You mean, if their own hardware/software combination is all they have to distinguish themselves? Like, say, why people buy Apple products at a significantly higher price than a competitor?
It is of course a difficult job to convince people of this. It requires a huge amount of skill and effort in the development of software and hardware, in unison.
It's a tricky thing to compare anything to the success of Apple products. And, to be fair, Apple always outputs hardware that's technically impressive, even if they sometimes omit certain features (multitasking, NFC). You'd never see Apple do something akin to taking their latest software and slapping it on old Blackberry Curve hardware...which is kinda what Nintendo would be doing if the Wii U really is just a repackaged 360.