As of today, the WiiU is about 1 year and 6 months old and has sold 6.2mil (VGC front page)

As of today, the PS4 is about 6 months old and has sold 7.6mil (VGC front page)

 As of today, the X-bone is about 6 months old and has sold 4.6mil (VGC front page)

How embarrassing.

I am pretty sure, the only 2 things that will guarantee a huge increase in console sales (for any console) is quality games being released at a decent pace and a price cut. Personally, i feel a price cut for WiiU is not a smart idea because it was just announced a week or so ago that the WiiU is finally making money every time one is sold. A price cut would probably stop that. So that leaves us quality games at a decent release pace, right? Since nearly every major 3rd party has borderline abandoned WiiU and it is not looking likely they will return anytime soon (seriously, its looking real bad), ill mainly focus on first party games and what little good exclusives 3rd party games.

IMO the heavy hitting quality first party/3rd party games for WiiU are Wind Waker, SM3DWorld, Pikmin 3, DK Tropical Freeze, Nintendo Land, MH3 Ultimate, ZombiU, New Super Mario Bros U, Wonderful 101 and maybe 2-3 more i am not thinking of but it can’t be more than that. Ok wait, i know right off the bat people are going to want to name other great WiiU games like Deus Ex HR, NFS Most Wanted U, RE Revelations, Call of Duty 89....etc but those are all multi-platform games who are guaranteed to sell the worst (by far) on WiiU. In general, people buy WiiU for first party games and not 3rd party. Anyways, those really good 1st/3rd party exclusives i named are all REALLY GOOD GAMES imo and make the WiiU look very appealing and have gotten WiiU to 2nd place in the 1.5 years it has been on the market. Yet if the current rate of sales continues, WiiU will be last/3rd place by this time next year. Clearly, what the WiiU has right now is not enough to fight off the competition.

Now look at PS4/X-Bone. I think we could all agree, for the most part, that these consoles are more expensive than WiiU, came out later than WiiU, have less 1080p/60fps games (for some reason 1080p/60fps is a big deal to the masses) than WiiU, have less "must have" (in terms of quality) games than WiiU. Yet WiiU is still on track to be in 3rd/last place this gen. Right now,the WiiU should be doing better than it currently is.

Now to the point of this thread. I predict that Mario Kart 8 (May 2014) and SSB4 (Nov-Dec 2014) are the WiiU's last opportunity to change the direction of the ship. I say this because historically, Smash/Kart are crazy popular on any system they appear on and most def sell consoles. Think about it, how many of you and your friends have said "once smash/kart comes out, ill get a WiiU." If Christmas 2014 isnt dominated by Kart/Smash+WiiU, its over for WiiU. I truly do not think XenoBlade 2, bayonetta 2, Hyrule Warriors and FE vs SMT aka not nearly as popular games/3rd party can save the WiiU (has 3rd party ever made a significant boost in Nintendo console sales?) especially if all those first party gems didn’t. Yes, we will get a proper Zelda WiiU but i dont think we will see that until late 2015 or early 2016. By then, the X-Bone/Ps4 will have so many crazy good games out that it won’t matter what WiiU does.

Im not saying Nintendo is doomed or WiiU is doomed. Nintendo will still be here in 100000000000000.7 years from now and WiiU has/will continue to dish out sick ass games that we all will buy and love. I am just sad to see a company who won last gen (fluke or not) literally be so close to losing this current gen so early.

I somewhat agree. It has second place now.

I wanna believe this and buy you a beer if you are right. Im just not seeing it at the current rate the WiiU is selling. But again, i have hope that Kart/Smash can turn it around.

I can't stop staring at your sig...
Isn't it solidified in 3rd right now?

That's probably true. I doubt they'll have any other chances to beat Xbox One after that.

I'm optimistic about E3.  Like "Iwata" said, a single game can change the Wii U.

that game has to be an anomaly like wii sports was..

Wii Sports was all but forgotten about after the first year or two.

Now that Nintendo is breaking even and making profit on the Wii U hardware, will they wait for tech prices to go down so they can go for another price cut? I think a $50 price cut now is more than reasonable, cause they need to push hardware sales to push software sales. MK8 and SSB4 probably won't be enough to comp the $300 price tag, for me (I'm getting a better job soon, then I will take the Wii U plunge).

If MK8 and SSB4 doesn't deliver stellar hardware sales, you will see a substantial price drop. But will it be too late to capitalize on the momentum these titles generate?

In terms of 3rd party developers creating content on Nintendo consoles, I always think about EA and their recent lack of professionalism. Can't EA create another entry in the Boom Blox series for Nintendo? That was the only time I actually felt EA had their finger on the Nintendo pulse and actually delivered something compelling that adhered to the Wii's strengths. The evil side of me would like to see EA crash and burn hard.

Now, I have a tech idea for Nintendo I would love to see, but probably never will. A peripheral that plugs into your Wii U. It has several slots for NES, SNES, N64, GB/GBC/GBA. It would allow all of your classic physical Nintendo cartridges to be played on your Wii U, and not only that, it would allow you to copy the rom onto the Wii U's memory, thus creating a digital game library all rolled into one. Why it won't happen is because companies want to still generate revenue by rereleasing those titles on the Nintendo eShop. But I can dream, can't I? Haha.

WiiSports was a seed planted on day one. It bloomed in year 2-3 and decimated the competition. So much so that they had to create their own motion based add-ons to try and take some of the motion based pie.

WiiU does not have and will never have a "wii sports" type seed. Wii and its obscene power was a fluke.

The reason why i have not written off the WiiU yet is because Kart/Smash have not had a chance to shine. Those 2 are more important than any other 1st party game on the WiiU thus far and i hope it will change the tide. i hope.