Topic: What do you think the future of the Wii U will be?

Just my guesses but - WiiU won't fail completely. Nintendo won't let it. Nintendo is a hugely cunning and resourceful company. It won't do Wii numbers. It will probably be closer to Gamecube. It won't get a huge lot of multi-platform games - Wii didn't either and Wii was the market leader. But it will pick up from where it is now.

What do I base this on? Essentially just knowing Nintendo. They can't make another Wii-type success - that is beyond anyone's power - but they won't let WiiU go the way of Dreamcast - they are a much bigger, smarter company than Sega. They turned 3DS around from a position of near-failure (which they admitted and Iwata-san cut his own salary in a kind of gentle seppuku) and it is now selling almost as much as everything else combined in Japan.

Points to consider: Nintendo's handhelds have historically done better than their console equivalents. Handhelds alone can support Nintendo. The idea that handhelds are finished in this generation because of tablets and smartphones (which every doomsayer was repeating like a mantra in the early days of 3DS failure) has been completely disproved by the runaway success of 3DS.

On the other hand, consoles do seem to be on the decline in Japan. Why am I talking about Japan? Because it is the market that matters most to Nintendo. Also because what happens in Japan today may well happen in the West tomorrow. I don't think WiiU will be Nintendo's last console, but if it is, it will be because consoles in general have become non-viable. I don't think that will happen this generation or next - but it may be coming eventually.

This generation will be dominated by 3DS and Nintendo will find ways to make WiiU viable - but not a huge success. They will be very happy with that. They aren't playing football. They don't need to "win" the "console war". They need to stay healthy as a company and continue to create wonderful games. And they will.

You might find this interesting. It is the official Nintendo dream-village in Animal Crossing. In the golden rooms devoted to Nintendo history, dominated by a golden-framed portrait of Iwata-san, is, displayed proudly in a glass case, a Virtual Boy. A Western company would probably want to forget Virtual Boy as a failure. Nintendo is still proud of it. It was part of a proud history of innovation and imagination. It wasn't a commercial success, but in business you win some, you lose some.

But the show must go on.

And it will.

the future of the WiiU is the same as every Nintendo console, having a sucessor by the end of the gen and being remembered by many(many but FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR from being all) as the best Nintendo console ever.

I just want Nintendo to learn from this. They need to learn to release their games on time and how important clear messaging is. And they need to be willing to spend money. Sometimes you gotta spend money to make money.