Nintendo not good with marketing? Noo... when did this start?
They never really have been good. Hell, that stupid Raven chick and her robotic buddy made me more interested in Xbox than "Clean in better than dirty" did with SMS.
As for stores in my area, none are good at marketing anything. No EBs near me, but the ones I've been to have always sucked. Funcoland and GameStop near me, neither does much with the way of marketing.
However, they did do well with DC. Best Buy always had cool stuff with DC. Funcoland had a midnight launch. And the other Funco I go to had Sega's launch party. But the recent systems, they haven't done much of anything.