Gotta love how people always jump to the conclusion that the disappointed crowd wanted Nintendo to copy Mass Effect or some other generic shit.
The problem is perfectly demonstrated by your post. If you need to go into a fucking detailed search and pick out minor ,,improvements'' such as optional waggle, one new character (aka powerup), some barely noticable fur effect slapped onto the old models, transparent pipes in Mario, copying fucking NSMB multiplayer, and so on - Nintendo has failed. You didn't need to search for what's new in Mario Galaxy, shit was clear as day at first sight. The improvements a Prime 3 would get through the Wiimote were obvious the second it was unveiled.
None of the changes here show a generational leap, barely anything shown justifies the WiiU price tag, considering not a single aspect of the games are truly tailored to any aspect of this new hardware and just buying the Wii- and 3DS equivalents will surely give you the same fucking experience, for less money.
Admittedly, Nintendo's studios are held at higher standards, but they should be. They want you to buy new (overpriced) hardware and yet all they offer this gen so far are games that could be map packs at first glance. This is some Call of Duty level of laziness and one should expect better from this company.
Sure, if you don't know where to go with this redundant gamepad and just want to milk some proven concepts, at least go the obvious route and make some visually impressive games - and these last gen lookalikes this year ain't doing that job.
Mario Kart 7 to 8 or Xenoblade to X are the jumps that many expected and should be the standard. God knows when X comes, but if Mario Kart is April, one has waited one and a half years for the first Nintendo game to arrive that feels like it's existence on this new hardware is justified. Pretty damn pathetic, Iwata and other higher ups must have been handling their teams poorly for years now. Wii was killed prematurely and they still got themselves in this mess.