a decent estimate unless they kill off the console prematurely. It's in a much worse position than the Gamecube was in:

- Dev costs are way higher than back in 2002 but the install base is lower
- Nintendo has problems with HD development and thus a lower software output
- Due to the 3DS struggling they had to allocate more resources to their handheld market
- The Gamecube was very cheap to produce, the Wii U is not due to the Gamepad
- With both the Wii U and the 3DS underperforming life cycles for both platforms will be shortened

The install base is too low to support profitable games. I'm damn sure Pikmin 3 didn't make a profit (selling worse than the Gamecube games and those games performed poorly enough to put the serious on hiatus for a decade!) and the same will happen to Bayonetta, X, Yarn Yoshi and maybe Donkey Kong as well. Basically, the only games that can turn a big profit on Wii U are low budget games like New Super Mario Bros., Wario Ware, Wind Waker HD and so on. Smash and Mario Kart should be profitable due to their high attach ratio but it won't be enough to offset losses on hardware.

Therefore, the Wii U will have long game droughts, a short life cycle and low budget games. Some games will get a big budget (Mario Kart, Smash, Zelda) due to their high popularity but most won't.

Long story short: the point at which the Wii U could've been a big seller is long past. All Nintendo can do now is reduce losses (or turn a slight profit), sit the generation out or do something drastic like cutting the gamepad or releasing a "third pillar" home console (think of an "Ultra Nintendo").

I'm not either, it has no future. :(

Good insight, and that's the next problem. I dabbled briefly on a possible solution here.

Every mayor entertainment company is opening their own shops to interact with the client. Be it retail or online. Apple, Microsoft and recently Samsung has started. Nintendo should aim to do it at least digitally, then they could sell their hardware and software by themselves.

This could be too costly to set up from scratch for Nintendo. But Nintendo already has some (http://store.nintendo.com for example), and they should expand to more countries similarly to what they are doing in the UK http://store.nintendo.co.uk which I think is done in collaboration with the Hut Group. They could also try make deals with Rakuten or even Amazon (in Europe everything seems fine, but America...)

With Nintendo's new direction of going account based instead of hardware, I think aiming for lower budget games is a win. You can still have a few big games, but everything else should be done fast and digitally. Let the competition go for big AAA production, while you go for a more stable development, this is similar to what they said they aimed with the Wii (SD instead of HD).

15-17 million would be what Wii U could max sell. This yeaar the droughts are even worse, it is down YoY in Japan, it's gonna be a terrible year.

I think they will beat last year's sales pretty soundly. Mario Kart 8, Smash Bros. U, and probably some kind of Pokemon NFC game will probably be their main drivers. 

That said I think it will still probably finish only around 20 million and make less money than the GameCube overall. 

Nintendo just can't sell more than that with their own games in the console space unless they have some kind of Wiimote like miracle idea to work with.