Yeah agreed. Wii did have that type of appeal ... 4-5 years ago. Today the "hot girl" is more apt to say "oh yeah I had one of those four years ago". 

And if they loved Wii Fit so much, there is a Wii Fit on the Wii U. And Nintendo Land. And 2D Mario. And Just Dance. And Wii Sports. And Mario & Sonic Olympics. It's not like Bayonetta is the only game on the system and most of the games I listed can be played with just the Wiimote. 

People thought Gangam Style was cool and funny when it first came out too. Now if you're driving down the street blasting that, people will think you're an idiot. And that's only what? 3 or 4 years old? The Wii is coming up on being a decade old. That's *ancient* in tech trends. The Motorola Razr was the coolest phone in the world when the Wii came out, if you carry one of those around today people will look at you like you crawled out of a cave. 

Being unique is the only reason they're still around, NES was unique it was different from every console around at the time of release I don't think you thought that one through as it was the first modern console, SNES was a follow up of what they started with NES.

The NES was a fairly conventional console to be honest. There's a reason it's still the industry foundation that everything since has evolved from, Sony and MS included. 

Aside from flattening the joypad (something that had been around on the Game & Watch for years prior), the main thing the NES had was it was a massive processing leap over the Atari 2600 that most households were used to. Most Atari games were single screen experiences (see: Nintendo's own Donkey Kong, or Pac-Man or Space Invaders). 

The NES being much more powerful introduced scrolling, expansive gaming worlds with better animation. Going from this:

to this

Was massive. 

The things like R.O.B. and the Zapper even Nintendo admits they just packed those in to get retailers to carry the system since they were wary of dedicated game machines after Atari, but the NES was basically that. It was just a much, much better version of it. 

Oh and Nintendo having basically a monopoly on third party content meant that their platform had far and away the most variety of games. What's happened to Nintendo since then, is Nintendo has allowed Sony to take the NES mantle, while they have warped themselves into the modern version of the Sega Master System ... a good system with great 1st party games, but no third party support, hence no diversity, hence very low sales. 

Nintendo's made two main slip-ups and they're two slow moving (like the Titanic trying to avoid the ice berg) to recover from them.

The first was the decision to not use CD-ROM on N64. That basically handed Sony the market leader position without even firing a shot in the console wars. Nintendo shot themselves in the foot. 

The second was launching the GameCube too late and making several other sloppy errors with it that gave Microsoft all the room they needed to get a foothold in the industry.

They should have come out swinging against MS like Sony has beaten MS like a red headed step child this gen. They needed to be sharp, focused, and on point in 2001/2002 and they weren't. They simply weren't. 

But those two mistakes basically cost them the core market. Now they have no choice but to make unconventional consoles because Sony and MS occupy the market that used to be theirs and it's too hard to move them out.

Game and watch was still something from Nintendo themselves and that was a handheld, the fact that that style of controller was alien to consoles in general was a unique feature as it gave the platform a diverse universal interface that's still standard today. 

To be honest Nintendo did everything right with the Wii(though some luck was involved to), what they did wrong is that's all they did. They was serious demand for a Wii HD pretty quickly and it would have cattered to the core gaming audience and have kept Nintendo's loyal following happy. Introducing a more powerfull Wii HD alongside the Wii could only have increased sales, and it might have drawn in 3rd party's and with that possibly quite a few people that were looking for a system to play multi-platform games.

It could have brought Nintendo back in the game but instead they stayed with the casuals, while they could have catered to both.

Being unable to support fully their console has cost Nintendo every recent generation.

Of course I was talking about the time when the Wii was Nintendo's current gen system. Nintendo needs another Wii: a console that is mass market friendly, cool and easy to understand and that invites people to play. Mass market gamers have high quality standards (gasp!) so it's obvious Nintendo has to invent something new. But the point stands: A Wii is still way cooler than a Wii U. In fact four girls I know played Just Dance on a Wii just a few weeks ago and three of them are pretty ;) That's what people don't get: Most consumers have very high standards and they are not going to buy the same thing (or something totally different) all over again just because it has the same name on the box. 

Again: It's like you guys live in an alternative universe! I'd really like to adress these points but I have no idea where to start. The paragraph I bolded alone is weird on so many levels it would take half an hour to respond to. 

I'm not trying to bash anyone: I'm a core gamer myself and I enjoy these discussions. But outside of gaming forums people think so differently about videogames it really feels like this is another universe I enter when I log in on vgchartz. And judging from past events, what hardcore gamers think Nintendo "needs" to do is always what gets them into trouble. My girlfriend is 10x better at analysing the gaming market than most people here: I just need to show her a gaming system or a game and I instantly see if it's a hit or not. Hardcore gamers have page long discussions about totally irrelevant things or make up myths ("casual gamers! The Wii was a fad! Console are successful because...!"). I can't count the times someone talked about "cartridges" on a gaming forums as one of Nintendo's biggest mistakes or "the casual gamers not being loyal" to Nintendo. It is somewhat grotesque. And I really don't want to offend anyone, I enjoy these discussions and love videogames. I'll be in line on launch day when Nintendo's next console launches. 

Wii was a huge gamble but a total success. Wii U was another gamble but they lost. I think the name and terrible marketing had more to do with it's failure than the Wii. I mean it def is also failing due to lack of power but there are so many reasons it is failing and it has nothing to do with the Wii which was a huge success. Personally I think the nunchuck controller is the best possible controller for gaming. I love it and I hope their next system uses it.

They need more powerful hardware to compare with Sony and M$ , after that, they can "unique" how much they want