[alexPetrov]

A new (real) Mario?

Are you serious? Do you mean a 2D Mario with actual effort put into it? Because that's Nintendo's biggest series in the ones you listed. Also, all of those games were available on the Gamecube (excepting 2D Mario), and Wii U is basically selling at Gamecube levels. I think it's important to note that the philosophy Nintendo has with the Wii U is more their Gamecube philosophy than Wii philosophy. Look at what Iwata had to say during the respective console cycles. I agree that it's the games, but more specifically it's their lack of interest in focusing on the games that sell systems (hence their horrible treatment of 2D Mario).

I'm inclined to believe that after three years of the Wii being sold out in stores, Nintendo went straight back to the strategies that led to the abysmal sales of the Gamecube. This led to significantly lower sales for the rest of the Wii's life and led to Gamecube-level sales for its successor, the Wii U.

[rlanday]

Anyone who describes GameCube as a failure without saying the same of the Xbox is either being intentionally dishonest or smoking crack. The GameCube wildly, wildly successful like the PlayStation 2, but it sold something like 22 million units versus 24 million for the original Xbox; critically, I’m pretty sure Nintendo at least made money on it, versus Microsoft apparently still showing a loss for the Xbox division overall, over a decade after the first Xbox was released: http://www.vg247.com/2013/01/07/xbox-360-and-ps3-losses-tota...

Can you imagine what pundits would say if Apple released a new product that didn’t immediately make money hand over fist, let alone pissed away this much money over more than a decade? Sales are emphatically not what matters here.

I have no idea what you’re talking about when you say Nintendo’s returning to the “Gamecube philosophy” with the Wii U. The GameCube was a relatively powerful (more powerful than the wildly successful PS2, and pretty close to the Xbox) system that had a pretty standard controller, used (mini) optical discs, which was a first for Nintendo. It didn’t fail miserably like the Xbox and Xbox 360 have (the Xbox 360 hardware having had a special problem with failure), unless we’re still smoking crack, but it also didn’t sell 100 million units like the Wii or PlayStation 2. The Wii was not very powerful for the time, but had a unique controller and otherwise appealed to casual gaming, and has now sold about 100 million units. Nintendo has undeniably won this generation in the marketplace, even if the Wii doesn’t appeal to hardcore gamers with inflated perceptions of self-importance. There’s actually kind of a pattern: the most powerful system never sells the most units (e.g., Wii vs PS3/Xbox 360, PS2 vs. GameCube/Xbox, PlayStation vs. N64, SNES vs. Genesis I think), so while this seems like a risky strategy, it probably isn’t really.

I think the Wii U exactly continues the “Wii philosophy”. The problems Nintendo is having so far with Wii U sales probably stem from a combination of poor marketing, to the point where people don’t even realize it’s a new system because Nintendo has gone too far trying to tie it to the Wii brand, and a lack of titles for their loyal audience who buys Nintendo’s systems to play Nintendo’s games. I own a Wii U and not a 3DS, but it seems like the 3DS is getting a lot more first-party titles than the Wii U has so far. Once Nintendo starts getting out stuff like Pikmin 3, a new Super Smash Bros. game, a new Mario Kart game, an HD Zelda game, a hardcore 3D Pokémon adventure, game or whatever, I think the system will start looking a lot more attractive. It’s kind of too bad they just released a Luigi’s Mansion sequel, a Paper Mario title, and an Ocarina of Time remake for the 3DS because they probably could’ve used some of that for the Wii U.