Nintendo, Sony and MS's fault of course. Sony had something special with PS1 and eventually lost a large amount of that fanbase to MS. At this point Nintendos only real chance to gain headway with that group would be to fold as a company, change its name and launch a new upstart console. They wont have to release games better than MS/Sony just similar. A good chunk of the core gamer doesnt want to associate with Nintendo cause it makes them look uncool. IMO the vast majority of Nintendo fanboys already bought a U while the majority of current PS4/X1 sales are by fanboys. PS4/X1 will continue to roll on selling greatly more than the U, the first year sales dont lie. I dont think power, price, or games(obviously you need games) make as much a difference in sales as do public perception.

lol, we're essentially saying the same thing...

Capcom :*

OR maybe Sony just has a bigger prescence WORLDWIDE. moreso than Ninty and def MS. SOny sells in countries that Ninty doesnt I know in Europe Ninty was never big. Hell i just came from there and you would swear Nintendo and MS doesnt exist.

OR maybe the other two earned their loyalties by constantly having game releases on their systems. Sony supports their home consoles for years much longer than Ninty ever did and MS seems to be following suit. Fact its when you buy a Sony or MS system people know the games are coming. That hasnt been said about a Ninty home console since SNES. Even the Wii missed a LOT of stuff or got way worse versions. So IMHO they dont earn any pity because they chose not to take measures the other two did to gain bigger fanbases

Oh sorry, I thought you were saying that the wii U is a core gaming machine but it needs to go mainstream to do better.

There is absolutely nothing they can do to "win" this gen. The best they can do is damage control. I would probably promote many in house developers/producers to executive producers and shell out a crap ton of money for HIGH QUALITY 2nd party exclusives. Turn the platform to a fully exclusive one. They simply can't count on third parties at this point and that's a HUGE hit. After seeing the tech demos at e3 I think they need to ditch the game pad and use a patch for existing games to not use it. There simply aren't enough games that use it well (3 in total in my opinion) and the tech demos at this e3 were AWFUL. They were mostly just tablet games you could play on an ipad or a ds with Nintendo ip slapped on. Lastly, stop making 2d side-scrollers and remakes. Resources are better spent on more contemporary genre's and fresh games.
Quick side note, I actually really like the gamepad, but it' almost 2 years in and there's simply not a justifiable amount of games that use it "uniquely". I would love a lot more co-op games that use it like hyrule warriors and black ops does, but that's probably not gonna happen.

Win back the casuals and they'll win

Real quick, getting bayonetta and devil's third were good first steps, but they need to be even more aggressive. How bout the cancelled mega man legends 3? StarCraft ghost? these are great opportunities. Many times games get cancelled for technical barriers or development problems, but the concepts and characters of the games are still sound.

3rd party support and to do so means their next console needs to be as powerful or very close to its competitors. Would stop all the whinging and hate... for a few months.

This. You can still be different while using all the things that gamers expect from the competition.

They also need to get third parties on board as has been mentioned. As a Nintendo fan I buy all my third parties on another console as I was forced to get one during the wii generation. Im sure there are many others in this situation that would happily buy third parties for wii u, except theyre gimped, lack features that other consoles provide, and just arent up to the competition graphically. I always felt that with how the PS3 faltered at the start of last gen, had Nintendo had a console with comparable specs they wouldve dealt Sony a massive blow.