In comparison to PS consoles. Doesn't mean they weren't successful. Taking it the most negatively that you can?

That doesn't even make sense. That's like saying PS 1, 3 and 4 aren't successful because the DS sold a lot more.

I'm comparing the level of success of home consoles to home consoles.... The market leader has massive success while the others have some. What's so hard to understand about that? You're starting to bring up handhelds so you're the ones starting to making sense. *shrugs

NES and SNES were market leaders at the time... Probably made more money than the PS1 as well. 

It comes down to expectations versus reality. Many of us gamers are pretty simple in what we want, a steady evolution of tech and games. Nintendo has made a lot of decisions in its history that went against the grain, and because of this many ideas are predicted as failure for not conform to conventional thinking.

Think about this, what will the PlayStation 5 look like? Probably have a good expectation and think about processor, hard drive, RAM, even down to the controller and shape of the system.

Now, what will Nintendo's Switch successor look like? I have no clue.

Coupled with this was the Wii was a cultural phenomenon the way a gaming system hasn't since. So many people can claim it as their only dedicated gaming system. This mix of not catering to forum gamers and being a huge success earned it a place of being a threat. Imagine if gaming changed and Sony and Microsoft and gone full on "Wii Mode" and not just add-ons like Move or Kinect, but the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were barely more powerful than their predecessors and emphasized motion controls.

Gamers are use to being catered to as they were the bedrock of the industry for decades, to think they could be disposable and see their passion change into a general hobby of the masses scares a lot of them.

Market leaders with really low sales in comparison to what sony managed to do with the playstation consoles. The PS1 sold  almost double the games that the NES did and almost 3 times the games that the SNES sold. The PS1 also had a higher tie ration than either one. So I doubt that nintendo made more money on NES and SNES than sony did with the PS1.

Because it wasn’t cool.

The rhetoric of Nintendo catering only to children is now so ingrained that Wii ‘winning’ the generation causes cognitive dissonance for ‘hardcore’ gamers.

By discounting the Wii, two opposing mindsets may be adopted:
“Games are cool and mature.”
“The Wii is for kids, but adults played it.”
Because the adults that played the Wii don’t count; they were soccer moms and grandparents, not ‘hardcore’ gamers.

The truth is that games are childish by nature. People confuse ‘adult’ games as being mature. But it is only the content of the game that is mature; playing a game is still childish.

Ironically, the desire to be seen as mature is childish. True maturity is not caring.

The Wii was an amazing console. Family members that would usually complain about anyone using electronics at a family function were now the first to fire up the Wii for some bowling. I played with so many people I never thought possible beforehand.

The Wii changed the image of gaming to something that everyone could enjoy and it was no longer cool to ‘hardcore’ gamers.

Because the "casuals" liked it. Some fans blame it for Nintendo now not being a more traditional gaming company and relying on gimmicks. However, I like that Nintendo is doing something different.

Yeah hardware and software sales are not always an indicator of profit. Just ask X360 and PS3, I'd venture to say NES and SNES each garnered more profit than both combined.

It was released at a time when just about everyone had upgraded to HDTVs, and it ran in SD. The games just looked terrible compared to every other system being sold at the time. They basically repackaged a slightly overclocked version of their previous generation (GameCube) with motion controllers and tried to sell it as “next gen”. The movement controls were mostly fun for non-gamers and a bit of a gimmick. Online was all the rage; and the Wii was a complete fail in online. The only reason it sold in massive numbers is it was about half the price of the competition; so a lot of Moms and Grandmas bought it for the kids because of sticker shock. That and Nintendo fanatics that would literally buy any hardware that plays Nintendo games (which I can kind of relate to).

I remember standing in line to get one for my nieces and nephew when it came out because they were really excited for the motion controls. It got hauled out for various family events...probably a few dozen hours of play during its life. Meanwhile the PS3 they later bought got thousands of hours of play and is still in use.

I was so appalled the first time I connected their new Wii to their HD screen on launch day. Soooooo ugly video.

The thing I can’t understand is the Wii U hate. They fixed all the deficits of the Wii, added some very innovative features, and it’s a very solid system. I really enjoy mine. I think people were just pissed it was a normal price system after getting used to the cheap Wii.

I’ve owned almost every other console since the Atari, and the Wii is the one I refuse to buy.