After all the articles I've read and the hyperbolic PR from Nintendo. I was led to believe there would be a solid stream of good quality 1st and 3rd party games.
A couple of months later. All I get is an apology from Iwata for the lack of titles on WiiU. So yeah, they are totally to blame.
Eh, I don't know. Were you at least satisfied by the launch line up for a while? I don't see why you'd buy a console for future releases that you knew nothing about, considering how there weren't even names or anything by the time of the system's launch.
I'm a Nintendo fan who bought the GC and Wii right after their launches, but it's because they had games I wanted to play and knew they'd last for a while (Smash Bros Melee for the GC, Twilight Princess for the Wii). The Wii U had nothing comparable for the near future, so I still haven't gotten one yet.
Had Iwata and Miyamoto not done a complete 180 in console philosophy between GCN and Wii, Nintendo would likely not be in business anymore. No way a GameCube successor with HD graphics and dual analog controller would have sold more than GameCube.
I'm not sure. It certainly wouldn't have reached Wii numbers, but the loss of power that Sony went through could have helped an HD Nintendo console a lot, especially in the beginning of the generation when tons of things went multiplatform rather than continuing Sony only due to the PS3's slow start. An HD Nintendo console there could have benefited a lot from that. Of course, that's all in hindsight, considering how they likely didn't know Sony's launch plans exactly when they were making the Wii.
Iwata might have turned things around with the Wii anyway, as far as sales go, but now he has damaged Nintendo's image among part of its core audience and lost all the extra audience the Wii had obtained. He has launched a system that's performing worse than the GameCube.
And this only happened because he bet on a strategy that was a dead end. Even in a best case scenario, the Wii U would sell just as much as the Wii. If everything worked like they expected, and the Gamepad exploded, it'd be just an exact repeat of the Wii's trajectory, with no chance for growth (initial support with last gen ports, support drops when current gen becomes strong, lack of titles hurt the console's market outside of a few specific segments). The Wii did well, but I don't think they should have set themselves on a course with no growth opportunities.