Nice to see that after a lot of pages that this thread actually became quite civil actually. People are giving interesting ideas rather than repeated the same points over and over again.
Wow wiiu really has become the next vita with people upset that people aren't praising one of the biggest flops the industry has seen. Get over it, nintendo has one of the biggest fuck ups the industry has seen and they deserve every criticism that comes their way.
If i were nintendo this is what i would do for wii u
1. Get rid of the basic model. SKU swap in japan and price drop to 270 for the deluxe in the US. Throw in game and wario along with nintendo land
2. Offer a subscription plan of 50 dollars a year to play all VC games and a discount program
3. Get over themselves and make a real account system
4. Do a NSMBU and DKC bundle for 300 during BF to compete with the new consoles
5. Get together a development studio to begin porting all their big gamecube games for hd collections. This can easily fill gaps for the gen
6. Get a cross platform system set up and take advantage of your damn back catalogue to create some ecosystem
The third party situation is done for this gen but they can at least keep their console image alive.
Agree with #1.
I don't really get the point of #2 unless it's on the Wii/3DS...
#3 is eventually necessary, but won't even be noticed by the vast majority of people. Thus it's the lowest priority as this likely requires a general code rehaul on both 3DS and WiiU.
Maybe for #4. I agree some bundle would be good, not necessarily that exact one.
#5 can be handed to Grezzo, although I don't think it'll really do that much. Sure it might please the current fans, but the problem is not the current Wii U userbase. If people aren't willing to buy new games, why would you expect ports to even sell 100k.
#6 is a good (and hopefully obvious to Nintendo) goal.
The thing I think Nintendo needs to target for the longterm is AA (yes 2 A s) 3rd party development. One reason why most Japanese developers stick to portables (apart from their relative popularity to consoles) is simply because of cost. That's the reason Nintendo was able to get Monster Hunter Tri on Wii.
Now, take that concept and try the two following approaches. Approach somewhat proven, but smaller development studios (like they seem to be doing with Platinum, try it with Level 5 let's say), and cultivate them. Make great partners without explicitly owning them. Do this with both Japanese and Western developers, and make the barrier to entry lower than the competition, but higher than phones, etc. (kind of like what they're doing with indies). Also, work with the Japanese studios you have good relations with, and try to get key titles from them.
A great example is how Nintendo in the Wii/DS age secured Dragon Quest and Monster Hunter for their platforms, which was a huge win in Japan. Obviously try your best to keep those titles, and try to do the same with other titles going to PS3. For example, it seems like the Tales producer is staying on PS3 for a while. While I don't entirely trust them at times, it seems to me that until their fanbase moves to PS4, I doubt Tales' games will come to PS4. As such, maybe they can be simultaneous releases on PS3/WiiU. Work with Level-5 to get some of their interesting games on WiiU. I can't really think of developers in the West to talk to apart from the big 4 (Ubi, Activision, EA, and Take 2), but maybe even secure a Disney or Warner Bros. exclusive or something. None of this is easy, but maybe enough cash to push it one way or the other. That's my 2 cents.
Edit: Why isn't there a Taiko game for Wii U for Japan when the Wii one is still charting? I actually could think of some interesting things you could do with the GamePad along with some Wiimotes.
