When Nintendo released its financial results recently, we highlighted the worryingly low projection for Wii U sales. While the 3DS is expected to sell around 12 million units over this fiscal year, Nintendo's estimate for its home console is just 3.6 million units — should that be accurate, the Wii U will have failed to reach ten million sales in around two and a half years at market.

We set the sales unit forecast of 3.60 million units of Wii U hardware as the target that we should at least reach by making the releases of two key titles for this fiscal year from the very popular, evergreen franchises that have been under development since before the launch of Wii U hardware, “Mario Kart 8” and “Super Smash Bros. for Wii U,” the pillars of our entire marketing strategy for this year. These two titles can be enjoyed alone or with others, and we believe they will encourage those who do not own Wii U hardware to purchase it.

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/05/satoru_iwata_explains_conservative_wii_u_sales_projection_of_just_36_million_units

I think they will make it but we won't know fully till MK8 comes out at least

I think it will be 4 M but yes I should wait untill MK8

I think it has to do more with avoiding ugly news headlines.

In the last year, the press could easily provoke a response by declaring how far behind Nintendo was to their sales goals. It made the WiiU look extra bad. By setting a very conservative estimate, they probably won't need deal with the same perception issues in the coming year.

Aim low and you're sure to hit.

I hope that they have good standing with the manufacturing companies they use as I have high hopes that MK8 and other other games/bundles they'll be using this year will dramatically increase demand.

Otherwise, any increase in sales will be met with no stock to buy and that would be worse.

So where's the explanation?

3.6m expcted Wii U sales seems like a pretty ugly news headline. 

So basically, if something new is to be released this year it won't be anything big. Only MK8 and SSB.
I'm dissapointed. Droughts are big and my Wii U claims for games.

It is, but once they're past it, it's much easier to make that ugly narrative to go away.

Saying they surpassed the forecast of 3.6M is not good headlines unless they sell 9-10M.