Wii U won't be in the sales ghetto forever because Japan just can't say no to Mario, but it's clear that this thing won't dominate much. Maybe dominate an increasingly irrelevant part of the Japanese video game industry, but even that's dicey. I'm sure it'll sell more than Sony's next console does in Japan, but the (as it stands today) absolutely abysmal Japanese third party support for Wii U ensures Sony will have a market there. It's what makes threads like this humorous to relive after the fact. I'm sure someone will dig up the post where I proclaimed victory for Vita in Japan months before launch (and in my defense, prior to 3DS price slash/MH megatonne), but at least that was from my own delusions. I didn't expect 3DS and Wii ports to lead the charge to victory like some of the Wii U camp did.
Wii U's performance thus far in Japan isn't surprising. The controller is obviously not getting the non-NeoGAF audience excited like the Wii's controller did, so it's going to have to sell off of traditional software. The major titles released are New Super Mario Bros. U, and Monster Hunter Tri G HD with the major titles in the wings being Dragon Quest X as well as a myriad of Nintendo software. To the average joe NSMBU probably doesn't look all that different to the previous games in the series, and thus isn't a system seller but rather a game they'll pick up with the system. Monster Hunter Tri G HD, is a port of a 3DS game, itself an expanded port of a Wii game in a franchise that is only a mega system seller on handhelds. Dragon Quest X is a Wii port of an MMO in a series not known for being MMOs. Now, I should say DQX did really well on Wii, but that's 500k on a platform with a considerably larger install base. I suspect DQX HD won't be selling many Wii U units either. As it stands now that's all Wii U has for big third party games, and in that case, it's more so the names than the actual games that are big. We're left with Nintendo first party stuff, and unfortunately for Nintendo, we have sales history for Nintendo platforms that don't get third party support.