The reality is the gimmick of the console wasn't very intuitive/practical (jumping focus between controller tablet and screen isn't fun once the novelty has worn off) and also the OS absolutely crippled the console. It was SO SLOW to do anything. It was also pretty lacking in a lot of hardware areas. The build quality was lacklustre (the Pro controller was so cheap compared to the Switch's), and the memory was so limited that if you hit the home button in Breath of the Wild, when you closed it out the game would have to spin for a few seconds to load the game back into memory.
The Wii U was a chump blocker, basically.
As a result, die hards (admittedly, like myself) were happy to purchase the console, and were willing to get read up on the differences, but capturing the casual, and probably more importantly, the parent audience, who remarkably during the NES -> SNES transition were adamant about not purchasing a new console because "they already have one" didn't understand that, while there was backwards compatibility, the console was certainly capable of standing on its own. It would have offered neat experiences with games like Breath of the Wild taking advantage of the WiiU gamepad with screen, and otherwise been easy to write software for as an existing developer on the previous platforms. It would have been a quite fine stopgap release if it had been marketed appropriately.
Same here. It's got a lot of great games, has backwards compatibility with the Wii, and because of the hardware similarity, with some homebrew (nintendont) you can load gamecube games and play them natively (ie without emulation). And having a hdmi port makes it more convenient than pulling out my Wii for Wii or gamecube games.
That's three generations of Nintendo consoles in one.
My only complaint is the gamepad. The battery life is terrible, even when not on and the console won't boot without it.