Except that Skyrim has sold 20m copies while Skyward Sword only sold 3.9m.  Clearly TES appeals to a massively broader audience. 

However my point wasn't that Zelda isn't broad enough, it was that Zelda will not move many units because if you are an adventure fan there are FAR bigger adventure games on other platforms for far less money.

GC was not the "bane" to Nintendo's name. It was a great console with a great library of 1st AND 3rd party games that only sold as poorly as it did because Nintendo designed it to look like a purple lunchbox and didn't have the foresight to include DVD playback and online functionality (only one online game was ever released for it) like the PS2 and Xbox did.

Comparing the GC to the Wii U is a travesty... the GC is better than the Wii U in just about every way possible.

The reason it isn't selling as well as the Gamecube is because the Gamecube was better. It had comparable hardware to the competition (although stupidly relying on mini-dvd's in a naive attempt to curb piracy), for a reasonable price, not to mention way more memorable games. The opposite is true about the Wii U.

Virtually all of the problems with the Wii U are because of the tablet controller. It keeps the price high, ensures that the system will have weaker specs than if it didn't have it, and ensures that no third party developers will develop for the system. I'd say the only issue not related to the tablet controller is the name; it's horrible and still confuses people to this day.

I hope they´re successful, but without a doubt it´ll be a real test and a very tough one at that, due to the mobile monster.

It's pretty wishful thinking that just because Wii U sales have grown YoY means it will continue to do that.  Even more so that it will grow to such a degree that it will beat the Gamecube by 6-10m.  We also don't really have enough data to describe it as "growing each year".  Yes, 2014 was higher than 2013, and 2013 was higher than 2012, but 2012 was less than two months of sales.  So we really just have 2014 being higher than 2013 which isn't much of a trend.  The data from 2015 has been mixed.  It is down in Japan, but up in the US.  I don't think we have any European sales numbers for this year yet. 

In fact, if we go by quarterly shipments, we have more quarters down YoY than up, including the most recent quarter.  Only the 2 quarters April - September 2014 have been up.  October 2013 - March 2014 were down, and October - December 2014 was back to being down.

So far after 9 quarters the Gamecube has a lead of 4.74m.  Over the last 9 months it has gained 1.36m.  The Gamecube will do another 630k in the last three months of that fiscal year.  Considering that is more than the Wii U has ever shipped outside of a holiday quarter, it seems unlikely it can match those sales in this quarter.  The next fiscal year sees the Gamecube shipping 3.92m.  The Wii U could hypothetically be up in the fiscal year ending March 2016 and still lose ground to the Gamecube.  That would put the Wii U 14 quarters into its life and roughly 5m units behind the Gamecube.  When will it manage to not just catch up, but outsell the Gamecube by 10m?

14 quarters in the Gamecube had sold 85% of its total.  The Wii 70%.  The N64 90% (a bit rougher there due to the staggered release dates and lack of quarterly data).  If the Wii U is only around 13m by March 2016, that would put it at just 41% of the 31.74m (10m more than the GC) total.  Quite unprecedented for a recent Nintendo console.

A number of reasons come to mind.

For instance, the Gamecube had more third party support. The Gamecube also had a stronger selling first party line-up at this point in its lifetime. Though it lacked a lot of key sequels, the Gamecube had the momentum of N64 owners behind it. Wii owners took the disregard for casual gaming with the Wii U to heart and jumped ship. Probably the biggest factor, in my honest opinion, is the macro-economics were far better in 2001 to 2003 than 2013 to 2015.

Skyward Sword came at the end of the Wii's lifetime and required an add-on to even play. But best of all, it's immensely undertracked on vgchartz. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

Twilight Princess sold 9.4 million units by the way. Why on earth are you comparing a game that's on 3 different platforms to an exclusive game anyway?

XBOX360 and PS3 have a combined userbase of 160 million. And I can't even put a number on PC. The GC and Wii have a combined userbase of 120 million, but most people who bought a GC also bought a Wii, so that doesn't even really count.

What's your source for Skyward Sword being immensely undertracked?  The most recent number I can find from Nintendo is 3.52m shipped as of March 31, 2012.  That was only a 100k increase from December 31, 2011.  So it wasn't really growing at a huge rate, at least near launch.  It hasn't shipped more than a million in a fiscal year since then.  I also found a figure on GAF of 3.67m that is supposedly from December 2013, but I can't find an original source for that.

Not sure why you are bringing up 3 different platforms or combined userbases when Skyrim on just the 360 outsold either of the Zeldas on the Wii.

Common sense. Read the comments on the wall of Skyward Sword in the vgchartz database.

Tell me, what's the next best selling Elders Scrolls game?

I bet that huge Elders Scrolls appeal made the mmo flop hard.

Skyrim on the xbox360 sold better than the Wii TP yes, but not by huge amounts at all. Nintendo games don't get pricecuts, Skyrim did.

So what you're saying is you don't have any evidence?  All I see in the comments is a lot of people who don't understand the difference between shipped and sold.

While ESO didn't do well, it apparently had ~750k subscribers a couple months after launch.  Considering the state of subscription MMOs in 2014 that isn't terrible.  There also seems to be some extrapolation based on revenue of 1.2m subscribers around October, but that data seems fairly murky.

TP was available for years at $20 as a Nintendo Select title, and looking at Amazon price history it sometimes went lower as well.  Even lower if we include 3rd party sellers.  Seems like it has been out of print for about a year though.