They messed up royalty with Wii U, but it could have been a success. How? Just a few changes. 1. Lower the ridiculous price. They should have dropped it to $200 to $250 in the 2nd year. It's still $300! Such greed. 2. Focused more on exclusive Wii U games. Too many big games like Smash Bros. would have been bigger system sellers if there was no 3DS port. Also, this would have freed up more time and resources to make more Wii U games. There is plenty of 3rd party support for 3DS, so they didn't need as many first party games on 3DS. If Nintendo had released a true 3D Mario successor toSM  Galaxy 2 like SM Odyssey and a true Metroid on Wii U, more systems would have sold. 3. Release a steady flow of Virtual Console releases instead of a trickle here and there. Many Nintendo system owners buy Nintendo on Nostalgia. A more consistent stream of VC releases to buy would tap into that Nostalgia. 

Combine all of these, and there would have been a much more successful system. What do you guys think?

i rmb reading somewhere stated that nintendo is selling wii u in a loss, due to the high cost of the second screen.

No.

1. Dropping the price by $100 would likely have resulted in more sales but would lead to higher losses per unit.

2. Smash Bros as a Wii U exclusive wouldnt have seen better sales nearly to the extent you are thinking of. As of the last update Smash Wii U has sold about 5 million & Smash 3DS has sold about 8.5 million for a total of 13.5 million. As a Wii U exlusive we might be looking at 7-8 million so Nintendo loses out big time. A Mario in the style of Galaxy may have sold better and moved more hardware but not by a huge amount. Metroid is relatively niche, it usually does in the 1-2 million range so its not nearly as big of a system seller as you think.

3. Virtual Console titles are great as supplementary titles but are not system sellers in and of themselves.

Overall we might be looking at a Gamecube level sales with your ideas but also far greater losses.

The big problem with the Wii U (besides the name of course) was the tablet controller, which didn't have many games that took advantage of it and was an unnecessary burden on the Wii U's overall cost, hanging like an albatross around its neck. Gamers were looking for Nintendo to return to form with a more traditional style console this gen, not another underpowered one that relied on a new controller gimmick to sell. And outside of the usual Nintendo franchise staples plus Splatoon, software for the console was slim pickings on all fronts throughout its life.

Nintendo alone cannot sustain a console. And don't give me the "...but N64 and GCN!" argument, both of those consoles had plenty of 3rd party support in comparison to the Wii U, as well as a stable of strong 2nd parties like Rare for N64 and Retro and Factor 5 on the GC to really bolster the quality of their libraries. The Wii was a dumping ground for 3rd party shovelware outside of a few bonafide hits, and since the Wii U couldn't replicate the Wii's success those 3rd parties went elsewhere.

No, even then the Wii U would not have been saved, would have just hurt the 3DS more

According to this forum Nintendo made plenty of profit with the Wii U. That is all that counts.

No, it was basically a premature version of the Switch. Decreasing the price would have made it a higher loss (even the current price has them losing money), it costs too much to port games over, gamepad simply wasn't that good, etc.

No way. The console had too many flaws

It was the customer fault for not understanding the product. Or so idiocy I remember them saying it.

The Wii U was a combination of too many mistakes to the point where it would have been insanely difficult for Nintendo to manage to save it.

- The marketing was fucking awful. Some of the marketing they actually did have were just down right cringy as well.
- The whole selling point of the system was supposed to be the Gamepad, but yet barely any games used the damn thing in interesting ways or even big ways as part of a game. Remember how Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze literally just had the gamepad screen as a black screen that didn't even show anything?
- A huge ass first year drought where for months there was nothing new releasing on it outside of maybe 1 or 2 games.
- The messaging was so off point about what the Wii U was from the beginning that a lot of people honestly thought it was just a add-on for the original Wii.
-  The name of the system. I personally didn't think the name Wii U was that bad, but they could have done better to differentiate it more from the original Wii.
- It seems like the controller was so expensive to the point where Nintendo put themselves in a bad situation with it and couldn't do some of the things they originally wanted to with it. Remember how originally people were gonna be able to buy more than one gamepad? That never panned out unless you bought another Wii U system.

- The cost of the gamepad seemed to also continue to be a problem since I would guess that's why they weren't able to drop the console's price to try to bring up sales without taking a loss.  It was an expensive thing to produce, an integral part of the system and selling point, that they didn't even know what to do with and they couldn't just drop it. 

I know that companies can take years in advance to think of and design a new system, but the Wii U just seemed like something that wasn't well thought out enough imo considering all the problems it had.