The Wii U is at the end of its life cycle but still to this day I'm not sure who Nintendo was trying to appease with this console. Their messaging from the very beginning seemed very confusing to me as to who they were trying to get.

Was it the casual Wii crowd? But then the game pad seemed a little bit too complex for that kind of audience and there weren't very many games that took advantage of it like the Wii did with the Wiimote for casual games.

Was it the hardcore (PS3/360) crowd? But then they made a console that was nowhere near the PS4/One in terms of powet and didn't have any 3rd party support.

What do you guys think?

Same as the Wii, but with more focus on the core gamer.

They didn't and still don't know what they wanted.

Judging by the sales even Nintendo themselves didnt know.

Idiots like me.

This is the first year Nintendo lineup for the Wii U ...

New Super Mario Bros. U
Nintendo Land
Sing Party
Ninja Gaiden 3 port
Game & Wario
LEGO City Undercover
The Wonderful 101
Pikmin 3
Wii Fit U
Wii Sports Club
Wii Party U
Super Mario 3D World
Zelda: Wind Waker HD
Mario & Sonic Olympic Games

That's 8 party/mini-game titles. 2 multi-player casual friendly Mario platformers. A Zelda remake. Two kinda mid-tier Nintendo core releases in Pikmin 3 and Wonderful 101. A kids licensed game in LEGO City. And one port of a "hardcore" PS3/360 game, Ninja Gaiden, which had mediocre reviews.

Anyone who can say with a straight face this is a product aimed at "hardcore" gamers when literally 2/3rds of the games are casual fare is out of their mind. A port of the shitty Ninja Gaiden 3 is the only thing expressly not for casuals or kids.

It was for casuals. The casuals just didn't come back, and there were signs they were already leaving later in the Wii's lifecycle.

They didn't support the Kinect either on XBox One.

To me, it was always clear they were trying to get both. Iwata said they will have both deeper (more complex) experiences as well as wider (reach more people) experiences.

I think they tried to have a PS2, a console that appealed to everyone. Just, they failed at it.

Nintendo has been throwing everything at the wall just to see what sticks. When the Wii took off they were convinced that all people wanted was "new" and "innovative" video games. the newest 3D mario was just a gimmick, the newest animal crossing was a gimmick, the newest metroid will be a gimmick, mario party 9 and 10 were gimmicks, amiibos were gimmicks... etc... they had a huge audience to aim at but aimed at everyone else who wasnt interested.

im willing to bet money that the reason Zelda U is being delayed so much is that they were planning a gimmicky new zelda game but halfway through realized that they had gone too far. so they went back to the drawing board to make it more conventional.

and just to prove a point- look at Splatoon- probably the least gimmicky and most outstanding games on the Wii U. they started with an idea and let it evolve into a brand new, amazing game that game new light to a tired genre. they need to start doing that more and less of taking established franchises and mucking them all up.

I think it's more likely they wanted more of a console DS. Something that was primarily aimed at casuals, but unlike the Wii still got some better third party support.

Sony wasn't dumb enough to gimp the PS2's graphics to PSOne level, if they had they would've sold 20-30 million units instead of 150 mill.

The target audience was Nintendo's ego.

It was aimed at no one, to be honest. The gamepad is more hardcore than the PS and Xbox controller. Some games were clearly meant for the mass market (unfortunately they didn't put any effort into them), but at the same time they tried to get "hardcore" third party games and put all their energy into stuff like Pikmin 3, which didn't sell on Gamecube either. The hardware itself was designed with people in mind who don't care about graphics, but the packaged product was placed in a price range that said "hardcore only". Kinda like a computer manufacturer that didn't know if their next product was supposed to be a home computer or a laptop, so they made a fridge.