Okay here's my two cents about the Wii U and Nintendo as a company in general. The main thing for Nintendo that will matter in the coming months is sustained sales momentum. If they can't ramp up interest from consumers and begin moving units at retail they will find themselves in the same situation they did with the 3DS before the price drop. The projection of negativity being displayed by journalists (aside from being deliberately sensational to grab attention) is also a show of lack of faith that this will occur. I share this view as well since the lightning in a bottle that was trapped by Nintendo with the Wii just isn't there with this system.

It's partly due to a bad economy and the rest is the fault of Nintendo for poor product differentiation, marketing, and a general lack of understanding of what their target audience wants to see from them. Nintendo suffers from its own success. They fail to learn the lessons of what they continue to do wrong in a business sense because their revenue tends to be steady due to name recognition and past product success. For instance making the standard $300 Wii U. Nobody wants the thing because it has a small HDD and doesn't come with a game. And yet the shelves are flooded with them.

They went with the idea that people would go for cheaper over value but the price difference isn't significant enough to warrant the average consumer losing the benefits offered with the $350 model. If the sales show to be lackluster in the coming months then shareholders are unlikely to remain happy for long and will force the company to take action, much the same as they did with the 3DS. The lifespan of their product is too short to have a sustained lull in sales figures and their window of profitability shrinks as time passes, especially with the expected launch of their competitors new consoles within the next 12 months.

I don't hate or love Nintendo. I just see them repeating the same mistakes as a company and never learning how to maximize their profits by avoiding a lot of obvious hurdles. It's the sign of a company that has never really known true failure. Now the economy has suffered globally for a sustained period and its starting to affect things for them. They need to stop trying to float their product on name recognition and shore up the holes in their business model. You can take risks as a company but you should do it in as logical a manner as possible. And to start they need to understand their consumers.