The Wii had a great marketing strategy and had tons of popularity because of it's revolutionary motion controls gimmick. In fact, as some of you may remember, the Wii's name was initially "Nintendo Revolution" but was changed late in development. It had some great games going for it as well and was considered a big hit, one of Nintendo's biggest consoles. But it did suffer from the same stigma that the Gamecube did, and that was that it was considered a kiddy/family console. Not too surprising, Nintendo is considered a family company. It did considerably better than the Gamecube though.
The Wii U had a poor marketing strategy... wait, I actually don't remember any sort of marketing strategy. The fact that some people mistook it as a Wii add-on is ridiculous. How on earth did they expect it to sell? The Game Pad is not appealing at all. The launch game line-up was horrendous, much like the 3DS's launch games. The current game library is laughable still. There are only a few good games for it, such as Super Mario 3D World. I played through the entire game with my brother and it was a lot of fun, I was always Peach and he was always Luigi. But that's about it.
Even though it's a huge flop, they're still trying to salvage what they can. They're probably hoping Mario Kart and Smash Bros. will help sales, as they did for the Wii. I actually heard they are rushing the development and release of Mario Kart 8.
At this point in time, Nintendo has already lost so much money on the Wii U, I don't think they can afford to bring out a whole new system without losing even more money.
Nintendo just needs to get with the program.
EDIT: Hold up, just read this on Tumblr.
Iwata cuts his salary after dismal profits.
According to AFP, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata will be receiving half of his usual salary for the next five months in a small act of atonement for the terrible year Nintendo had, most in part due to the Wii U.
Nintendo's revenues dipped 8.1% in the last couple months.
