No one is assuming most wii owners are just waiting to upgrade to the wiiu. But past history tells us that most console owners tend to be brand loyalist and that the dominant manufacturer must make major mistakes to be alleviated of its position.
No, it doesn't. There's probably a subset of brand loyalists within the group, but suggest it's 'most' based on historical data is ridiculous, in fact we can see quite the opposite. Most PS2 owners have definitely not bought a PS3. I also doubt that most xbox or gc owners bought the brand sequels.
There will be people that want the mario games, and there will be people that want to stick with live or psn or whatever game, but most? Prove it.
The PS3 didn't automatically garner support from the total PS2 userbase. But look at what it did to lose that support. It had to offer a new console that was 1.7X to 2X more expensive than the PS2 with limited availability for the cheaper version. It lost exclusivity of prominent third party IPs which had been major differentiators between its and its competitors libraries. Major exclusives were mostly first party IPs, which might have been enough if it weren't for the fact that its strongest IPs like GT, GOW, KZ and SOCOM took 2 years or more to show up.
And what has kept those people from buying now that the ps3 price is lower and the games are out 5 years later?
All this has shown is that the wii and the xbox360 have been much stronger competitors than in the past. Much of the casual audience was certainly initially captured by the Wii. 5 years later, kinect and move and flagging wii sales.
Now, exactly what is it about the Wii-U that will contribute to a less than top selling console? Lack of visual prowess? The Wii got by on that by simply introducing a new gameplay mechanic. Am I now suppose to believe that the Wii-U will be hampered by lack of competiveness in terms of graphics? There are no obvious flaws that make me believe that the Wii-U will fail to recapture the crown.
People bought the Wii for a variety of reasons, is there anything specific about the WiiU that will make most them believe they need a new one? Nintendo sold people on the active standing interactive stuff, MS and Sony have both now encroached on that territory. Nintendo is hoping to get ports of ps360 games, that doesn't mean they'll get ports of next gen titles.
Nintendo has already said they are going to launch at a higher price point than they did last time. This alone could be a barrier. The new controller may not resonate with past wii users. There's a lot of questions about it. Wii sales were incredibly impressive for the first 3 years, decent into the 4th, and they have begun to flag substantially. Perhaps the audience is looking for the WiiU, but perhaps they have just moved on to Kinect or Move.
One of major issue that disallow easy illumination of the potential flaws of the Nintendo strategy is the inability to compare to the other next gen consoles. Nintendo decision with the N64 can be easily seen when knowing the route Sony took with the PS1. Maybe, the Xbox3 and the PS4 will enlighten us to fatalistic flaws in Nintendo strategy. But given what we know and what we don't know, its hard for me to say that Nintendo won't take the crown this gen. Since historically its takes at least 2 generation for a manufacturer to get so full of themselves that they empty a full clip into their big toe.
Without a compelling online experience they are already likely to miss their target of bringing back core gamers or pull the ps360 audience to their console. People aren't buying COD for the 5 hour solo campaign.
The WiiU may very well be the 'winner' in the next generation, but there's nothing in history that suggests it's immune from failure.
