Long term it was a terrible move. Instead of becoming arrogant they should have seen their fans leaving in droves and spent some of that $5 billion a year they were making getting core games developed for Wii U.

I think if they had taken even $500 million, given it to 10 epic, reputable development studios and supervised them and told them to make 10 massive experiences on the Wii U at $50 million each, then Nintendo's reputation and the Wii U would both be in better positions right now.

Alas, they waited too long and hoarded their cash because they're Nintendo. They couldn't see the forest for the trees. They were selling the most consoles so the future of gaming must be motion controls right?

Oh - there are TWO AC on the Wii U. And if the sales of those would have been better the Wii U would also get a third one. If there is one thing Ubi cares about then it is NOT user experience but MONEY.

The reason why EA doesn't support the Wii U at all is because Nintendo would force them to use the Nintendo Network instead of their own servers. Thats a fight about power. And unfortunally Nintendo lost as the missing Wii U support doesn't make that big difference in EAs bottom line.

It's a shame that the Wii U is ignored by the big studios and publishers because many indies show that the Wii U means business to them. 

Last gen? Nope
This gen? Yep

Just give that bitch of Ubisoft 10M US$ to make a RedSteel 2 HD with online multiplayer. Will sell like hot cake. 

The future of gaming IS motion control. It is Sonys Move controllers which make their Morpheus the best - because of most immersive - VR system. Thats somehow ironic because Sony almost dropped support for it beside their infamous "Wonderbooks"...

I don't think the Wii destoryed their connection to 3rd parties... It was the WII U for making a controller into a tablet. Devs are looking at the gamepad like its some sort of Alien device from another planet.... That and Hardcore Nintendo fanboys don't buy any game without that Golden Nintendo Seal of Quality sign...

Wii had TONS OF 3RD Party support (Actionvision, EA,Ubisoft,Sega to name a few).

As for your OP, it wasn't bad for them at all. They should have CONTINUED to catter to casuals by expanding to a gaming audience.

And just because a Console is made for casuals does not mean it can't have hardcore gamer games for it. The latter is much more harder to accomplish.

I suppose AC wasnt the best example since there was early Ubisoft support on the Wii U. Ubisoft is Ubisoft, and EA is EA, they have their own reasons for not supporting the Wii U (and EA is just shit anyway).

I mean games like GTA5, there is no reason it coudlnt have been on the Wii U but Nintendo didnt actively want it nor did Wii-to-Wii U owners expect it.

The only reason I feel third party games are not on Wii and Wii U is because of console limitations. Sure all the cross platform games can easily be on Wii U, but once support drops from PS3 and 360 then I see a viable reason not to put 3rd party games on Wii U.

Either way, im pretty sure Ubisoft made some money from putting AC3 and AC4 on Wii U.

The trouble with 3rd party devs is they want sales to be all or nothing, instead of a gradual increase. Same mentality that is crippling the gaming inudustry (eg; capcom no wanting to make sequels if the games sell less than 2mill).

This!!!

But with some aditional comment :) .  Neither casual nor core what they trying achieve on this generations  it's an ambigue market what they looking for. It was build to achieve both but failed on both.

That is what this gen is all about, which is exactly the thing they need to do. What there falling short of is making sure ALL of these games get into the hands of gamers around the World. If we had Dragon Warrior X and Fatal Frame 5 I'm sure the overall picture of sales wouldn't look all  that different (if different at all), But for every hardcore game or major franchise game that makes it to the Wii U the easier it would be to make an arguement for why people Worldwide should own the next Nintendo console. Many Sony and XBox fans have said (and I completely agree) we should not have to beg for games on our console to release Worldwide. It's not like these two series haven't had numerous releases over here, so why not these? No clue. If there's some sort of red tape in publishing they need to figure that shit out now!

I don't see how it tarnished their image. Before Wii it was the console for kids and Mario fans. After Wii it is the console for kids, Mario fans and casuals. If anything it improved.
Now if they only manage to get the cores on board.

It was a great strategy! The current strategy of going after the "hardcore" market is bad. People say this nonsense that Nintendo lost its "core" fans with the Wii - but in reality the Wii had the highest selling core games of any Nintendo console. 3D Mario was more popular than ever, Smash as well. Mario Kart is loved by hardcore Nintendo fans and sales of that franchise exploded. The Wii had the highest selling Zelda game of all time.

Resident Evil, Okami, Mad World, EA Sports games, Little King's Story, Rayman, etc. The Wii had way better third party support than the Wii U does. It had more hardcore games than the Wii U by a landslide. The Wii was the best thing Nintendo could've done but after a few years of success they decided to put out low quality games. n 2008 Animal Crossing was lazy and Wii Music sucked. Then later we got sequels (Mario Galaxy 2), flat out bad games (Other M...), Nintendo decided to focus on 3D gaming on the 3DS (and we all remember how that one turned out at first, right?) and feed the mass market cheap stuff like Kirby. Each successive year Nintendo's software output for the mass market went down in quality. And guess what? Customers left! The mass market is intelligent. These people don't buy games based on hype.

The simple story is that going after the mass market with the Wii and the DS (and with the NES and Gameboy) made Nintendo one of the fastest growing companies on this planet. Leaving that mass market behind to concentrate on the lower quality games they put out right now stopped their success.

Oh and for the Wii tarnishing their image - it did the opposite. Outside of hardcore gamer circles the Wii and DS made Nintendo a much more liked company. Going back to the hardcore gamers is what is hurting their reputation in the real world right now.