Its really not up to Nintendo its up to the third party developers. When they gimp a game no one wants to buy it. Specially when word gets out that its gimped.

Launching a console 5-6 years after the others with similar horsepower is just stupid to begin with.

Yes, it paid off for the Wii but that was a once-in-every-20-years type miracle gamble.

Would you have bought a Playstation in 1995 if it had just SNES level graphics and Sony's sales pitch was "look! For only $300 you can play SNES hits like Street Fighter II and Castlevania IV just with the novelty of a different logo on your game box!". 

Uh ... no. That prospect doesn't excite anyone.

I get the vibe that Nintendo doesn't really care about third party. If they really did, you'd think they would try to convince more developers to make their multi-plat games for it.

Very good point.   The Wii U could have sold extremely well if it was more like the PS4.  Great hardware and solid online infrastructure without any unnecessary gimmicks. 

If they had launched a "Super Wii" in say fall 2011 that was a legitimate 600-750 GFLOPS in horsepower with 2GB of RAM (for games, not just the OS) and just a regular controller + say a Wiimote ... I think they legitimately would've had some better success with third parties.

A 2 year window to have the best multi-plats probably would've served Nintendo well, even if the Wii brand was fading, they'd probably be sitting today with about 20+ million install base even on the lower end of the scale.

A direct quote from Nintendo themselves. 

“Nintendo’s position is that we are going to sell our hardware with our own software titles, and if consumers buy a number of Gamecubes, then licensees would become interested in making games for Nintendo Gamecube. That’s the general idea in Nintendo’s business. So we are not actually approaching them [third parties] and asking them to make software for Nintendo."

yeah and that hasn't worked out. 100m Wii's sold. Nothing improved in peoples personal perceptions.

It would have sold better than than it is now for sure (It would be really hard to do worse) but I doubt it would have sold extremely well.

Full 3rd party support would have been still uncertain, and the fanbase of big 3rd party games like AC, COD, FIFA or GTA would likely have gone for a Ps4 or an Xbone anyway.

The problem is WiiU is not a proper competitor for Ps4One and it's not proper follow up to the Wii either.

/thread

A quote from Hiroshi Yamauchi, former President of Nintendo. 

"I've been told that Sony won over Nintendo by surrounding itself with software companies, and I will admit that situation was there in the past. However, times have changed, and it's no longer a race to see how many useless companies you can get on your side. There are many people in the industry that know nothing about games. In particular, an American company is trying to do the same thing by engulfing software houses with money, but I don't believe that will go well. It looks like they'll sell their game system next year, but we'll see the answer to that the following year," he explained."   - Hiroshi Yamauchi  cir. 2000