Did the Wii really hurt Nintendo's image? It seems like people forget the Gamecube, it was labeled as a kiddy system and barely passed the 20 million mark. GameCube pretty much sold purely on big Nintendo IP like 3D Mario/Mario Kart/Smash Bros/Zelda/Metroid/etc.

How in the hell can you even consider one of the most massively successful strategies in videogame history to be a bad one? Especially coming from a company which had been effectively dead for about 5 years.

The bad strategy was not preparing correctly for the Wii U. There are way fewer games being released for the console, the first big game didn't even come out until the console was a year and a half old. On the Wii there were multiple big games released in the first year.

Exactly, look at the sales of the Gamecube, which was directly catered to the hardcore crowd and had the best hardware. Making the Wii was an excellent decision that put Nintendo back on top. There problem was betting that this gen they could repeat the process.

I don't think I've ever read so much wrong concentrated into so few sentances..

Ok, firstly: "Casuals" are a myth created by the industry, in order to segragate, undermine certain gamers, as well as attempt to explain the Wii phenomenon, which went against their interests.

Second, if by "casual" you mean expanded audience, which I assume is what you are refering to - then... Appealing to these people is WHAT MADE THE WII A SUCCESS IN THE FIRST PLACE! They've only failed now with the Wii U (and the later days of the Wii) BECAUSE they have gone back to appealing to the hardcore. Appealing to the hardcore will ALWAYS lead to failure, especially if you're Nintendo. The only one's who have found true success in doing so are Sony, and this is mainly because of the sheer numbers of titles on the system, cranked out contantly by third parties. More games generally = more sales. So this has less to do with the hardcore, and far more to do with the number of games available, which allows for a greater console appealing.

Nintendo listening to misguided hardcore viewpoints like these are the REASON Wii U is in the current rut it is in...

Focus on casual was quite a winning strike, and get them a lot of money, they got back in the console race, that can't be wrong in itself. Their problem is under-investment on technologies, studios, licenses, 3rd party relationship for an HD console. It seems they just enjoyed counting their money for 5 years and that's why they are in a total mess.

No, abandoning them was.

In the short term, it was a phenomenal strategy.

In the long term ... it's not helping them. They can't compete with Apple/Google for casuals anymore than they can compete head on with Sony/MS for "hardcore" players. Probably less actually.

A "hardcore" player would probably give the Wii U a look at the right price/games and some good marketing, casuals today are so far gone that they won't touch Nintendo's $40/$60 per game model. Mario is nice, but next to free/$1 casual play games and much "cooler" fashion centric smartphone devices ... Nintendo can't compete with what the casual player expects today.

I don't think there's much Nintendo could've done with the Wii U/3DS to attract large legions of casuals this generation out unless they were willing to make smartphones basically and charge $1/game. There's just no reasoning with this audience any more, they got a taste of that and now won't accept anything different and the whole appeal of smart devices is that they replace the need for multiple old devices, which means tough sh*t for all console makers wanting casuals (Kinect in XBox One was a liability as a result too) and handhelds are in huge trouble. 

Whereas on the flip side, if they Nintendo taken advantage of their year headstart and made a decently powerful next-gen console with some good games, they honestly could be sitting fairly well off right now. They wouldn't beat Sony's PS4, probably not in the long term, but they likely could've beat the XBox One in this situation and finished with a decent no.2 standing this gen if they had executed properly. 

Instead they compromised and made a "sort of" casual machine with the Wii U -- underpowered, gimmicky, lots of mini-games and casual Mario fare early on.

Keep in mind that Nintendo had billions in the "bank" right before the Wii was released.

This a million times over

Not really, they tossed out some vague rhetoric, but it was obvious from their actions they had moved beyond the expanded audience.

First clue was the system itself, especially the gamepad, its big clunky and uneccesary.

Second is the library especially the rehash NSMB Wii U and the shallow Nintendoland, which showed Nintendo was not interested in really reaching out to an expanded audience like they did with the Wii