There are situations where I see it as someone having different tastes. Like I don't like what they like but I get WHY they would like it. Then there are times where it seems like someone is getting scammed. To me the Wii was just Malibu Stacy with a new hat. It relied on it's target audience to not know that it was effectively just a re-released Gamecube. That isn't a different opinon on the part of casuals but rather a lack of knowledge.
Again, you're assuming they should view gaming the way you do.
You care about the hardware. Casual gamers do not. They don't care what the hardware
is; they care about what it
does and it was the only one that let them play Wii Sports. You call it getting scammed, but are you even trying to see it from their perspective? They already looked at core games and decided, "I don't want these." Nintendo was just smart enough to give them something they wanted. If Nintendo knew what they had (e.g. a console that would be constantly sold out for nearly two years), maybe they would have included better hardware.
You insist that Nintendo preyed on ignorance, but there are major holes in that argument. You haven't addressed why they would spend millions in research and development (probably more than they did on Gamecube and Nintendo 64) to do so. People give Nintendo **** for Wii hardware, but they still had to pay IBM and AMD to develop Broadway and Hollywood. If they were really masterminding some devious plot to trick dumb people, they could have just put Gekko and Flipper in there and called it a day. However, the hardware was optimized for everything that was in the console from WiiConnect24 to motion controls. You're vastly understating the amount of time, money and work that went into developing Wii. That would have been a lot of effort just to take advantage of people's ignorance.
Anyway, to bring this back on topic, I wonder if Retro Studios considered making a 2D Metroid game when it came time to decide their next project. And I get the feeling that there are now two teams at Retro Studios and the other was expanded when Mario Kart 7 was completed. /tin foil hat