I live in Japan and work in the game industry, so I talk about games to a lot of people.
These are the most common comments I've gotten in the past 5 years:
- "I used to play a lot of games, but they became so complex I couldn't keep up."
- "I owned a NES, a SNES, and the first PS (and maybe the second one). After that, I lost touch."
- "I'm not really aware of what's going on with consoles. You do hear a lot about smartphone games lately though..."
- "I'm so busy with work that I don't have time to sit down and play. Smartphone games that you can play using one hand in the train are good enough for me."
It is a very deep and complex phenomenon that can't be explained in just a few lines, but basically, games have become too realistic/complex/unappealing to "common people", which all of a sudden found what they were looking for in their pockets (smartphone games).
The remaining core games? They mostly own PSPs (everyone has one here) and 3DSs (everyone and their mothers have them now), and to a lesser extent PS Vitas.
The PS3 caught steam late in the cycle (post 2011) and so now there are a lot of games coming out for it (mostly JRPGs with moe-kei characters that honestly look mostly the same to me) and sadly the PS4 has nothing that appeals to that niche.
Nintendo is seen as a family-friendly company and that's why everyone buys their children 3DS here, and to a lesser extent, Wii Us, because it's a "safe" console with "colorful games", but the Wii U hasn't caught much steam because most people don't know what it is or what the difference is with the original Wii (which everyone bought, played for 5 minutes and then never touched ever again).
Therefore, very few hardcore users own the Wii U, and the ones that do would probably buy Bayonetta 2 (heck, some people -me included- actually bought it for the freaking game), but it just isn't enough.