No because of motion controls and the graphics.

If they continued to support the Wii they would have been in a worse position then they where/are in with the Wii U. The Wii U had a great chance of being good but a perfect storm chased developers away, and the ones that stayed didn't exactly do Nintendo any favors with the title choices they brought over. Nintendo choice to save money and continuing to use the PowerPC 750 line of chips to help promote backwards compatibility instead of going with a new supported MPU, it didn't have to be x86 based there are still other RISC based chips out there, help sink support faster when the makers of the UE4 engine decided not to do the optimizations for the Wii U but left it for developers to do it themselves. There probably wasn't much Nintendo could have done to prevent the "break up" with EA. Because I think that had to do more with Microsoft coming around with it's DRM ideas for the Xbox One that cause it.

Nintendo's biggest fuck up with the Wii was not making it HD or on par with the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Had it been on par with the other consoles or at least just HD imagine how much third party support it would have got, the console had a 100 million install base, I don't see how any third party could pass on that.

That's why by the end of the Wii's life cycle there was almost nothing releasing for it anymore, where as the PS3 and Xbox 360 were still getting a shit ton of games.

So Nintendo basically cut the Wii's life even shorter than it should have been because of the power gap.

It was such wasted opportunity. It could have been a time for third party games to actually start selling well on Nintendo consoles, (I'm not saying third party games don't sell at all on Nintendo consoles, but a lot of them seem to bomb), and for them to really improve relations with them and in turn they would have learned HD development last generation instead of barely this generation.

It's not that they should have kept supporting the Wii. It's that they should have waited a bit longer before upgrading to the Wii U. They rushed it out.

If it had launched at the end of 2013, it would have had internals that were stronger (because prices drop with time), they could have had a lot more by way of content on it, given it another year of development, etc.

Meanwhile, some of the titles they released for Wii U, they probably could have released for Wii. New Super Mario Bros U could have been a Wii title, instead, as could Lego City Undercover, Sing Party, NES Remix, and Pokemon Rumble U.

Then, think about what their launch lineup would include. Wind Waker HD, Pikmin 3, Super Mario 3D World, The Wonderful 101, Game & Wario, and an expanded version of Nintendo Land (with another year, I'm sure there would have been more content in it). They could also have Wii Sports Club, Wii Fit U, and Wii Party U ready for the launch period. And they'd probably release a HD version of New Super Mario Bros U with New Super Luigi U.

Keep in mind, some of these would be 2014 releases, as you wouldn't dump 6 major releases all within that one sliver of time. Which also means that 2014 would be a bit different. DKC TF would no longer launch in early 2014, since NSMBU+NSLU and the newly-released Rayman Legends would be enough platforming for that period - it would probably be pushed out to release in Holiday 2014. Captain Toad would probably be shifted into 2015 properly, which would help to bulk up the 2015 release lineup.

Meanwhile, with Zelda, 3D Mario, Pikmin, and Wii Sports all present at launch, the system would probably have a better start to the generation. Without the whole kerfuffle over Rayman Legends, and other titles getting boosts from releasing simultaneously on Wii U and other systems (as they're delayed to release on XBO and PS4 anyway), Wii U would probably also see better third party support.

With another year, they probably would have gotten the controller costs down further, to allow a better battery. And Nintendo would have another year to build up their HD skills.

I struggle to think of any *real* downside to the idea of releasing the Wii U in Holiday 2013. At worst, Nintendo posts a loss in 2013 prior to its release... but then, that's what happened with the Wii U, anyway.

And this would also lead to NX being delayed another year, at least. Which would work well, since it would mean Zelda BotW would be a Wii U exclusive, and probably release a bit earlier. Plus, other titles that are known or suspected to have been shifted to NX would be on Wii U in 2016 or 2017.

Nintendo would also be further into development of Amiibo, and would have designed all of their games to use Amiibo well from the start.

It would've been much better if Nintendo had continued to support Wii instead of Wii U. However, Nintendo's problems are caused by bad software, not bad hardware, like there's no 3D Mario on Wii U, NSMBU is just rehashed, et cetera. Games like SM3D World had been much better on Wii as it already had the installbase, and then SMG3 on Wii's successor. A Wii HD that you use to play Wii games in HD with larger internal memory would've been great

Yes - I so much enjoy playing NES Remix in HD, just like I enjoy playing A Link To The Past in HD, Ninja Gaiden in HD, Minish Cap in HD, 3DS in HD, and look how people play their smartphones in HD... Oh, wait...

MK8 is maybe the worst Mario Kart ever made, Splatoon would've been much better on Wii.

Well, smartphone market already exploded before Wii was released, but yeah, it took some time before all the free flash games on PC went to free games on smartphones.

It was Wii U anyway that made the name "Wii" old and boring.

I'm just pointing out that third party games bomb equally on any platform. As for third party support; Wii had the most third party support last gen anyway, the higher dev cost could have only made it for worse, not for better.

There's no "learning" HD development any more than there is learning any other development, the only thing to learn is hardware and middleware, both of which are different every generation. 

Basically you're just pointing out how fast Wii sales dropped after Nintendo stopped supporting it. Basically Wii sales died when Nintendo shifted focus on 3DS and started Wii U games development. Thing is, that Nintendo expected 3rd parties to pick up where Nintendo left, much like they did with NDS, but it didn't happen. If Nintendo had supported 3DS and Wii, they could have had better software output on both, handheld and home console side.

Even that you're correct with the generational change serving the purpose of selling much of the same for the same people, it totally ignores the fact that Nintendo is currently unable to develop the number of sequels to support the purpose of console cycle anyway.

Well, it would have been a better decision than developing the Wii U imo.
But it still wouldn't be the optimal solution imo.

No, I think that a PS3-level HD console was a necessary step for Nintendo to play catch up with the rest of the industry.  Remember Miyamoto's comments back in 2013 about how hard Nintendo was finding it to develop games in 720p?  Just imagine how bad it would be if he was instead making those same comments in 2017 when Sony and MS were already moving into 4k.  Nintendo doesn't need to be at the front end of technology, but it's really not a good idea for them to fall more than 1 generation behind.  Nobody wants to be buying a new console from a store, bringing it home and playing with fuzzy 480i on their nice 50" flat screen.  The Wii had to go and it was even really showing its age way back in 2010 once people were starting to buy HD TV's on mass. 

That said, looking back, I think a Wii HD might have been a much better idea than the Wii U.  The gamepad was a total loss and I agree that Nintendo would have been better off if the gamepad never saw the light of day.

No. They couldn't just support the Wii forever. The problem wasn't leaving the Wii. The problem was its replacement kind of sucked.