The Tragedy of the Wii U

It's tragic on how the successor to one of the best-selling consoles of all time flopped hard, it barely lasted 5 years. Wow. Discuss your experiences with the Wii U here: if you liked it, hated it, and say why you think it flopped.

For some reason I feel like I inspired this topic :P. Anyways, the Wii U is a really nice console. It has some great games like Splatoon, Super Mario 3D World, Smash Bros 4 Wii U, Mario Kart 8, and Super Mario Maker. It's a real shame it flopped, because it did produce some stellar titles. The games are really how I judge a modern console, and I couldn't be happier with it's lineup. The touchscreen was OK, nothing spectacular, which is probably the reason it failed. Using Wii remotes was cool, I could keep them. I think what Nintendo missed was that the Wii was marketed to everyone, that's why it was so successful, a lot of people bought it. When the marketing is only towards kids, it's not going to get the eyes of other people. The commercials kind of suck to watch to be real with you. I just think they may have misinterpreted how the Wii got successful, and marketed it in the wrong manner.

A) Lack of third party support and adult games
B) Casual gamers were switching to mobile phones
C) Poor memory storage and mixed online track record
The build-up of the NX only made things worse, and the first Switch trailer was the nail in the coffin. The Switch got right everything the Wii U did wrong, being a portable home console with tons of different types of experiences. I’ll still remember it for its good games. As Reggie Fillsame-withstrength said, it was a flop, but a necessary stepping stone between the Wii and the Switch.

EmployeeAMillion said:

A) Lack of third party support and adult games
B) Casual gamers were switching to mobile phones
C) Poor memory storage and mixed online track record
The build-up of the NX only made things worse, and the first Switch trailer was the nail in the coffin. The Switch got right everything the Wii U did wrong, being a portable home console with tons of different types of experiences. I’ll still remember it for its good games. As Reggie Fillsame-withstrength said, it was a flop, but a necessary stepping stone between the Wii and the Switch.

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That's what I love about Nintendo, they try new things, yet they don't so far out that it's just way too ahead. They learnt from what they did with the Wii U to create the Switch, so even still the Wii U's failure is a positive.

FinnDinner said:

For some reason I feel like I inspired this topic :P.

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You did!

So, my thoughts on the Wii U. I kind of wanted one when Splatoon came out, but I only wanted it for that game, but I also realized it didn't play GameCube games like the Wii did and yeah, that made me lose all interest. I love that it can play Wii games in 1080p, but if I can't play BFBB on there, I'm not interested! :hehe: Yeah, I am glad I didn't get one and the Switch got things right. Didn't their online servers shut down as soon as the Switch hit store (and digital) shelves?

I got the Wii U in it's first year and I really wish it did better. It has some great games like Splatoon and SSB4. But I can admit the Wii was better.

I enjoyed the Wii U.. I think the Switch has been done quite a bit better but there are some sort of cool things with the Wii U gamepad that were done.
I played smash and MK8 a decent amount.. and some other awesome games like Mario Maker were on the Wii U as well. To me the console was pretty cool with some good games on it.. just poorly marketed when it came out. Don't think I got one until about a year after it was out.

The WiiU gamepad was huge for me. It was so much easier to play video games and let the SO watch tv or do whatever. The only thing that was disappointing was the library of games.

There's many reasons why the Wii U flopped in the market. Many of them have to do with the poor marketing, lack of third party support and hardware issues (such as the architecture of the console itself), the fact that you couldn't turn off the gamepad while playing with a different controller. The eshop also lacked many games that gamers were expecting which was a disappointment to many. The console was also plagued by a poor library that couldn't sustain the console by itself, especially considering that all major third party developers dropped the console once the PS4/One showed up in the market. It was a big blow to the Wii U and to make matters worse, the rumors of the upcoming Switch (then NX) made a lot of people lose confidence on the console.

If the Wii U was released around 2010 perhaps it would've been successful since the Wii's sales were starting to die down around that time period. Plus, it would've given it enough time to receive third party games from the PS3/360 instead of being left in an awkward situation where third parties would drop soon after. I think a lot of the Wii U's issues were based on timing and hardware issues. They weren't going to be successful with the same strategy that the Wii had, that was not going to happen considering the casual gamers that helped proper the Wii to success were not interested in the console anymore. The rise of mobile gaming had a lot to do with this. And also the so called traditional gamers were already on the other consoles so they were not gonna run over to a much weaker system that lacked the proper third party games they wanted. The name was also confusing since a lot of people thought the Wii U was an add-on for the Wii and didn't realize it was a brand new system. Nintendo had a lot to lose on this system, i'm glad that the Switch seem to be fixing some of these problems, even if things are not perfect still.

I never got one, though I always wanted one, especially when Smash Bros. 4 was released.