I dont give nintendo one single bit of credit. They launched the freaking 3ds in 2011 with a similar looking system, similar boxarts, and there was massive confusion. They had to explicitly say the 3ds was a new system. So what did they do when making wiiu? Make the console look like a larger wii and not even show it. How the hell are they so incompetent? At least make some different mistakes not even 2 years later.
This is really the issue. We've gotten to a place where we add a number to a system or rename it entirely to signify that it's not an "upgrade", and we add a word or something to a system name to let you know it's an alternate hardware change of the same system.
Example. PS1 slim, ps2 slim, ps3 slim, ps3 super slim, Xbox 360 slim, GBA:SP, GBA Micro, DSi, DSi XL. These are all names of a HARDWARE ALTERATION of an existing product.
So when Nintendo decided to name their Wii successor console Wii-U, that creates brand confusion. Name it something else or put a freaking number after it. Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, the number tells you it's different. N64, GameCube, Wii. Different names also tell you it's different. Going from Nintendo Wii to Nintendo Wii-U doesn't fit with Nintendo's track record or any other track record of system naming conventions.