@fceramic Great to hear from you directly. I think the art style looks fantastic. Looking forward to playing it.

I picked up a few Wii U games I was on the fence about because of discounts: Injustice, Nano Assault Neo, Tank Tank Tank, and will probably get a few Marvel tables for Zen Pinball 2. Plus, still playing Scribblenauts Unlimited.

@Damo Sounds good; I really like the look of the art style, and I'm curious what the gameplay is like.

Ads must be about GAMES, not about the hardware. Luigi's Mansion had some great ads that made me say "I need a 3DS." I hope they do more ads like that when Mario Kart and the other big games come out.

Great to see the man behind the character; I love Frank Honey.

Highly recommend this article http://nintendoenthusiast.com/14331/nintendo-wii-u-strategy/
He says the GamePad makes possible things that have previously been done on PC but never on consoles; I think he has a point.

The GamePad's potential is huge; it's just a matter of getting software that takes advantage of it. I hope games like Metroid and Zelda do things that make everyone think the 2nd screen is the best revolution in gaming since the analog stick.

The marketing so far has been weak, and the loss of developer support is annoying. Those are the main valid points. I hope Nintendo really makes the effort to improve relations with the new heads of EA and Square Enix, and get others on board. I have a lot of confidence in the first-party games that are coming.

The Wii U drought is finally over: Lego City Undercover! Also some Zen Pinball 2 - have Plants vs. Zombies and Earth Defense so far.

Even if Wii U sales continue to lag, at worst I see a GameCube-like scenario where there are a solid dozen absolute classic titles and Nintendo still managed to turn a profit, though smaller than they hoped.

With Nintendo's fat bank account, even if they had to eat every Wii U produced, they should be able to try at least one more console - probably something with heavy crossplay with their next-gen handheld given they merged the divisions. The only way they'd get out of consoles is if the entire console industry died - then we'd see appstore Mario.

I don't have it on any other system, so I'm definitely getting this. The question is which tables to buy - Plants v. Zombies is definite, and after that my top choice is Star Wars (hopefully gets confirmed soon).

For those (in the US) waiting for a price drop - Target will have $50 gift card if you buy the Wii U and a buy 2 get 1 free next week. It's linked in the deals section in the forums here. That's basically getting the Wii U and 3 games for the normal price of a Wii U and 1 game.

It does look pretty great, and I have it on preorder. Really hope it's not another "Aliens: Colonial Marines" type of fiasco - but with Nintendo publishing it themselves I think that's really unlikely.

I'm intrigued by what they could do with it, but there are other things I would consider a higher priority. Everyone knows the Wii U needs some big games urgently, but it's great if they can get other people working on NFC stuff that won't slow down Mario Kart/SSB/Wii U Sports (often overlooked by Nintendo fans, but don't forget how crucial it was to the Wii's popularity).

Bottom line, Skylanders earned 500 million dollars, and they didn't have the advantage of characters nearly as famous as Nintendo's. A very appealing NFC-related game or app could be just the kind of thing that gets some customers to want the Wii U despite release hype for PS4 and 720 this holiday season. I just hope they come up with something where the cards or figurines aren't too expensive.

IP laws are inherently illegitimate, the arguments attempting to uphold them are flawed, and studies have not shown them to actually help creativity, I highly recommend the work of Stephan Kinsella on this topic, for example http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf

It's hard to complain too much when the NSMB series sells so well. It's hard to balance innovation with keeping the Mario 2D tradition and not angering the fans. I'm pretty sure I'll still buy and love the Luigi NSMBU content as long as it's not too expensive, and I think that's a much better idea than releasing a whole new game.

The biggest innovation I'd like to see is offering level creation tools to players. See what they come up with, maybe integrate it with Miiverse.