There might be an explanation how even Nintendo itself, which did manage to produce some kick ass titles for the N64 not a trivial console to code for, was not playing with mature enough dev kits until very late in its development cycle (by their own admission)... but that and the length of their R&D cycle for Wii U compared to the state they launched with make for a whole different can of worms.
With Wii U what could be confusing for many people is seeing a console where the software for the first six months of the platform's life honestly does not blow out of the water or at least show a clear difference from the previous generations of consoles. Even the N64 which did not come out many years after PSOne and Saturn was able to easily turn heads with SM64 and not just because it played so well... it looked awesome too.
Take Amiga vs C64, SNES and Genesis/Mega Drive vs NES and SMS, PSOne and Saturn vs SNES and Genesis/Mega Drive, PS2/GCN/Xbox vs PSOne and Saturn, PS3/Xbox 360 vs PS2/GCN/Xbox, GBA vs GBC, DS vs GBA, 3DS vs DS, PS Vita vs PSP, etc...
Amongst the software titles for the new platform succeeding the previous one in the list I just wrote down, even talking about the first six months or so, there was at least a title which turned heads quite strongly... the new platform would show quite a good glimpse of what was coming
.
So far Wii U has not done that, they have yet to show it. They did a great jump over the Wii, but most people expected a similar jump over what PS3 and Xbox 360 offered.