Nintendo killed the Wii too early, not because the hardware didn't need a refresh or because it could have sold much more, but because they ended up having very few games to launch the WiiU with. They needed way more 1st parties the first year.

If Nintendo had supported Wii even longer then WiiU would have even less games ready.

Nintendo only took Wii out of the market when it was barely selling anymore, but SW support they removed long earlier and that is a possible cause for the sales of HW to plummet so hard.

They didn't need to support it at 100% of their dev power. Just enough to justify it being around. Hell, they were swimming in buckets of money back then, they could have paid other studios to keep quality Wii games coming, or just open more studios and let them experiment with the Wii, it's not like they needed to make the system sell at this point.

I understand the sarcasm and would have to search to send a link, but the core idea is that the usual gamer Joe just wants more of the same in better (or simply different, not necessarily better) clothing (see FIFA and CoD), not real innovation. 

100% yes

The problem was Iwata was obsessed with the 6 year life-span and assumed it was an unbreakable rule for the market. Nintendo did the same thing with the DS, killing off their most successful system ever. By launching too early, Nintendo killed the Wii and the Wii U couldn't get key software out in time. It also made the system outdated by the time Sony and Microsoft released their systems, which made porting more of a chore. With the poor sales of the Wii U, there was no point in attempting it, so the Wii U struggled further.

In the end it was a horrible decision. Nintendo didn't repeat this with the 3DS of course, though I worry they may try it again with the Switch. The lack of new games is feeling like the late Wii days.

I certainly agree Nintendo could have used the money to keep sw support, just that op thinks of hw support being cut to early when actually sw was the problem.

Opening a new studio is probably the most expensive option for a publisher to do.  Especially since you are proposing that these new studios become experts in a soon to be obsolete console.

As for the topic in general, I don't know.  It is hard to say.  The fundamental issue is that Nintendo just can't support so many consoles at once.  You had the 3DS launch in 2011, Wii U launch in 2012, plus trying to support the Wii up through 2012.  They were basically trying to support 3 consoles at once.  I guess 4 if you count the end of the DS lifecycle (Nintendo published games up through early 2012).

I just hope with the single piece of hardware, generational transitions go more smoothly for Nintendo.

GT4 isn't native 1080i, it's 632x448 upscaled to 1080i.

The Wii did get the later COD games, they continued releasing for it every year until its replacement.

No but the WiiU should have been an mid-session upgrade Wii with HD support and digital output for 199$ in 2010.

No. Sales were dropping significantly even as early as mid-2009. By Sept. 2009, the baseline had dropped to around 150k, when it was more than double that just the year before.

Once the 360 and PS3 dropped to more affordable price ranges and adapted motion controls with the Move and Kinect in 2010, the Wii lost its appeal very quickly as it had lost the two main things that made it stand out aside from Nintendo 1st party titles: Its unique motion control gimmick and its cheaper price tag. Unlike the Switch's hybrid nature that has legitimate staying power and appeal that has been near universally praised and embraced by all gamers, casual AND core alike, the Wii was a very polarizing system. There were those that thought motion controls were the next big thing and the next evolution in gaming. And there were those who thought it was just a gimmick that had its one niche audience and the clock would eventually strike midnight on its Cinderella story, which was ultimately what happened. Furthermore, unlike the Switch, with its hybrid factor, the Wii's motion gimmick was not something a lot of people were fond of because it was viewed as the trade off for Nintendo going for HD graphics along with the 360 and PS3. So by late 2010-early 2011, with everyone having motion controls, affordable price ranges, extensive game libraries, BUT the HD twins being exactly that - HD. All the Wii was at that point was severely dated in every way.

The writing was on the wall. The Wii achieved incredible levels and was a cultural phenomenon for its time. But once the fad ended, that was all she wrote. It ran its course and it was time to move on.