Nintendo is unquestionably the master of first-party software support for their systems. Their catalog of characters and their consistently high quality offerings go back nearly three decades. For a long time, Nintendo was synonymous with video games. If you were playing games, you were playing Nintendo. Now, that's hardly the case.
Financially, the Wii was a smashing success. The console was hard to find more than a year after it was released, and Nintendo made a profit on every one they sold. The problem is that the success, in hindsight, was built on a bubble. That bubble was the non-gamer community that saw the Wii as a toy or the Wii Sports machine. These are not the people that are going to buy more games and drive long term profitability.
In addition, because of the unusual control scheme and the fact that the Wii was so under-powered compared to its contemporaries, the X-Box 360 and the Playstation 3, third party developers found it difficult to simply port their across all three systems. Most simply chose to develop for the 360 and the Playstation. Once the Wii hit market saturation, there were no software sales to drive continued profitability.
These are the problems that the Wii U was supposed to fix. It is supposed to meet or exceed the 360 and Playstation in terms of the hardware power. The availability of more standard type controls, along with the hardware power, was supposed to allow for the multi-platform games that would re-attract the hardcore gamers who came to see their Wii as nothing more than a machine for first party Nintendo offerings.
The problem is that it will likely soon be behind, as Sony and Microsoft are heavily rumored to be introducing new consoles next year. The Wii U, in terms of hardware, is probably 3-5 years too late. The Wii U is not going to get the third party support that is needed to attract gamers to use a console as their primary gaming platform. Most will continue to turn to Microsoft or Sony to fill their console needs.
That's not to say the Wii U doesn't have its place. To be sure, there are some unique things that it can do with its tablet game pad, and anybody who thinks Nintendo's first party games are going to disappoint probably has not been paying attention for the last couple of decades. On the other hand, anybody expecting the Wii U to be their primary console is going to be disappointed. Either another console or a gaming PC an important counter-part to the Wii U for the traditional gamer.
What remains troubling is Nintendo's apparent inability to get with the times. By all accounts I've read or heard, including Giantbomb, Polygon, Shacknews and various Reddit threads, Nintendo still does not understand how to implement a proper online structure. Confusion about friends list functionality and the lack of account migration and general cloud support of any kind are causes of concern. The OS is apparently huge and ridiculously slow. These are basic things that Microsoft, Sony and Steam have taught the modern gamer to expect to work well, and they are ways that Nintendo has apparently failed. It can be fixed, but they had the road map to follow and they didn't.
It's obvious from the reaction I've seen on Reddit and other forums that people want to like the Wii U, but most of the reactions I've seen come in one of two forms. A large portion of people sound like they're are trying to justify their purchase, both to others and to themselves. Others are perfectly willing to accept the likelihood that they may never get any significant third party software support, but Nintendo's own offerings make the system worth it to them.
To be fair, the game pad and the Miiverse seem to be resounding successes, and could be things that other's would do well to copy, assuming they have staying power. It remains to be seen what the future holds for the Wii U, but my money is on it being a Mario machine. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as you know what you're getting before you fork over the dough.
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