One would logically think that if people were indeed getting tired of Nintendo consoles, then Nintendo would do something to get the audience interested in their consoles once again.

Well, I had a Wii and I loved it but I had to ignore a lot of flaws with the console.

"Oh, those graphics aren't so bad."
"Oh, the motion controls work well enough"
"Oh, I didn't really want to play online."
"It's okay. I didn't really want to browse that porn site."
"Oh, I aleady have a DVD player (yeah, I said "aleady" instead of "already")."
"Oh, I don't need any memory. An SD card transfer for my games is good enough."

As a consumer, I shouldn't have to apologize for my product. I just focused on the good that was done in spite of the limited hardware. Yes, I love Nintendo and I was happy to see them doing well but they were doing well at MY expense. I'm forgiving but a lot of gamers probably weren't.

Now, the Wii U in my opinion is an all around great console. It deserves better sales but Nintendo burned a lot of people last gen. They tricked them into buying a Wii. Fans flock towards the hardware that they feel is the best (which is why 360 and Wii caught fire last gen and why PS4 caught fire this gen) but they also don't forget when they got burned (which is why Dreamcast suffered and why Xbox One might suffer). Even me, I put off buying a PS3 because my PS1 and PS2 broke multiple times, causing me to re-purchase the consoles.

TL:DR--the Wii U has to pay the price for being weaker and, like the Dreamcast, it has to pay for the sins of the father.

Nintendo is like a sports team that has one really good player that plays his heart out and puts up spectacular stats ... but the rest of the team around him constantly lets him down. 

EAD is a crown jewel developer, but Nintendo is constantly being let down by bizarre management decisions, poor third party relations, slow moving leadership, no concept of the Western market, etc. etc. etc. 

As such they're a great player ... but the team rarely wins anything. 

The Wii was like one miracle playoff made by said team after a few losing seasons, but it was a bit of a mirage and now things are back to normal. 

Nobody wants a heavy tablet that cannot even be used mobile and 5 year old, outdated hardware without any games, real online modes or 3rd party support, the Wii-U is a complete design failure and it is Nintendos fault.

But maybe the Wii U is replaced much sooner than everybody thinks by a new and more powerful version with real mobile game support. My interpretation of the recent 'Nintendo Fusion' rumors is that the fully backwards compatible system will be announced at this years E3.

FUSION DS

CPU: ARMv8-A Cortex-A53 GPU: Custom Adreno 420-based AMD GPU
COM MEMORY: 3 GB LPDDR3 (2 GB Games, 1 GB OS)
2 130 mm DVGA (960 x 640) Capacitive Touchscreen
Slide Out Design with Custom Swivel Tilt Hinge
Upper Screen made of Gorilla Glass, Comes with Magnetic Cover
Low End Vibration for Gameplay and App Alerts
2 Motorized Circle Pads for Haptic Feedback
Thumbprint Security Scanner with Pulse Sensing Feedback
2 1mp Stereoptic Cameras
Multi-Array Microphone
A, B, X, Y, D-Pad, L, R, 1, 2 Buttons
3 Axis Tuning Fork Gyroscope, 3 Axis Accelerometer, Magnetometer
NFC Reader
3G Chip with GPS Location
Bluetooth v4.0 BLE Command Node used to Interface with Bluetooth Devices such as Cell Phones, Tablets
16 Gigabytes of Internal Flash Storage (Possible Future Unit With 32 Gigabytes)
Nintendo 3DS Cart Slot
SDHC “Holographic Enhanced” Card Slot up to 128 Gigabyte Limit
Mini USB I/O
3300 mAh Li-Ion battery



Fusion Terminal

GPGPU: Custom Radeon HD RX 200 GPU CODENAME LADY (2816 shaders @ 960 MHz, 4.60 TFLOP/s, Fillrates: 60.6 Gpixel/s, 170 Gtexel/s)
CPU: IBM 64-Bit Custom POWER 8-Based IBM 8-Core Processor CODENAME JUMPMAN (2.2 GHz, Shared 6 MB L4 cache)
Co-CPU: IBM PowerPC 750-based 1.24 GHz Tri-Core Co-Processor CODENAME HAMMER
MEMORY: 4 Gigabytes of Unified DDR4 SDRAM CODENAMED KONG, 2 GB DDR3 RAM @ 1600 MHz (12.8 GB/s) On Die CODENAMED BARREL
802.11 b/g/n Wireless
Bluetooth v4.0 BLE
2 USB 3.0
1 Coaxial Cable Input
1 CableCARD Slot
4 Custom Stream-Interface Nodes up to 4 Wii U GamePads
Versions with Disk Drive play Wii U Optical Disk (4 Layers Maximum), FUSION Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) and Nintendo 3DS Card Slot
1 HDMI 2.0 1080p/4K Port
Dolby TrueHD 5.1 or 7.1 Surround Sound
Inductive Charging Surface for up to 4 FUSION DS or IC-Wii Remote Plus Controllers
Two versions: Disk Slot Version with 60 Gigs of Internal Flash Storage and Diskless Version with 300 Gigs of Internal Flash Storage

The Wii U was treated more like an adition by Nintendo rather than a new console hence all the Wii U games replacating experiences from games that Nintendo have allready released on the 3DS and Wii.

I bought a Wii about 2 weeks ago and i am amaze at how little their store have progress, how poor the interface is, the lack of an easy friends system.

During the time the Wii was a success nintendo did not take advantage of anything, networking technology, online services, they thought that laziness was going to work again, they did not started to prepare for the next cycle, they made zero progress while they were on top.

So is 100% their fault and they deserve to do bad and even worse than they are doing now, hopefully this will have the effect it had on sony and push nintendo to move forward and make a GREAT console that can make the market improve eve more.

I'm gonna try to go deeper in your question.

If we think about SWOT analysis, i would say that Nintendo played their strengths and weaknesses (internal factors) all wrong, and at the same time all threats (external factors) took place. There is also the fact that Nintendo decided to go on a very risky way by betting on an expensive gamepad, and when you take that much risk then the results will be either a jackpot or a big flop.

By threats coming true i mean third party crap job as an example. The little support they gave were faulty from the start and a lot of games didn't made there, despite having PowerPC versions of them at the PS3 (I suppose the architecture would not be a problem because of this, but i could be wrong, i know little of programming). Even worst, most companies stated a lot of BS as reasons for not giving WiiU games, instead of just saying they didn't believe in the return of the investments. An example of this is EA saying Frostbite 3 engine couln't run on WiiU, and then backtracking on their words months after.

Despite that, if only external factors were hurting, Wii U would be selling better than GameCube. Nintendo did some very wrong marketing decisions and misjudged the difficulty of jumping to HD, causing a drought of the first party titles that usually carry their consoles to profitability point.

Misterxmedia, is that you?

Yes it is Nintendo's fault for releasing it at a high price with no advertising and constantly delaying there games.

I still believe price/games/advertising are a major reason for poor Wii U sales. Even if Nintendo does fix these things its hard for a product to comeback once the public sees it as an unworthy purchase and with 1.5 years of bad publicity its probably too late for a drastic change in sales.

If Wii U had released at $250 with a steady flow of software and advertising i believe the situation would be much better right now and may have been able to outsell N64 but at this point it likely will sell less than GC.

yes