Nintendo's Japanese Arm basically has always wanted to do things their way and screw everyone else and what they want. They make the products they themselves like, and if other people buy them, BONUS.
The American Arm is basically just a puppet organization that does nothing but set up contracts between major pubs and Nintendo and that's it. Oh, they also pass on publishing the occasional game much to the anger of their more hardcore fans who aren't completely in love with Nintendo franchises(See Fatal Frame 3/4[I forget which], all those RPGs until people practically stormed the doors of Nintendo of USA's headquarters, etc).
The only reason the Wii U had such a focus on showcasing Western titles last E3 and this E3 was because Nintendo finally realized that to have a platform that doesn't just make a crapload of money within three to four years and then die off unceremoniously, they have to have publishers other than themselves.
If MS tried the same nonsense the Wii did with basically catering to MS owned/published games almost exclusively, and going with a super cheap update of the previous model, it'd have a similar fate, only much faster. Sony... their fans tend to be more die hard than MS fans, if only because of a longer history and more consoles(5 vs 2) made, but they'd have the exact same fucking thing happen. It'd probably take as long as the Wii, or slightly shorter/longer(six months at max in either direction) simply because of the fact that they have more franchises than MS does, and that they have a better base to start from than the GC(People love graphics, though obviously far from all as the Wii showed).
If this post sounds angry, it is. I'm a long time Nintendo fan. My second console was an NES after the twilight of it began, and I've owned every nintendo non-handheld since. The way the Wii was handled due to not bundling a controller worth a damn for more than three or four types of games* by default ruined the system(The lack of CPU and RAM helped too, but I feel a non-standard controller being the only one bundled into the system hurt it far, far more).
Nintendo was good before the Wii because they allowed publishers to take care of the market they didn't care too much about, which is the "everyone who isn't completely in love with nintendo developed games" market. There was something for everyone. Sony did this remarkably well too with allowing all sorts of things(Aside from 2D games in US and Europe LOL) on the system and publishing all sorts of games themselves. MS tries, but IMO fails at it much like Nintendo does, except their main market isn't served by kid friendly games like Nintendo's is. They do the same thing Nintendo does except in reverse. They cater to the stereotypical hardcore gamer instead of the all ages gamer like Nintendo does.
The fact is, the Wii U is trying to make up for lost ground while trying to have a new gimmick beyond graphics for the subset of Wii customers who don't give a shit about graphics and having the ability to play games that people with PCs, PS3s and X360s have been playing for a half decade.
* I do want to point out a bias here, I have had Fibromyalgia since before the Wii came out, and thus motion controls aside from the occasional lightgun game or something like that is an absolute no-no. Still, try controlling some open world game like Spider-Man 2, or GTA3 or Hulk: Ultimate Destruction on the Wiimote & Nunchuck. Yeah, that shit ain't happenin' very well. Examples chosen based on games that either were on the GC or could have been ported to it.
