I do see your point about people complaining about it being 'tacked on' and being forced to use it but here is there problem: you are forced to buy a Wii U with it and the increased price is not justified in ALOT of gamers eyes. If Nintendo had a gamepad-less version of the console, it could easily shave off $50 off the highest retail price. Considering the screen is not used in any meaningful way in more than 50% of Wii U games(other than as a map/menu/vitals), many gamers feel it is an un-necessary item and expense.  I personally don't think dropping the gamepad will solve the bad sales of the Wii U, I think it is too late now given the PS4 is booming as well as the Xbox 1, but I do think the gamepad was a bad idea and poorly executed as most games do not do anything innovative with it. Just my opinion anyway.

Here's another issue. Nintendo never split the profit numbers of the GC and GBA. They just combined them. We'll never know what the GC sold alone. But they did make a profit the whole time of that generation. The issue relys with: Does it matter if the GBA helped or not? The graph definatly shows the GC would of beaten the Xbox. People can argue that Nintendo had an advantage. But nothing prohibited Sony or MS from making handhelds in those years. It be like bitching that the taller person on a basketball team is beating the smaller one. You do better at picking a person that can deal with it. Train the person, Or higher a taller person too. Plus, the PS2 sold 120+ (at the time of 2006) million units. And only goes over 5 million boosted income. VS GC 21 and 81 GBA. http://i.imgur.com/ZUJHD.png

I agree without my heart broken

I'm disagreeing on Wii and Wiimote use. There was a minority of games even from Nintendo that really used the Wiimote well and to much games that would have played better with traditional controls or actually did play better on the classic controller.

That said, there's a ton of games even on the e-shop. that make decent use of the touchscreen without overusing it. On other games i'm fine with off-tv and map.

Bought AC IV for Wii U only because of off-tv. The slightly improved map was a nice to have, would've been better if you could have set targets directly on the touchscreen map.

With Rayman Legends Murphy levels are actually fun. I'd love to see point & click adventures on Wii U by the way.

On the other hand, Mario Kart 8 without touchscreen features is better, but you still can use motion control.

And there's actual OS integrated features like Miiverse or simply the browser, the Gamepad is great for. Or switching on my TV. A small but acutually nice to have feature.

Kinect is pretty much useless aside from some Kinect games. It's even much more inefficient for OS features than pushing a button. I mean, Xbox On vs. pressing the guide button? Come on.

The Gamepads two biggest issues still are people thinking of it as a Wii add on instead of a new console with Gamepad and Nintendo doing extremely dumb marketing.

I'm sorry but your analogy doesn't make much sense. 

You didn't say "Ninty beat Sony in 2006" to which I would have replied, "where's the evidence?". You said "The GC will be always remembered as a failure. Even though it made profit"

You made a claim that simply cannot be supported by evidence. When you do find a reliable source that shows that Gamecube alone overall made a profit, then you can continue making that statement. At the moment, we simply don't know and it seems to me that the logical thing to do is to refrain from such unfounded claims. You can, however, say that Ninty was overall profitable during the Gamecube's lifetime/that generation. We all know that.

Would love a Zack and Wiki 2.

You want the profits displayed in a certain way, to show it absolulty made more money than the PS2. From an offfical source. Than you're right. It can't be done. Unless you want to do all the guesstimation numbers.

What if Nintendo makes an amiibo Pokemon? That can make a huuuuuuuge boost on the console, i´m expecting some kind of surprise with amiibo.

I absolutely think that the Wii U will pass 15 lifetime, no doubt in my mind. But to make a guess for an actual lifetime sale I can not, it's really difficult to know how much it will sell in the end.

I usually say 30-40m, but to say 20-30m would be much more safe.

The GC and N64 that didn't sell all too well still made 4-6m lifetime in Japan so my bet is that the Wii U will do the same. It is already at 2m with a 1m/year average, similar to the two other systems.

When it comes to NA it would need to continue selling around its current numbers to reach 10-14, similar to the GC.

For EU the GC and N64 made 4-6 like in Japan, extremely low numbers actually. And just looking at the Wii U's numbers it seems to do worse than the other two, but not too worse, so it could make the same numbers.

For RoW I would think 1-2m would seem possible.

Add those numbers up and I will get 19-27m consoles WW lifetime sales.

Still I'm hoping for pricecuts and some wind in the sails for Nintendo. If things goes better in the coming years it could reach 40m, which for me would be a victory in itself, given the poor situation it has now. But yes, this is wishful thinking.

So can it make 15? Yes it will. Make 20? I do think so, yes. Make 30? Perhaps, it's not impossible but also not probable. Make 40? Seems impossible at the moment, something must really change for it to happen.

Does anyone have any numbers for how well(poorly) the GC, N64, Saturn and DC actually did in their 3 first years on the market? It would be really interesting to see. :)

:P You're heartless!