far better than Sony has with their Vita supporters

Nintendo DOES deserve a little lenience in my opinion when considering that they have had the difficulty of carrying two systems practically on their own. as you can see with the Vita, its not something any company manages that well

and frankly the reality is you should never really buy a system (or any product for that matter) if you're not satisfied what's available at the time or purchase because the future is impossible to know

NX is rumored to have a pretty strong opening library so that may not be much of a wait. (i.e. especially since it seems heavily implied that Nintendo has been working MORE on NX software in the last year or two than they have on Wii U)

I agree with this in some respects

while I don't think Nintendo has released a great library for the Wii U (no Metroid, no F Zero, no true 3D unique Mario, no Animal Crossing, no Pokemon home console game) they have tried decently to some level and you can only expect a company to put so much into a drowning ship

and to give Nintendo some credit they didn't really seem to abandon the console until the last year or so. They tried supporting strongly for a few years despite bad sales

I also will point out that generally speaking you need to have software planned and in development by the numbers wayyyy in advance. I think likely what happened is that Nintendo expected (after the blockbuster Wii) that the Wii U would get strong third party support and in terms of software there might be less pressure on them. So they DIDN'T start a lot projects exclusive eto the Wii U early enough and by the time they were a few years into the Wii U's lifecycle it was basically too late

bad planning by Nintendo, sure. Also Nintendo has seemed slow with adjusting with the fact that today's games generally have much longer development periods than a few generations ago. Hopefully they'll finally have grasped that for the NX and have already hired on a lot more software designs or acquired some more development teams (Nintendo's employee count is insanely low for the size of the company, just to give you a perspective Nintendo has a fraction of the employees that Ubisoft has despite being much larger)

They're in business to make money. The Wi iU didn't sell well, so they can't justify spending the resources necessary to make games just for one system with a small install base. It is largely their fault that the Wii U sold so poorly. But, that doesn't change the economics of the situation.

They're carrying those two systems on their own because they've failed to cultivate good relationships with third party developers.  So, its their own fault.  

If they get off Power PC and go to x86 or whatever we might not be able to transfer our games at least initially.  Just like Sony and Microsoft didn't allow game transfers to their new systems.  It would suck but perhaps they will do what they did with Wii U VC (have you pay a small amount to transfer it to Wii U menu instead of booting it up in Wii mode).  I never did that because it doesn't take that long to boot up Wii mode. 

While Iwata was alive they were treating it well. But after he died it has become appauling.

Realistically there's only so much support you can expect for a system that sells this poorly.

The Saturn and Dreamcast and Jaguar and 3DO didn't get more than 4 years of support (in real continuos way). Wii U wasn't going to either.

It's nothing personal. It's simply business, it's like being mad a theater company for pulling a movie out of the theater after 2 weeks because it's bombing and wanting to use that screen for something else.

Besides to be honest there were still a lot of Nintendo games released for the Wii U, and a lot of very good ones. It's not like they Virtual Boy-ed it. 

Systems that have trouble getting to even 15 million units sold will be phased out after 3 or 4 years. That's just how it goes in this industry, Nintendo is not a charity, they're a business. The whole "5 years or bust" thing only applies to system's that are actually successful in the first place. 

I actually would have been happy with just four years of proper support; it's not the lifespan that bothers me, it's the droughts, the delays, and the amount of safe/uninspired software.

I feel happy. I had many great games and now Nintendo is moving into a new console... and I want a new console!