A lot of people are upset Nintendo abandoned the hardcore audience with the Wii, and now Nintendo is trying to get them back with the Wii U.

In fact, the Wii U should have once again focused on the Blue Ocean strategy that the Wii did. The argument is that a lot of those non-gamers went on smartphones. This is true, but I think Nintendo could have still been successful with that audience if they tried. The reason the non-gamers started to abandon the Wii brand is BECAUSE of Nintendo. Wii Sports Resort came out 3 years after the Wii and was a hit; but after that Nintendo didn't release anything. Just Dance kept it alive with the non-gamers but no Wii Sports after 2009; no Wii Fit; no Big Brain Academy, etc. etc. Nintendo basically was done after 2009 for some reason.

The hardcore gamers abandoned Nintendo in droves. During the N64 and GameCube era the sales were so bad Nintendo had no choice but to find a new audience. The problem is, they tried to go  back to the audience that rejected the N64 and GC - the result is the Wii U has pretty much failed miserably (hasn't even reached Dreamcast sales yet).

If Nintendo wants to turn the Wii U around, it needs to focus on the Blue Ocean strategy again. It can be done. The 3DS is hugely popular with females for example (like the DS). 56% of Animal Crossing: New Leaf players are female 

Nintendo needs to start pumping out games like Professor Layton, Nintendogs, Wii Fit, Just Dance, Animal Crossing, Tomadachi Life, Style Savvy, etc. etc. (not necessarily these franchises but SIMILAR) to try and at least attempt to get back some of their blue ocean audience. Nintendo needs to stop focusing on an audience that is ignoring them and start focusing on the ones that didn't.

What do you guys think?

TL;DR VERSION: Nintendo should focus on non-gamers like they did with the Wii. Nintendo stopped doing that around 2009 and the result is the Wii U has sold far below expectations. This is because the typical hardcore gamer does not care much about Nintendo franchises, or not enough to buy a console for them.

Most of them are "smartphone gamers" now.

The hardcores are with Nintendo. They never left.
Or are you impliying that those COD and FIFA players are the hardcores??

9 million sales in 2 years, less than the Dreamcast. That's abandonment to the 10th degree. It's weird - Nintendo abandoned the non-gamer audience, while the gamer audience abandoned Nintendo, so Nintendo tried to win them (us) back? Hmm.... 

To get that lightning in a bottle again Nintendo will have to do something new that appeals to those blue ocean types. Wii Sports again will not make people spend $300 on a system. Those people are now on phones or tablets so I don't envy Nintendo in trying to figure out what would pull those folks away from $1 to free games at this point.

But the hardcore never abandoned Nintendo. The thing is there are not a lot of true hardcore gamers. THose teenagers who cant play a game withouth healt regeneration or think that a game is bad because graphics are not hardcore. Media is to blame, because media made them believe they are the hardcores.

This.

I wouldn't say the hard left Nintendo either. How many million do you think are hardcore? Majority casually play and I don't mean those that jumped on the Wii bandwagon. I mean those who play games as a hobby all time but not devoted. The Nintendo fans wouldn't go elsewhere. They are with Nintendo because of Mario, Zelda, Metroid, and such. Nintendo has been always able to deliver great first party support. Nintendo's lack of branching out though with new IPs have hurt them from expanding their audience, instead it just retains fans. Sony for instance with LittlebigPlanet, The Last of Us, and Uncharted have been able to introduce the PS3 to new users who might not have been fans of God of War, Gran Turismo, KIllzone, and such.

What does health regen have to do with anything?

I think everything is wrong with how you approached this.

First, the "hardcore" are those that want to play the most amount of games. And with all the latest and best features, so we're talking great graphics, great online networks and all genres of games. Who ever provides a platform that can give them all that; is who they will support.

Nintendo decided that they weren't going to compete with Sony and ms, being that the only way to do that effectively last gen was to use the loss leader business model, which Nintendo just didn't want. So they made the Wii, and completely abandoned the type of people that mostly cared about HD graphics, multiplayer...etc and focused on those that couldn't care less about stuff like that. It worked.

Then they made the WiiU, again doing the exact same thing, but hoping that putting a touchscreen on their controller will capture the minds of the casuals again, they probably figured that since the casuals were all using touchscreens now they would be able to identify with the WiiU. It didn't work.

No the only people buying the WiiU are the Nintendo faithful. Those that would have bought a WiiU regardless of whatever Nintendo did. Unfortunately, cause that user base has dwindled over the generations, right now its a very very small number of people.