It was a competent platform. It tried to hold its own against the likes of the PS4/XBO but in reality it was more inline with the PS360 before it. It should have been the wii that people wanted.

I always wondered what would've happened if Nintendo had released an actual "Wii 2" with straight up technological progress. Because that's what Christensen proclaims in his theory of disruptive innovation: Companies are supposed to move upmarket, not abandon their strategy like Nintendo did with the Wii U.

A system with no gamepad but more efficient hardware. Better motion sensing technology. A wireless nunchuck with actual gyro capabilities. Better pointer capabilities. Add a microphone and a camera to the sensor bar (nothing crazy like Kinect, just a decent camera. Sort of an evolution of Eye Toy on the PS2). Maybe additional sensors like a heart rate sensor.

This would've enabled new gameplay possibilities (a Tetris or Luigi's Mansion or Eternal Darkness game that gets more hectic the higher your heart rate goes, Nintendogs via camera + microphone, Eye Toy like games, better light gun titles, new Wario Ware and Rhythm Heaven games, games that use the microphone in general, etc.), would've forced Nintendo to release actual new entries in their established "Wii" series of games (instead of releasing HD remasters of Wii Sports and Fit lol) and would've clearly been Nintendo moving upmarket with their vision of the Wii. Also, the console certainly could've been $50 cheaper while still being 20% more powerful, since the Gamepad was really expensive to produce and a lot of R&D costs went into making the second screen have less latency. I'm sure such a console would've sold at least 50 million units, probably more.

If the architecture was actually easier to develop for, third-party games could've helped the slow roll of first-party games. Alas, the third-party on Wii U failed to captivate players from AAA games to tiny games. 

Nintendo Land was great !! i miss it so much

I'm probably one of the few that really enjoyed the Wii U for few personal reasons:

1) I bought the white 8gb model when it was being discontinued after a year for $199CAD so that was a bargain itself, and adding a SD card was much cheaper back then.
2) Backwards compatibility + Bayonetta 2 exclusive
3) Nintendo is always my couch coop/party machine so my friends and I always play the hell out of Mario Party 10 and enjoyed SM 3D World.

Yeah I still have mixed feelings about it.

The game droughts were brutal and the hardware was incredibly poorly conceived, but on the flip side, games like BOTW, Mario Kart 8, Tropical Freeze, Mario 3D World, Splatoon, Bayonetta 2, etc were phenomenal, there just weren't enough of them.

I feel like I would have loved it if I was a kid who didn't mind replaying the same games endlessly and didn't have to worry about when the next game was coming, or if I'd picked it up near the end of its life with a ton of games to chase down all at once. (Though Switch 1 kinda made that redundant)

Overall, a badly designed system with some really, really great games.

I still think it's better than the ps4

Fun idea, some great exclusives, bad overall experience.

We shouldn't have needed to wait until 2015 to get games that sell us on the GamePad.

I love Super Mario 3D World, New Super Mario Bros. U, New Super Luigi U, and Mario Kart 8. Great games. Xenoblade Chronicles X looks amazing too, but I still need to play it.

But aside from that...

Amazing console. It got some of my favourite games ever (Bayonetta 2, Xenoblade X, Super Mario Maker, The Wonderful 101, Mario 3D World, Twilight Princess/Wind Waker HD, DKC Tropical Freeze, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, Zombi U, Breath of the Wild, Splatoon...), a pretty great Virtual Console selection of games and platforms, some insane value as a media center thanks to the Gamepad (I got literally over 1000 hours on the Internet Browser alone), off-tv play really came in handy many times and being backwards compatible with the Wii and all of its controllers and accessories was a blessing.