What went wrong with Wii U?
They should have just called it Wii 2
horrible marketing
>>737225375Didn't save switch 2.
>>737225271bad marketing, awkward design, too gimmicky. I say that as somebody who enjoyed the Wii U. but ultimately it just felt like I beta tested the Switch. and they really didn't know how to sell it.
>>737225271The name and confusing marketing.Calling it an "upgrade" when it was a brand new fucking console. People just thought it was a goddamn controller.I really hate it failed because switch taking off means we will never get a duel screen set up again.
>Horrible marketing>Gimmick that doesn't immediately make a lot of sense on a home console that even Nintendo seemed to struggle to find applications for>Initially poor library, this improved as time went on but it took too long, there were many game droughts even early on>Nintendo kept chasing the Wii-era casual audience even though they all moved on to mobile games, simultaneously repelling core gamers>Nintendo's draconian treatment of youtubers/streamers, while based, lead to their games not having as much exposure online as their competitors
>>737225375They should’ve called it the Wii Nii and have some clever marketing about how fun it is to play with your Wii Nii
>>737225375Doubt it would've made a difference. The Wii was basically fad status by 2011. Nintendo still would've put full focus on the gamepad and consumers still would've been confused.It also would not solved the real problem the Wii U had: no fucking games. It launched with another New super mario bros game, and then had nothing from Nintendo for 6 months.
>>737225515It outsold the Wii U in about half a year on the market anon, fuck when the updated numbers come out in May it'll have likely outsold the cube too, it doesn't need saving.
>>737225737>>737225749it's interesting that the 3DS had a lot of the same issues as the Wii U to start - name similar to the DS, early game droughts, built on a gimmick that was underused and eventually abandoned - but while they just dropped the Wii U and let it die, they eventually righted course with the 3DS and it was pretty successful (not as much as the DS, but it still did well enough).
>>737225271>>737225375>>737225487Real answer?It released right alongside the XB1 and PS4 announcements which showed a vast upgrade from previous gen graphically and technically.Meanwhile, the Wii U was just a 360/PS3 with a shitty tablet.Most people were expecting Nintendo to try and compete with next gen after the Wii was basically a PS2/GC but with a Wiimote gimmick. Fans were generally okay that Nintendo skipped 7th gen, and expected them to show up for 8th gen instead they basically released a PS3 with a shitty tablet gimmick that you couldnt even take to the bathroom to take a shit without it disconnecting.
>>737225816actually genius
>>737225271Confusing name and atrocious marketing. The average mom and dad buying a console for their kid had no idea what it was and just figured it to be a Wii accessory.
>>737225271I've said it before and I'll say it again: I believe the Wii killed the Wii U. The Wii alienated a lot of the "hardcore gamer" crowd, and the casual audience lost interest in Nintendo by the time the Wii U came out. Most people forget just how badly the sales of the Wii nosedived at the end of it's life. I also don't think a lot of young people who grew up with the Wii realize how bad Nintendo's reputation was with the hardcore crowd at the time. Nintendo knew it lost a lot of fans which is why they tried to recapture them with the Wii U. This is why they published far more M shit than usual, like Bayo 2, NG3 RE, and Devil's Third. However, they still wanted to recapture the casual appeal of the wii, but in the end, they failed to capture either. Both hardcore and casual audiences had moved on. Yes, the Wii U was marketed poorly, but I'm not sure the casual audience would have EVER been interested in a touch screen controller, and hardcore gamers certainly didn't care about it either.I think the Wii DID create a lot of young Nintendo fans though, and a lot of them became adults just in time for the Switch.
>>737225749I mean the gimmick is that its a TV DS. They just didnt do enough with the tablet
>>737225271It had no sandbox 3D Mario.
>>737226375Neither did the wii. Galaxy was linear as shit and the moveset was basic as fuck
Time forgot how fucking weird the gaming landscape was back then, it was like an unholy amalgamation of Wii shovelware mixed with a desperate attempt at regaining the "core" gamers they lost with the Wii. Almost the entire Wii U lifecycle was defined by this complete non-commitment to either side. Probably 90% of the excitement for BOTW came from the fact that it was willing to undo nearly all the design sentiments from the Wii and be a game for actual gamers. It literally marked the end of ten years of Wii fatigue.
>>737225271it's still crazy that NoA and NoE either didn't tell Nintendo the name was retarded, or NoJ were too arrogant to listen.
>>737226101Yeah I think this is actually very true. The marketing wasn't great either and that didn't help it, but the confusion over whether it was a new console or not is really overblown. The initial reveal was sort of vague, but by the time it was coming out it was pretty clear to anybody who paid attention that it was a brand new console. And the name might have been confusing to moms, but again it was overblown, consoles like the SNES, GBA and 3DS had similar naming schemes based on their predecessors and did fine. The reality is there just wasn't much interest in a low-power home console anymore. The uber-casual crowd that the Wii captured had moved on to mobile gaming, and lower budget console gaming was better suited for handhelds, especially when by that time they could handle pretty ambitious games, with the 3DS having games that were basically on par in scope with the Wii. So why would you buy a console barely more powerful than the Wii, that was stuck in your living room? If you wanted a living room console you went for the PS4 or Xbox, if you wanted a lighter, more casual console you went for the 3DS. The Wii U was straddling some weird middle ground between the two. They eventually got it right with the Switch being a full on hybrid home console-handheld.
>>737226708>Time forgot how fucking weird the gaming landscape was back thenWe're reaching a point where a lot of Wii babies are trying to rewrite history and claim everyone just loved the wii back in the day. They can't accept that the console was a low point for Nintendo since they so much nostalgia for the damn thing. I fucking hate it
>>737226101Hardware isn't the answer cause the Switch is no better than the Wii U in terms of power and it is the 2nd best selling console in history. It comes down to what other people here said. A weird gimmick you won't really use, no games in the first few years, and horrible marketing. Meanwhile when the Switch released they did the exact opposite and it was a massive success.
>>737226101>XB1 and PS4>showed a vast upgrade from previous genZoomers are getting more retarded by the day.
>>737226846I was a Junior in HS when the WIi released.Everyone I knew was only excited because a sequel to Melee was coming out. That's it.The fact that it caught on because of it's very casual games with the Wiimote was stroke of luck.We all knew it was basically GC 2.0 and that PS3 and 360 had better looking and technical games. But Brawl and even Galaxy hype was real as fuck.
>>737226430Galaxy was different, and people liked that.After two games, though, people probably wanted another sandbox game.Galaxy was also structured similar to 64, but with more straightforward stages.3D World was just linear get-to-the-end levels.
>>737226917Are you really trying to say that a Wii or even Wii U game could compare to heavy hitters from PS4 and XB1? I realize a lot of the initial titles were also released on PS3/360. But to say something like Killzone Shadow Fall or Halo 5 didn't show a leap in tech from a fucking Wii and the Wii U/PS3/360 is absolute insanity
The only Wii U game that made me raise an eyebrow when it was announced was Xenoblade Chronicles X.Then I saw it in person. Never bought into the hype of a Wii U game after that ever again.
>>737226862Switch got away with it by being a handheld hybrid. There is a market for lower end hardware consoles, but they gravitate towards handhelds. The 3DS dominated the Wii U, because why would you buy an expensive console that's tethered to your living room when you can play the exact same Smash Bros game on a handheld? Less than 20% of people primarily played the Switch docked. It got the handheld market, who already didn't care about graphics.
>>737227345XBX was fantastic, that game alone made my Wii U worth it.
>>737226327>>737225271I don't think it was just the marketing or the name, it wasn't hard to understand that it was just a console with a tablet.I think it was a little too gimmicky for that era of games. Not a lot of other devs beside Nintendo tried (or I imagine wanted) to do interesting things with the tablet. There weren't many third party games developed for the Wii U specifically, so a lot of the library was just lower quality ports with some menu functionality offloaded to the tablet.It's a shame because when it worked, it was great. I loved Nintendo Land, Warioware, even just random small things like the tablet functionality for Smash, miiverse. It felt like the last uniquely experimental era of Nintendo with a strong identity, and while the Switch was definitely a strong improvement all around, it just feels kinda like any other console.>>737226327One of the better explanations I've read
>>737225271Since 7th gen Nintendo has mostly relied on consoles with fun gimmicks to captivate the casual audience and abandoned the idea of classic powerful home consoles. There's a reason why Nintendo themselves claimed "they sell toys".After the Wii and DS massive success due to their innovative controls, it feels like the WiiU was they last try with classic home consoles and pandering to old hardcore Nintendo fans. And it was a absolute disaster. Even if BotW had been released on the WiiU, it would have been a flop. Why? Because the WiiU failed on delivering a new attractive gimmick.Good thing Nintendo realised this, killed the WiiU and created the Switch.
>>737227457Sure, but at that point I had been playing PS3 and 360 games for nearly a decade. I expected something next gen. It just wasn't it.I was fully on board for next gen at this point. I was very optimistic for what PS4 and shit could offer, even though it took me a year or two to actually buy a PS4.
>>737225271there was a number of factors:>bad marketing. (IE calling it an "upgrade" and the infamously bad smash and splatoon commercials.)>controller was awkward and the gimmick wasn't really utilized well. (especially by third parties)>the normie/casual market moved on to phones by that point>the wii branding scared off the hard core gamers>the games took forever to come out and when they did they did it was kind of a mixed bag (amiibo festival was complete dog shit in a time where people wanted a proper animal crossing was a stupid idea) no real good hard hitters until years later but by then the writing was on the wall.>third parties still had beef with Nintendo/ were going for more powerful games. (save for some niche indies)>Nintendo being a bit shitty towards content creators at the time for no real reason.
Stupid nameTablet controller was not good enough (480p capacitive screen with low range) AND was really expensive actually so the console specs suffered and weren't even better than PS360, hardware from 2005.
You retards are forgetting that this thing launched not long before and confused the fuck out of clueless parents when their kids were asking for that "wii U" thing that supposedly already exists..
>>737228228I have never met a person who didn't get a wiiu because their mom couldn't understand what it was. This is a make-believe scenario made up by people who failed to understand why the casual audience had left nintendo for mobile phones.
>>737228228I've never seen that thing in my life before anon. The amount of people who got confused over it are probably in the double digits, at most. In fact the entire narrative about it being confusing is exaggerated. There are a lot of other more important reasons it failed.
>>737226768>by the time it was coming out it was pretty clear to anybody who paid attention that it was a brand new consoleToo bad nobody paid attention To this day every normie in the world knows the Wii and most of them heard of the Switch, but almost nobody knows the Wii U even existed
>>737225271idk but I still use mine to play Wii games, easily my most used console (ironically)
>>737227217Its a wii u apologist, brutha. You see switch, 3ds, and wii fags admit their flaws, but not wii u for some reason.
>>737228383https://arch.b4k.dev/v/thread/509210372/#509215340
>>737228383never doubt the retardation of the average normie.
>>737229812yes normies are dumb but it's still exaggerated. 'Wii U' isn't any more confusing a name than SNES, GBA, 3DS, and let's not even get into the absolute clusterfuck that are Xbox console names. but none of those consoles were ever significantly impacted because of that. you know what most likely happened with 90% of confused parents? they went "what is this, an attachment for the Wii?" and then their kid or the gamestop clerk went "no actually it's a whole new console, and they went "oh ok". it's entirely likely that *some* people didn't buy it because of the naming scheme, but not a significant enough number to have made the console such an abject failure that it was.
>>737225271
>>737225271Iwata grew complacent with the Blue Ocean strategy and wasted Nintendo's money with half-hearted rehashes of their previous ideas. When they decided to appeal to hardcores again in a panic, they provided a lackluster console that was worse than a console from the Bush administration, in 2011.
>>737231140The perfect timestamp of the disappearing American middle class and the fall of the empire.
>>737228383A lot of people thought "oh, it's a tablet that connects to my wii, right?".
Basically no games took full advantage of the second screen because they were terribly afraid of "what happens if they want to play on the screen".Nintendo was honestly one of the worst offenders, they knew IMMEDIATELY that the system was a flop, so every game released on it from ninty just says "oh the game is on the main screen"
It was a pre-Switch that nobody wanted. Wii fans wanted more free-reign gaming, not back to sitting down.It was marketed too badly for regular console fans. They showed the actual console at the very last minute. Tech-wise it was too weak for whatever it presented itself to be.
>>737225816nintendo, hire this man
>>737227217PS3 was way more hype at first but then people started to realize those 'heavy hitters' started slowing down real fast. Some people came to appreciate that it was still cheap and fast to make games for Wii and 3DS and the libraries had way more stuff, especially for fans of Japanese games. For WiiU, even without that big of a library, you can still have a blast with 3D World, Nintendo Land, Bayo 2, Wonderful 101, Xeno X, Splatoon, BotW, and a bunch of other games. Switch 1 and 2 havw decent libraries. The only games I want to play on PS5 are FF7 and Death Stranding, and now they are multiplat
Someone post the Fox puppet image
Honestly the Wii U made me realize something, console players don't actually care about games. N64 and GameCube had kino libraries, but sales were relatively low. Wii sold a lot because of a gimmick, Wii U sold poorly, then Switch sold a lot with the highest sold games being ported over Wii U titles. PS5 is also selling a lot despite having no games on there.
>>737231571Honestly, I'm glad that Nintendo decided to make the retarded decision to follow up a console with free-reign gaming with a console where you could sit down and play while others watched the TV. Brought the whole free-reign gaming medium out back and shot it like old yeller. I hate to see what gaming would be like now if it weren't for that.
