Officerrob
Banned
Expecting them to run the exact same playbook a second time to reach success the exact same way isn't plausible.
For as many people who thought the Wii was so easily approachable, there were also people who it never reached, people who liked the game but didn't want to waggle. You weren't of this strange impression that hardcore gamers were the only ones who thought that, were you?
Wii only sold 46 million in the US, which has a population of 314 million. Take non-earners out of the equation (to be extremely generous, let's say only 1 in 4 Americans makes a livable income, when it's actually closer to 1 in 2.5). Different people have different tastes, and there's still 32 million wage-earning people that never owned a Wii. Perhaps they wanted something different and the Wii U fills that desired feature set.
Not everyone who buys an iPhone buys the next model, and many migrate to Android, but they are replaced by new owners who found something in a newer model that entices them. Your established market changes over time, and this will be no different. The ones who aren't buying will be replaced by others (like, say, hardcore gamers who are more willing to jump onboard the Wii U than they were the Wii, as but one example).
So yeah, writing off the Wii's success as a fluke that has NO hope of being repeated is not a thought-out suggestion. It CAN happen again. We just get to wait and see if it will, instead of jumping to an early conclusion like most of us did with the Wii, only to be proven wrong.
It's not about running the same playbook, it's about running a playbook that was destined to (and in the very early stages proven to) not create the mass market buzz that the Wii did. The Wii was a sensation that was EVERYWHERE when it came out, and a poor quality touch screen in the age of vastly superior touch screens was never going to grab that kind of attention. Who was doing motion controls before the Wii? Nobody worth a shit. Problem is, most people have a cell phone with a touch screen that craps all over the Wii U's. People have been gaming on touch screens for years now, it's nothing new. Could a Wii like success happen again? Absolutely. Is the Wii U capable of that? No, it's already failed at that. All this is before you take into account that there are tons of softcore gamers out there that think the Wii U is a handheld or just a new controller for the Wii.
With that said, if you honestly think all those moms and seniors who jumped on the Wii bandwagon will simply be replaced by others (especially hardcore gamers, who have for the most part abandoned Nintendo), good luck with that. Your argument about replacing these people is full of a bunch of "perhaps" and "maybe's", not exactly a good business model. How long of a headstart does Nintendo have until Sony and Microsoft start releasing info on their new systems, a few months? What has Nintendo done to try and bring over the hardcore? A bunch of third party ports (many with severe issues) and an announcement of a sequel to a game that didn't even break a million global sales (Bayonetta) just isn't going to get it done. Time is ticking, because when Microsoft and Sony show what they got, the hardcores are gone