Luigi U was just DLC, Wind Waker was just a remaster of a Gamecube game, and 3D World didn't come out until November, so for almost a full year, starting just a month after its release, Wii U had no big new games. Why would any mainstream audience buy a system that gets no games? Even NSMBU was crippled by being the second NSMB game in a matter of months; NSMB2 had just come out for the much more popular 3DS, most people interested in the series had just gotten their fill and had no reason to buy an expensive and unappealing new console just to play yet another NSMB game when they just finished one.

Wii U's first year wasn't just bad, it was utterly atrocious.

Switch on the other hand had 3 megaton releases just in its first 8 months; BOTW, Splatoon 2, and Odyssey.

There were other big games, tons of western thirdparty support. AC3, batman, rayman COD, and many others. it's not anywhere as bad as people make it out to be, switch has gone through droughts as well, after splatoon in april it didn't have a big game till 5 months later.

Wii U would have failed regardless even if it had something similar to the switch lineup. 

No, 3rd party was almost inexistant outside of the release window. Rayman was supposed to release in february, but was pushed to august and outside of Luigi U, there were almost no release before Pikmin 3. 

No, 3rd party was almost inexistant outside of the release window. Rayman was supposed to release in february, but was pushed to august and outside of Luigi U, there were almost no release before Pikmin 3. 

I like how we have this narrative that a console can't recover after having a slow year of releases when it really wasn't that bad. especially when the next year released  smash and mario kart, obviously not saying it should sell as well as switch, but 3 million LTD, come on.   

Dragonquest X and lego under cover.

It wasn't just a "slow" year, there were literal months were no new games came out at all, and 12 months passed without a big release. By the time stuff like Mario Kart arrived, while it did boost hardware sales, it was too late to save it; the Wii U had been established in the minds of the general public as a shitty failed system with no games.

Plus Smash 4's potential to push Wii U sales was crippled by the fact that you could also play it on the 3DS, so that's what the Japanese did, they bought it on the successful system they already had and liked, and hence had little or no reason to buy a Wii U for it.

New Super Mario Bros. U - December 8, 2012
New Super Luigi U - July 13, 2013
Wind Waker HD - September 26, 2013
Super Mario 3D World - November 21, 2013

If your next big game is coming 5 months after your console released, that's just bad. This was a problem during the entire life cycle of Wii U, months of software droughts. Even if it was a interesting hardware (for Japan, at least), and even if it had good software, that doesn't matter if they are released months apart of each other, killing any momentum that Wii U needed to have to succeed.

It didn't fail in Japan for being a home console - it failed because of terrible software droughts. Just like it did everywhere.

it was to late to save because nobody was gonna buy it, nobody was interested in the hardware to begin with. WII U got DQ game in march that could be considered a big even though it was just a port, and it sold pretty well.  

Nobody's denying the hardware was shit, but you're vastly underselling just how mind-blowing awful Wii U's software situation was and the impact that had. I know because I was there, I was an early Wii U adopter.

DQX on Wii U wasn't big cos not only was it already out on Wii but it wasn't a proper DQ game to begin with, it was an MMO, which was not what Japanese players wanted.