launch title and a pack in at that. 

lets look at your topic title shall we. 

you are talking specifically on a topic of turning a. consoles fortune around,  ergo,  denoting it was in a position to need turning around,  i.e. failing,  by nature a just launched system could only be labeled a failure if it sold zero units. 

Okay. There are many who would like to refute this more than I but I'll do it anyway.
Back in late 2006 and through 2007, did you hear a lot of people saying "I can't wait to play Wii Sports!" "Did you hear about Wii Sports?" or was it more "I can't wait to try Wii!" "Have you heard about the Wii?"?

I get the feeling it was generally more of the latter. The system got people more hyped than the games at the time. And that was fine. They should have been hyped for the system. I mean, it doesn't really matter if it's the games or the system that win people over, Wii owners still bought games so that they could try out their system.

It's in a few senses akin to buying a nice PC rig. Not a great analogy, but that's all about the system, not the games. You could have played the games on slightly lower settings on something much cheaper. Or if you've upgraded ahead of the curve, you're just making the bet games will show up that fully utilize your PC eventually, but for now you bought the hardware because you thought the hardware was cool.

Wii sold Wii so well that Wii Sports barely even had to. A bit of genius Nintendo tried replicating with cool unique WiiU hardware but failed hard.

EDIT: And also Wii Sports was a launch title and not near the only system seller in the Wii's first year. It got other big ones in Zelda and Mario Galaxy, at very least.

It's meaningless to try to pretend that Wii Sports was not the driving force behind the Wii. It was the game that everybody wanted to play, it's not that long ago so you all probably remember the stories of grandparents playing Wii bowling etc.

To pretend that it makes a difference if it was a launch game or not is ludicrous. Fact of the matter is that Wii Sports was the game everyone wanted, if Nintendo or someone else catches that lightning in a bottle again on the Wii U the fortunes of the console will turn around. Who in their right mind thinks that mass consumers will be thinking "Wii U Megablasts is looks like sooooooooooo much fun, but it's not a launch title so I won't get it"?

Ok, so you are saying that the one game that can change the WiiU's fortune (could) exist(s) but the WiiU will still sell like like crap, just not uber crap. Did i get that right?

If that's so i agree. If the wii u did not have mario it wouldn't have done half of what it did/does, so mario changed the fortune of the console.

To be honest, most consoles don't "turn around" after a year period. The GameCube didn't, Turbo Grafx 16 didn't, the Saturn didn't, the Dreamcast didn't, etc.

The PS3 is the only one to have pulled that off really, and the main reason was because its launch price was abnormally high ($600).

By the time the PS3 was one year's old it was selling far better than the Wii U.

Nintendo needs something new, not 20-30 year old franchises, to break out, but my guess is they are already moving any of those types of ideas to their next handheld already which should be deep into R&D. No sense in wasting them on a lame duck console like the Wii U (just like Nintendo could have released what became the Wiimote for the GameCube as an accessory but they nixed that idea).