Closing the gap? For second place? LOL!

Nintendo Wii U and xBox One are not really aimed at the same market.  One doesn't do better, and that harms the sales of the other - so, while I think the comparison of sales is fun - one should take the strategy of estimating Wii U sales, then estimating xBox One sales - and then comparing final numbers.

Comparing release schedules of software has no particular value.

Wii U market is different in that its the body of work, that juices sales.  So last years release of Super Mario 3d World, and the mid-year release of Mario Kart 8, are going to juice sales going into the holiday season.   So too will the non-game release of the Amiibo figurines.   And yes, Super Smash Bros. will get people into the stores as well.

Nintendo is clearly headed to year-over-year growth for Holiday 2014.

Microsoft - is trending the other way.  While its difficult to make comparisons against their debut last year - we do  know they were getting the benefit of the doubt at first, and the market seems to be crowning Sony as the next generation standard.  Those 3rd party software releases tend to goose PS4 sales, and not so much xBox One sales.

So with Nintendo poised for strong year-over-year growth, and Microsoft somewhat in question and the trends haven't been great - I predict Microsoft will not close the gap on Nintendo at all.

The big question is, Amiibo.   If Amiibo is some kindof hit, Nintendo will widen the gap.

But I'm not going to wuss out here, I'll make a prediction - the gap will stand at 2.2 million at the end of the year - in favor of Nintendo.

p.s. after reading the comments, I also would submit to you all, you over discuss the concept of buying a second living room game machine.

I seriously doubt Nintendo is trying to maximize sales of being the second choice after PS4 - far more likely they are trying to convert their 3DS customers to being Wii U customers - and that's an easy guess - Amiibo makes that strategy kind of obvious.

The casuals and PC master race might disagree. I've been to Android gamer and there are a lot of people asking if the Ouya is compatible to this game they're playing. 

Agree with you on all of it. But why does that have to be their only strategy? They can atract 3ds owners as well as apel to the ps4 owners. There is good potential for both.

It is really sad that the WiiU do not have 3rd party support, it is such a cool console, but how much can Nintendo do alone?

mario kart 8 will tell you...:P

I mean: how many games? MK8 is cool and all, but how can Nintendo stand without 3rd party? it is unheard of.

Someone can go dig up the old Chalkboard that was used last generation for the PS3. Currently, I think it's on "Halo 5 will save the XBO!"

Ultimately, it's all revenue for a company, regardless of where it's coming from based upon a company's business model.

For Nintendo, they don't sell hardware at or below cost, so every sale is profit earned. Of course their internally developed and published IPs are responsible for generating a significant portion of overall revenue and profit. Add merchandising to those IPs and they have a pretty healthy business model, even if it's not based upon high growth.

It's understood by all that the key advantage to producing and selling a proprietary gaming platform is to generate licensing revenue from developers, simply for the privilege of being able to publish on that platform, and this is the only real area in which Nintendo's business suffers from the standpoint of what they could be generating. 

But Nintendo has always been the fiercest competitor on their own hardware platforms for third party developers and publishers, to the point where some developers who can't find a profitable sub-niche market within the Nintendo market choose to skip the Wii U altogether. It's not "lazy developers" or "anti-Nintendo bias," there are simply a lot of instances of publishers who have been unable to generate sufficient profit by releasing their games on Nintendo consoles relative to Sony or MS consoles to offset the added cost of developing and publishing on a riskier, lower potential yield platform. 

So Nintendo has to get by with less 3rd party support and their business model should reflect that, leaving the market for their hardware smaller, but still profitable and still large enough for continued support. 

I think Xbox one will outsell Wii U next year, but the difference at the end of 2014 will be less than 1 million