No one would've thought the successor to the Wii would take 2 and a half years to reach the 10 million mark, damns.
Great milestone.

12.5m would be on par with last year. But the holiday software isn't nearly as strong as last year, so probably closer to 12m.

I think 13 mil. I really think Mario Maker will be huge and sell consoles.

I'm thinking 11-11.5M.

Yaaaaaay

I've stopped arguing on this or other forums. In recent years, I used to say: "guys, if they don't even announce any big titles by now, when are we supposed to get them? There's only so much time left in Wii U's lifespan, AAA games take this long to develop... there can't be anything more coming." And people would scream and downvote and be delusional. Now at E3 Nintendo has confirmed exactly that - they're releasing a handful of second tier games so the few who bought Wii U aren't too mad at them, and that's it. Any big IP you were waiting for is in development for the next system: 3D Metroid, 3D Mario, console Paper Mario, even Zelda, crazy stuff like F-Zero, new Mother, console Pokemon or Animal Crossing. You name it. From Nintendo's perspective any of these would be wasted on Wii U. 

This is coming from a Nintendo only gamer - Wii U is the only current system I own. 

So how was Wii U? I love MK8. SM3DW was competent, but worse than Galaxy. NSMBU was too much of the same. Kirby, Yoshi and Donkey Kong are alright, but feeling increasingly formulaic (mostly not made by Nintendo's A teams). Pikmin, Bayonetta, Splatoon and Smash are supposedly awesome, just not my taste. Oh Toad was nice, but hardly a big game.

Let's hope the next system starts with an incredible lineup. And Nintendo should spend money on at least one stunning third party exclusive, I'm thinking Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger or the likes. 

Me too! I loved my GCN and sorely miss the days when Nintendo bested Sony on graphics, and compared fairly well to the Xbox in visuals. The Wii was a massive success, but I can't help to think that if it were simply capable of 720p through component, and had enough extra juice to run downgraded ports of the later PS360 titles, its twilight years wouldn't have been so barren and painful. 

I wish they would look back at the GCN and learn from the marketing and branding mistakes that they made back then, and take another shot at making a primary console again (not a fun second alternative). Rather than running away from that challenge, they might find that making a relatively powerful machine gets cheaper when you don't pump tons of R&D money into some "revolutionary" new concept. 

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It starts to get a little crazy from here:

One solution might be that if Nintendo is going for multiple devices under one NX "platform", we might see a handheld release next year, an inexpensive home unit for casuals release shortly after that, and a more powerful machine for their hardcore fans release in the Fall of 2017. Each gamer "type" would be represented here, and Nintendo could simultaneously please their handheld fans, their (re-expanding with mobile) casual market, and their hardcore fans, by providing a device for each of them at a price that they can stomach.

I would say $149 for the handheld and the same for the casual home unit (aka Nintendo TV), and $299 for the gamer's box.

Each unit would be progressively more capable and would play all of the titles from the lower "tiered" devices. The handheld would play Nintendo mobile games and handheld titles. The casual box would play mobile, handheld, and graphically undemanding home console games like "Kirby's All-New Visual Style Curse" and "Animal Crossing: Amiibo Train 2". The gamer's box would handle games that require more horsepower ala "Metroid Prime 4: Boo-thaFugg-Yay-uh!"

Both the casual box and gamer's box would be able to play Wii U titles (digital BC, ala XBO), using the handheld as a second screen - perhaps allowing for a Wii U gamepad to sync with the system in the same way that the Wii U supports Wiimotes. Virtual Console, mobile, and handheld games would be linked to an account, rather than an individual console, and could be played on any of the three devices (i.e. cross-buy). VC would extend from Gamecube games and back on the handheld, and from Wii games and back on both home consoles.

Kind of a pipe-dream, I know...

Totally a pipe-dream!

EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not advocating that Nintendo try to create two wholly different home consoles on the NX platform.

I'm assuming both will adopt modest modern processors (marginally more powerful than that of the Wii U), sport x86 architecture for easy ports, and only run games at 1080p (Nintendo isn't going 4K any time soon). The major difference between the two models will be the size of the SSD, amount of RAM (8GB to match PS4, XBO on the deluxe model), and the speed of their GPUs.

It was half and half, it was a genuine congratulations. Just a shame their most recent console ended up like this.

Thank you Splatoon.

Yeah Nintendo has made many consoles that actually really deserve that 100m spot.

Whooptiedoo, should have gotten there a year ago.

I've let the WiiU's disappointment go myself, I'll take what I'm interested in when it's released but I'm not expecting that the system will leave last place in my personal Nintendo console ranking anymore. I also don't care about it's sales anymore. It may continue to ba a Saturn-sized bomb or it may recover; whatever. I never thought there would be a moment when I would wish we were back in the era of my previous least favorite Nintendo console, the GameCube, but here it is. WiiU is a farcry from what the Wii has to offer, that's for sure. It had a few good games, but as of yet few that are really special.

Still, congrats to WiiU for this bittersweet victory.