At the time of its release, the manner on how it they’d marketed that was confusing as they showcased the Wii U gamepad as if its a portable console (its not) since its rather the main controller for the Wii U console. I was in high school when the console was first revealed, my reaction to that was “WTF?” as I thought the gamepad was portable, as the ads often flex that it can be (or the way they showed it came off as that).
It’s a commercial flop. Console didn’t sold enough, compared to it’s predecessor Wii, and the other consoles. Even the XBOX One sold 4 times than Wii U. Let this sink in. And having only a few consoles in the wild also means, less software is sold. The original XBOX sold 24 million and that is even almost twice as much as the Wii U.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles