Why The Wii U Was Nintendo’s Biggest Mistake
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 พ.ค. 2024
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Few companies have revolutionized video games in more ways than Nintendo. The practice of literally stamping cartridges with the Nintendo Seal of Quality, introduced to circumvent Atari’s failures at quality control, marked the first step towards hardware makers profiting from software developed by third-party studios. And it need not be stated how effectively the Wii appealed to multiple generations, from children enjoying their first video game to nursing home residents in need of a convenient and fun tool for bolstering their motor skills. For decades, Nintendo constituted the entry point for many a gamer and easily vacillated between catering to casual and hardcore audiences. But after the Wii prioritized the casual with motion controls, which came at the cost of third-party support, Nintendo used its successor-the Wii U-to regain a foothold in the market dominated by PlayStation and Xbox.
The Wii U should’ve proven yet another sticking point for the manufacturer, given the inventive second screen application, interoperability between it and the 3DS, and backwards compatibility with the Wii. Unlike previous Nintendo devices, the Wii successor even supported HD graphics. A wide range of factors converged to prevent the home console from gaining much traction, however, chief among them being the sheer confusion that pervaded pre-launch marketing campaigns. Misguided by unclear messaging, trusted media sources most notably wrote previews describing the Wii U as a peripheral for the Wii; the product’s bizarre naming convention only exacerbated this particular issue.
Not even the acclaimed Mario Kart 8 could boost the system’s poor sales. As such, Wii U sold a dismal 13.5 million units in its lifetime, failure Nintendo hadn’t faced since the GameCube era. And it left many wondering if the House of Mario would ever fully recover.
This is the tragedy of Wii U.
0:00 Intro
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4:04 The Tragedy of Wii U
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This sponsor spot was pretty cringe.
Nintendo continues to disappoint me in just about every way imaginable lol... They do things that are incredibly immoral, like restricting and shutting down access to games and services and trickling them out behind a pathetic emulated paywall. Some games they release are amazing, but not near enough, it's too long between these games' releases. Sueing everyone over every tiny little thing they don't like. It's sad and disgusting to see them act this way and still claim they are on the gamers' side....... I have really hateful things to say about them, but I can't because TH-cam will outright ban me for expressing my true feelings about that POS company lol...
@@BAGGStheAugmented toca pasto.
I implore you guys to no advertise for a shitty game when doing an entire game series FOR YEARS about shitty games. It waters down every single position you have and justifies every shit game choice as a monetary decision like taking on a mobile predatory game sponsor versus making a good game, and then you see the abandonment when that exact audience isn't providing ancillary income from game shop purchases. Please try to utilize non video game sponsors , why takes anyone's 20 year old opinion on any game seriously when they advertise for a terrible mobile game.
This is a very good mini-doc, however as a developer who worked on a 3rd party Wii U launch title, I can tell you that there's some meat left on the bone here. Perhaps a part 2 or addendum video if the author is interested. While poor marketing did impact the Wii U negatively to an enormous extent, I can confidently say that less obvious elements had a cumulative negative impact that was just as big.
I'll touch on three things here:
1. Nintendo was a generation behind on developing HD content. Sony and MS had already been developing HD games on the 360 and PS3 for years and had learned a tremendous amount about tools and cost efficiencies when moving to HD games. Nintendo dramatically underestimated the difficulties and costs of this transition and it had a massive impact on their ability to deliver 1st party titles for the Wii U in a timely fashion. If Nintendo could have hit a software cadence with the Wii U like they have with the Switch, we would be talking about the Wii U as a modest success and not an abject failure. Great games will always draw people in, regardless of marketing confusion.
Now it's time to get techy and these two items had a deleterious effect on the success of the Wii U:
2. Even at launch, the Wii U's SDK (software development kit) was a disaster. My team was responsible for having a launch title ready for Day 1 of the Wii U being on the shelves. Documentation for the SDK was a nightmarish collection of poor definitions and sentence fragments written by their Japanese-speaking core technologies division in Japan. When we would hit a roadblock in development due to the poorly defined and under-baked SDK the process went like this:
A. Email our contact at Nintendo Japan with our questions.
B. That contact would then translate our questions into Japanese then forward to the core technologies engineers at Nintendo of Japan.
C: Wait three weeks.
D. NoJ engineers reply to our contact who then translates their answer into English and sends it back to us.
E. Approximately half of the time, something key would be lost in translation and we'd only get partial answers to our questions. The process would be then restarted with our remaining questions.
I honestly don't know how we got that title out the door in a stable fashion at launch.
3. Lastly, Nintendo made some of the most inexplicably bad hardware decisions with the Wii U internals I've ever seen in my time in the industry. It's literally as if the Wii U was designed by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. For every smart thing they did, they did something mind-bendingly stupid.
They packed in a tremendous GPU that was significantly more powerful than the GPU's in the 360 and PS3. They also packed in 2GB of RAM which was great at the time. They did have out of order execution and instruction reordering which allowed for less random performance penalties.
But here are the problems that completely undermined those good decisions:
A. I have to be careful here as I am still under NDA for elements of the Wii U CPU after all these years, so I'll be speaking in fairly general terms. The CPU was very similar to the Wii, just beefed up with cache and clockspeed. This meant no modern technologies that we take for granted like an SIMD instruction set. There was none to speak of on this CPU. Games get tremendous benefit fro technologies like SSE/VMX/AltiVec that allows for multiple parallel data sets. This is especially important with animation and particle systems. The Wii U cpu had nothing here.
B. The amount of memory was wonderful, the memory bandwidth was horrifically bad. Getting data from RAM to the CPU was FAR slower on the Wii U than it was on the 360 or PS3 despite there being a 4 year delta between those systems. Migrating 360/PS3 code to the Wii U is nightmarish because all of your memory pre-feteching optimizations on the old code were worthless on the Wii U.
C. One of the most important things I want to get across here is how bizarre Nintendo's approach was with the CPU. Most game consoles will take an existing desktop architecture and modify it to make sense for a game console. Typically general computing features are removed from the chip in favor of more specialized features that are geared towards game performance. In Nintendo's case, they dropped specialized features like vector math units (great for game coding) and kept more general computing elements. I can't express to non-coders how insane this was.
The culmination of the bad SDK/support and terrible hardware design was games that were much slower to market and couldn't take full advantage of the serious horsepower hidden within the Wii U. The amount of work and dev time for 3rd parties making multi-plat titles to get the most out of the Wii U just wasn't worth it given that the console wasn't selling. As time went on, you saw some great looking games from 1st party studios, but it's because they had the funding and incentive to find novel ways of moving chunks of particles/animation/physics from the CPU to GPU that allowed for efficiency gains. But all of that was done to get around the terrible decision to drop SIMD and the horrendous memory bandwidth of the Wii U.
Thank you to anyone who read all the way through. This was much longer than I anticipated but I think these items are a very important part of the Wii U story and why it sadly failed.
Something to note is that the Nintendo head Satoru Iwata was told after the Wii U's disastrous launch and reception that he'd have to cut costs majorly. For most big corporations, this meant layoffs of the lowly workers. Iwata instead refused and did something that still makes me have so much respect for him. Instead of laying off tons of workers, he instead ordered a pay cut for all the higher ups at Nintendo, including himself. For his salary he cut it by 50%. This ended up saving those workers' jobs that would've ended up with them getting laid off. If only more corporations did that. RIP Satoru Iwata.
Japanese management are awesome. Something similar happened at Sega. Former Chairman Isao Okawa deleted the huge debt Sega owed him and gave Sega $695 million worth of stock to offset the Dreamcasts $502 million losses. It couldnt save the Dreamcast but it kept the company afloat and is the reason why we still have Sega around today.
And in a good way too. Instead of laying off their workers and having a company brain drain, a lot of those workers soon helped the company to quickly recover.
Wii U hater detected
R. I. P. Iwata
He took pay cuts because he knew that the Wii U is great and needed to kept afloat until the NX.
@@700gsteakYeah and konami, who shamed workers for being a minute late from lunch breaks over loud speakers. And Removed one of their most prominent directors names off of all of his work
@@ianeons9278 Nintendrone coping detected.
I worked at Gamestop in 2013 just a few months before the PS4 and Xbox One came out and it was insane the amount of parents that would come in and ask me if the WiiU was a tablet add on to the Wii. You also had a ton of them ask me if Mario could be played on a ps3 or xbox 360. The concept of hardware exclusive couldnt enter their brain.
that is kinda dumb but that was nintendos fault for not marketing it correctly. personally to me the wii u doesnt appeal to at all because the library has almost no variety. i love 2d platformers but i need variety so getting a ps4 makes more sense honestly.
Those parents suffer from smooth brain.
Most older parents and grandparents struggle to understand anything media related. Years ago I worked at Target when the first Frozen movie came out; an older lady asked me if we had it on DVD. I told her that the movie was still in theaters and it would be months before it came out on DVD. She found a cartoon movie called "Frozen Land" and decided that was good enough. It was about Eskimos I think.
@@billtree52 one of the most disturbing things I noticed about older people. Their minds are just set in stone and can't understand new concepts. Wonder if we will end up like them when we are 70
@@aceofhearts573 You'll still use the internet, even though internet 2 has already come out
I hate that Mr. Iwata never got to see how successful the switch would become.
@@darkjudge8786 ?
Someone piss in your cereal, man?
@@darkjudge8786 tf you talking about?
@@darkjudge8786 Good lord, you are in a video about a game console in a channel dedicated to videogames. What world do you live in to think that is not what people should comment on this place?!?!
@Dark Judge then you'll hate the fact that I'm a 30 year old who loves punk rock music, has the hammer and sickle tattooed on my arm, and (probably the worst thing) think your opinion is totally fine.
That Reggie damage control reel is brutal.
Its not the same game - its not the same content. Sadly Reggie - it was the same game.. with a worse framerate than your 7yr old Xbox
He was doing his best...
@@megamix5403 he was lying
@@megamix5403 His best was garbage, the man was horrible at his job.
I had a Wii U. It was a decent console. I couldn't tell you a single game I had for it. The worst thing about it was our apartment flooded and while the console survived unharmed, the people who came to clean up stole the consoles tablet. IDK about now, but back then the tablet and console were permanently linked and the tablet couldn't be replaced. So I was stuck with an unplayable console and the thief was stuck with an unplayable tablet.
Should’ve posted a local ad looking to buy just the tablet for a Wii U and see if the knucklehead turns up after a while.
A thief who doesn’t know or look into what they steal, wouldn’t be wise enough to look at the profile of the person looking to buy. They’d be too focused on the money.
Its really funny to think that, when I think of the WiiU, I barely think on the fact it was my first console I bought with my money, or the cool gimmick by itself and whatnot, but the thing I think the most of is ZombiU. Its one of my favorite zombie games ever besides left 4 dead and it pains me to see it die in such a sad manner. Although the game did eventually come to other platforms while killing the whole gamepad gimmick which worked so well for ZombiU, it didn't gather as much success and my only and favorite Ubisoft game ever will unfortunately die with so much promise as the WiiU did. It saddens me that its also an impossible game to recommend since, although it did the whole gamepad mechanics just right - creative enough. to justify all its inclusions, clunky but responsive enough to be considered a great survival horror experience, so on, it still has the fact that you need to spend what would be at least in brazil about 1400brl for a single game. Its still cheaper than playing sims 4 with all dlc but that doesn't justify it, and Zombi (PC) lacks so many of the good things the WiiU game had that I can'r justify someone to play it, and its even worse since its kinda like VR, where you can watch someone play and get why they're having fun but only partially, since you need the full hardware to fully understand what it is all about.
The WiiU is my biggest love-hate relationship, it had so much to offer, and shockingly enough Ubisoft made a great, an amazing game for their own standards and for the WiiU console, and yet its all going down the drain...
I still have a Wii U. It's my most played system. It's way above decent.
@@Luggi83 For anyone wanting to play StarFox listen carefully, don't play the main story first. Go to training mode and spend about two hours learning the controls, because the motion controls are kinda complicated. There's a minus button that swap screens and you have the ability to turn the motion controls on or off in the pause menu. It's easier to shoot everyone in first person mode, where as all ranged mode is easier for avoiding enemies.
The thing that annoyed me with the Wii U was the crap battery power on the pad.
I liked posting messages and stamps on 3D world during the load screens. Seeing others was cool
They released a bigger battery but only in japan. I have one it was nice it lasted like 10 hours
@@sweet_sukeban4022No you could get that increased battery just by buying it from Nintendo directly. I got one that way from Nintendo in Australia.
@@UberNoodle I remember that. I don't remember the price, but I remember thinking it was too expensive for something that should have been there in the first place.
Yeah you have to plug in your TV, the console, and another plug for the gamepad every 4 hours... To play Mario Kart, one button and a control stick... Or buy another controller, but the fact that that gives me Sega 32x vibes makes me think what were they thinking.
Satoru Iwata was such a legendary game developer. I totally recommend the book "Ask Iwata" if you want to know more about the philosophy and ethics behind his work. Amazing through and through.
There's a book? I only knew about the interview series that was also going by the same name
Lmao Japanese work ethics, good joke
Shame the company now doesn't carry on his legacy, the man took a paycut to keep his employers in a job I think after the disaster of the WiiU.
No other CEO has ever done that in gaming I don't think
@@dnakatomiuk
Look up how SEGA stayed alive after the Dreamcast. What Iwata did, while admirable, doesn't come close
@@Kylekashi I think is the same book, but is not only a series of interviews. It also contains a collection of articles written by Iwata.
I remember when they revealed the Wii U and even though I'm a gamer, I still thought, is this just a controller for the Wii? They focused so much on the controller and it was just confusing. Eventually I was like oh it's their next gen console.
If a gamer gets confused at first glance, the average consumer will be confused further
The Wii-U always makes me genuinely sad. It was my son's dream present when he was 5, I'd raised him up on the Wii and the two adorable Kirby games on that system that we played together endlessly, and all he wanted was for Father Christmas to bring him a Wii-U more than anything, and Santa made his dreams come true on Christmas 2015. But the Kirby game for it was a weird line-drawing game made of clay that he didn't like and we mostly ended up still playing our old Wii games on it instead. I bought Watch Dogs, Zombi U and Mass Effect 3 for myself as I desperately wanted some grown-up games for when he was asleep or at his mum's, and I loved them (Zombi U especially, or 28 Days Later: The Game as it felt), but even at 5 he was readily feeling the drought of no games, and so was I. Where was a true flagship 3D Mario game? Where was the proper Kirby game? We kept going into a local game shop and he'd play all these briliant quirky indie titles on the in-store PS4 and wanted to play them on Wii-U, but none of them were multiplatform and available on Wii-U. I wanted more games like the above for my own time, and yet no others were really available either. Barely more than a year later he wanted a PS4 for Christmas, so my then-girlfriend and I went halves and bought him one and he was overjoyed. It's still being loved to this very day by both of us (and he's 13 and I dare say taller than me now). When I think of the Wii-U, I think of that little 5 year old boy's smiling face on Christmas day, and I smile, but also always see his overt disappointment just a few short months in. We still play on it from time to time, as he still loves playing our old Wii games on it in semi-HD for a 'retro night' (for him at least, to me it still feels like yesterday) and we transferred all our data from our genuinely dying Wii onto it, so it's not devoid of value (though we can't play the Gamecube games anymore now, after the Wii's second disc drive finally died), but even then, to see a young boy at the time be *that* aware of the lack of software support was really quite heartbreaking. My lad's still a Nintedo boy, he LOVES his Switch and adores the last two Zelda games (in fact he saved up and bought the new Zelda branded Oled console) and still plays Kirby, loving it just as much as when I introduced it to him when he was 3, but it did sadden me that his sweet little Nintendo world was shattered for so long during the Wii-U era and we had to venture back into Playstation and a lot of gritty games that probably matured him far too quickly all because Nintendo made such a blunder with the Wii-U.
Not true. The Wii U had plenty of great games during its lifespan. It’s just that he wasn’t appreciative of Rainbow Curse and didn’t even give 3D World a try or any of the other great games like Pikmin 3, Wonderful 101, Smash 4, Mario Kart 8, Splatoon, Mario Maker, etc. I’m 15 and I’ve always thought it has an abundance of great games from the start when I got it for Christmas 2014 at age 7 having only played my cousins Xbox 360 and maybe Wii before that as well as a Leapster I had.
Thanks for this write up and story man. My son just turned 5. Me and him play Mario party all the time together on the Switch. What precious moments
1) Your kid was a idiot in the first place for wanting the Pii U. He needs better taste in consoles.
2) Switch is trash, it is trash in 2017 and still is in 2023.
I wouldn't be caught dead with a Pii U or a Switch.
3) Nintendo games outside of Metroid are pretty crappy. Zelda has not been good since Ocarina of Time which is 20+ years ago.
Same thing happened to me in the mid 90s with the Sega Saturn.
@@Fornax70
Saturn was a very underrated console too
Interesting how both Nintendo and Microsoft made huge mistakes in 2012/13, but ultimately learned from them. Both were kind of trying to be more "living room presence" than just "gaming device", and both failed to hit their target. If there's one thing to know about gamers, it's that they are staunchly traditional, and change has to come gradually, not suddenly. Things also have to be exceedingly clear (Wii U and Xbox One were terrible names) and "games first"-focused. I think right now we are in the exact same situation when it comes to game streaming in the cloud - push it too hard and they'll rebel, but gradually and slowly introduce it as an alternative (key word there, alternative) and it can take root.
Reggie was brutal in some of those interviews. Super confrontational.
I don't blame Reggie for defending the Wii U so agressively; it was literally his job, and I'm sure he knew the writing was on the wall for the Wii U; he's not an engineer and he's not a higher-up in Nintendo of Japan; the best he could do at that situation is to agressively highlight how different Wii U was compared to the rest. There's an interview Reggie made that was more reflective on the Wii U's failure; I stick to a comment he made after the Switch's success, shortly before he quit; talking about the Wii U, Reggie said without the Wii U, there would be no Switch. The Switch was an evolution of an idea that was born with the Wii U; which was taking your game off the TV.
@@Dairunt1 The Wii U walked so the Switch could run. Certainly not Microsoft or Sony were going to ever make a system like that; Sony gave up on their handhelds because even being second place in a 2-party war was too much for their egos to handle, and Microsoft never did handhelds in the first place, and to the extent they did with Zune and Windows Phone they were complete failures.
Nintendo was not a clear generation winner with SNES, N64, Gamecube, or Wii U, yet Nintendo kept on hustling, and yet no one talks shit about those even though, like with the Wii U, what select few games it had to its own were very satisfying to the people who actually owned the machine and gave it its own edge among the competition even if it didn't decimate it outright
@@cosmosofinfinity I don't know if it was an ego thing, but Sony was clearly not interested in the handheld market after smartphones took over. Even if they made the right moves for the Vita; a $199 launch price, a microSD card slot, actually invest in major games for the thing, the success would have been modest at best.
What I lament is that the Xperia Play was an awesome idea that was taken down so quickly because two Sony branches (Sony Computar Entertainment and Sony Ericsson) couldn't unify their vision. The Xperia Play could have been fantastic competition against the Switch in 2017, and Sony moving their handheld division to make Android games would have made more sense.
I remember walking into Best Buy the same week the Wii U came out and they literally had a whole pallet of em sitting on the floor. In hindsight it makes sense why no one was buying the new console...
Maybe I missed it, but I wish this video mentioned the voluntary pay cut Iwata took instead of laying off employees after the Wii U’s failure.
He truly was a great man.
Everyone got a paycut not just him…
Another big problem, in my opinion, was that it was based around the "second screen experience", a desperate gimmick introduced by TV and satellite/cable to keep people from switching to streaming. That was shoved down people's throats so much by that point that people just wanted the ability to play on the gamepad if they couldn't on their TV.
Agree, the fact that Microsoft carried that forward with the xbox one and their focus on TV, demonstrates how that trend was just so wide of the mark.
@@Monkey_SK not really the same thing, actually.
It is.
@@Monkey_SK "TV, TV, TV, TV, TV, TV"
- Xbox One reveal
This system never grabbed me, but I admire the fan base it has.
Keep up the great work, this is the best gaming history channel in all of TH-cam.
There have been others that were equally good and others that go into more detail with the Wii U. It’s not really necessarily the best.
Tbh the best thing about the wii u was the eshop.
Tons of legacy content, but sadly it's all gone and I don't think nintendo will ever replicate that
@@israelruiz8706 I feel you there, the 3DS saved my life from depression (weight lifting did also) and I will always love the eshop and my 3DS for the memories associated with them. Shame the shop is shut down :(
"but I admire the fan base it has." lol wut?
@Pewpewpew182 nice man. Glad it was able to help you out. I remember smash bros being my escape and the wii u was my most played system because of it
I'll never forget the post E3 itnerview 2011 with Reggie on G4 with Adam Sessler. The first question just minutes after unveiling the Wii U was "Did Nintendo just announce a new console?" Reggie was clearly annoyed by the question and I knew the Wii U was in trouble.
I think Nintendo learned a lot from the Wii U which made the Switch a success. Giving the right information to their customers can really lead them to success.
It would seem that the 3DS really is what they learned from.
-Portable
-Cheaper then main competition
-Not the most powerful but pretty good battery life.
-focus on semiHardcore gaming fan base
@@RusticRonnie3ds is a good console
nintendo are in the same boat as the wiiu now with their new consle that will replace the switch. its inpossible to reach the succsess of the switch twice in a row. it will be interesting to see how they handle it this. time.
@@jackobyuk
Sony has done it. PS1 and PS 2 dominated their generations.
So it could happen again. Unlikely but it could happen.
@@RusticRonnie Nintendo Switch is casual
Gonna be honest, I actually really loved the Wii U.
I owned a Wii and a close friend of mine owned a Wii U and the Mii Creator music alone is godly.
Yeah I love my Wii U, had some great games, which I now also have on Switch like Mario 3D World, Mario U, Luigi U, Mario Maker, Hyrule Warriors, DKC Tropical Freeze and Bayonetta 2.
Also had Paper Mario Color Splash, Yoshi's Woolly World, Wonderful 101, Twilight Princess HD, Star Fox Zero and Star Fox Guard. Wii U definitely had some great games.
And I still play some Wii games on it. Just beat New Mario Bros Wii a couple weeks ago, and I bought Soul Calibur Legends so I'm gonna try that out soon. Wii U rules.
@@mattjindrak Hell yeah :)
The Wii U is a beast of a console for Nintendo legacy content.
Virtual Console >>>>>>>> 💩 >>>>>>>>>>> NSO
It’s an amazing console.
I really loved my Wii U too
The one thing surrounding the wii u I can never let go of was that e3 Zelda tech demo they sold me on and had me believing that was to be the next Zelda… all traces of it has been scrubbed from the internet (glad to see it make a showing at 1:08) but I’ll never forget it and wish it was brought up more. It looked amazing and I have longed for a Zelda game to look anything like it.
They did it previously. With the GameCube. th-cam.com/video/SvE3yJv3fm0/w-d-xo.html
They gave you hyrule warriors or whatever it was called…. Just turns out the “next zelda game” was actually a dynasty warriors clone lol
Same i was disappointed upon seeing the cel shaded graphics back when botw was announced (it’s a beautiful game, no doubt)… im more of a tp fan
It was just a tech demo to demonstrate the console HD capabilities. It was never meant to be the next Zelda look. They literally said that when it was demoed.
@@Ghostsonplanets so? I’d like a Zelda that pushed graphical boundary rather than looking like Vaseline smeared potatoes
it was good to hear Satoru Iwata's voice again.
I still have 3 Wii U's that I modded... Raised my 3 daughters on them... We played them every weekend for like 6 years... Wii U holds a special place for me...
The Wii U was so dope. My son still plays his and he has a Switch, Ps5, and gaming PC.
Nintendo Land is still our favorite family game
Same. Nintendo Land is amazing.
I bought the Wii U on my birthday in 2016 and fell in love with it. The GamePad, the cute sounds and music, and posting to Miiverse. It all had a magical charm. I met lots of friends online and I'm happy it was a part of my life. No one is online anymore in 2023 and Mario Kart and Splatoon won't be coming back. Now it's an empty house filled with memories.
I had no idea it was a separate console until *many* years later, and even today I just found out that there actually *was* a console component to it. I thought it was a big game boy that broadcast on your TV. If they had called it Wii 2, or literally anything without the word Wii in it, it probably would have been a completely different story
Same, I thought it was a handheld version of the Wii. Kinda like PSP is for PS2 or PS Vita for PS3
They should've called it the Wii DS. It tells you exactly what it is.
@@samueleinhorn6713
It's even more confusing
@@steelbear2063 How? It tells you exactly what it is, it's a Wii with the features of the DS, among other things. It may be confusing without the right marketing, but it's certainly not more confusing than Wii U.
@@samueleinhorn6713 calling it Wii DS just reinforces the concept that it's a peripheral, not a console
One of the most fun I had after modding. Why they never made gamecube games available for purchase I’ll never understand. So many times “in the past” I wanted to give nintendo my money but they refused. The final nail was the eshop buys not carrying over to the switch which again how many times Does Nintendo need to make dumb decisions before it figures out how to be more consumer friendly. Still it’s become my go to for family fun and with the smash bros adapter the controller options is crazy.
to lazy or maybe the lack of know how to
That's the thing Nintendo treats everyone like crap even if your their number 1 customer
They know how to make games, but they seriously suck at customer relations.
At least from a Western standpoint. There probably a lot of cultural issues underneath it all too.
Bad decision for you but good for Big N 🤑
@@rokker333 huh? How did I take a loss? I could’ve modded a switch, still could I just didn’t give a crap. Weak sauce dude.🤭
Man, I LOVED the Wii U. I was so hyped for it that I literally bought the 32GB deluxe with EVERY physical launch game, the Pro Controller, and all the official accessories on launch day. Sadly, I had to sell everything six months later to pay bills as I was hit with unforeseen financial issues that April. Sold it all in May 2013 (so basically 10 years ago this month).
I am a hardcore lifelong Sega fanboy, but have always felt that after Sega left the hardware market, Nintendo took over their spot as the innovater of the industry.
To me, the DS, 3DS, Wii, Wii U, and even the Switch just SCREAM Sega (no pun intended). The difference being Sega would have made them roughly on par with their contemporaries in regards to specs and system power. Maybe not as powerful due to the R&D needed for their primary selling points (Dual Screen, 3D, Remote, amd Tablet), but still MUCH more powerful than what Nintendo gave us.
I miss it a ton, but won't buy another one because sadly they have become expensive enough that I could buy a Switch and play all the first party titles on there (every one I am interested in got ported to Switch), and I have since bought all the multiplats for my PS3 and 360.
I have always felt the Wii U might have done much better with just a couple simple hardware tweaks. Keep all the numbers and clock speeds the same, but bump it up to a quad core chip (as opposed to tricore), and give it an extra GB of RAM (so 2 GB for games).
I feel as though that alone would have made a BIG difference. Even before launch, developers were bitching about the CPU (Same PowerPC 750X (G3) as the GameCube, just clocked at 1.25ghz), but they raved about the GPU.
I always thought that the reason why Nintendo went cheap with the CPU because they were pushing the GPGPU capabilities of the... Well... GPU, and that would help make up for the performance.
I miss mine so much. I only had it for 6 months, but made a lot of good memories in that short timespan. Oh man, I had SO MUCH FUN drawing weird, random Hot Routes in Madden and just having the WR or TE just run in circles for a laugh. 😂😂😂
Edit: Actually, looking at prices just now, it has dropped quite a bit, and I might take a chance on buying another one. Hopefully there is a way to keep it from dying due to the storage issue.
I would rather have a Wii U over a Switch anyway.
What's interesting is that years after the Wii U, I'm now playing my Xbox Series X in a similar way by in-home streaming to a smartphone connected to an Xbox controller, because sometimes it's more comfortable to play that way and at other times, the television is in use by someone else. It's interesting that even when Nintendo innovations fail to grab the public's attention long-term, years later they tend to resurrect in a competitors product. I'm waiting for someone to make a meaningful attempt at dual screen gaming again.
You could already do that with the PSP and PS3.
@@konradfunnd plot twist: I didn't have a PlayStation 3 or PSP.
Also it wasn't a mandatory feature on PlayStation 3. In fact the list of games that supported it is quite small. So even if I did have a PlayStation 3 or PSP, it would not have been as useful to me as it was with my Wii U.
@@UberNoodle its not mandatory xbox either, his point was you could do this on playstation before the WiiU. Sony made the innovation, assuming you ignore PC gaming
The Vita and PS3/PS4 combo was still the best version of this.
But steam Deck + Gaming PC is probably a close second, the only issue being that the steam deck is a little large and you might as while use it stand alone.
@@RusticRonnieSo there was no innovation in Nintendo making the feature intrinsic to the system itself. I see.
But I gravely apologise for angering the Playstation Gods by not explicitly acknowleging a gimmick that failed to gain traction in its time, irrespective of how innovative it was. Note too the topic of this video is WiiU.
Imagine playing an Xbox console in 2023 lmao. I feel sorry for you bruh.
Having a second display is a very underrated feature I wish the gaming industry followed nothing wrong with cool gimmicks like that like many consoles that don’t sell well they’re usually ahead of their time for better or worse.
PC, you can use 2 displays or 7 if you want
@@RusticRonnie I know thank you but I meant for consoles but do you know the limit on how many you can for pc? Asking for a friend… 👀
Yeah, the console definitely had the worst kind of promotion possible. But I still liked playing Splatoon and Hyrule Warriors whenever I got off of work and reading some of the wacky messages on Miiverse. I still had good memories of it, no matter how bad the console was failing.
Whenever I feel down, I think about Nintendo's recovery from the Wii U.
So paid online and overpriced ports is a good thing? The Switch era is great but it does have some downgrades from the Wii U/3DS era.
@@ianeons9278Exactly
@Ian Eons They didn't say that everything in the Switch era is fantastic, they just said that Nintendo recovered from the Wii U era.
@@CommanderWiggins
But the Wii U era was still better in some ways. But the Switch era is also better in other ways.
@@ianeons9278 my god did u skip school or what. Simple comprehension skills. The topic is not about good or bad, it’s about success or not
Well i didn't expect to be crying at the end of this! Rest in peace Mr Iwata!
As someone who still uses the Wii U to this day, the console had some interesting things here and there like Miiverse, Off-TV Play and other stuff.
Sure, it was a commercial failure, but I am still proud to be a Wii U owner and how this console gave us great games like 3D World, Smash, BOTW and Splatoon as some examples. 💙
My wife got me one last year for my bday and Ive used alot more than I thought especially to play wii games in HD
@@wangchung2157 Aww, that's so sweet of her!
You should be. It was a quality gaming platform doomed by Nintendo fumbling the ball through marketing. I would've bought one myself to play Xenoblade Chronicles X but I'm not paying launch prices for a defunct system.
@@BronzeLincolns81
Makes sense. It’s illogical to pay launch prices for an old game even if it’s great.
Launching with new super mario bros. U was extraordinarily dumb. I remember that on the time people were very confused, and assumed it was a normal Wii game.
If they would have saved NSMBU for a few years down the road, and instead launched with super mario 3D world, I think that would have helped.
I like my WiiU and till a few years ago actually never knew it was such a failure
The fall of the Wii U was that it never materialized that remake of Three Stooges on the NES. That alone would have boosted console sales.
I have the Wii WiiU proudly sitting in the living area on it's dock, and our family loves playing Super Mario 3d world and Rayman Legends and Splatoon on it. It's a groundbreaking and unique console with phenomenal graphics. Mario Kart 8 is extraordinary, and our gaming club uses it every single month. Such an awesome console. One of my favorites.
Moral of the story: Nintendo figured out exactly what NOT to do when releasing the Switch.
At least Nintendo got the chance to correct their mistake of the Wii U with the Switch. Unlike Sega who were already too little too late to correct their mistake of the Sega Saturn with the Dreamcast.
@@fusscoopland9680 indeed
@@fusscoopland9680 SEGA of Japan and SEGA of America were too busy infighting to correct any mistakes anyway
14:56 I love your choice of music for this section. 😊
Still play my Wii U to this day, actually I was playing Mario Sports Mix (Wii) on it earlier today. Think it would have been cool if Nintendo put in both a 3DS and Game Boy Advance cartridge slots in the gamepad and allow the gamepad to interact with other Nintendo handhelds via link cables or wireless communications
This video coming right after sony announcing the Project Q is amazing timing 😂
Yep!
Those who don’t look back on history are doomed to repeat it. That’s what project Q feels like to me.
@@bearerofbadnews1375 of course they do look at the history, that’s why project Q is an accessory, not a console system.
People thought that the WiiU was just an add on for the Wii. I remember a little after it came out when I was dumbfounded that it was a separate console with it's separate dedicated games. I remember only being interested in Smash Bros and it's 3DS counterpart. They knocked it out of the park with the Switch years later though
10:22 I remember that trailer, and my first thought was "where's the console", mind you, back in 2012 the best my internet could do was like 480p and in livestream like 240p, but even though TV shows played that trailer your focus was always away from the console, you got the game and you can even see the motion sensor bar, which is a Wii accesory as well, and then the controller, now I can see the non descriptive white box with a slit for the disc, but given that description, that definitely sounds like a late Wii model where Nintendo ditched the vertical stand and GameCube ports, so yeah the confusion was real, me and my friends were talking about this peripheral that let you play Wii in the toilet, somewhat appropriate while playing No More Heroes if you ask me, but I digress, sadly Nintendo not only dropped the ball but the whole match, they were really out of the next-gen race even though the had a head start.
Still have my Wii U hooked up to my big screen just for those few games that still haven't been ported to switch like both Zelda Windwaker and Twilight Princess HD and of course Xenoblade Chronicles X. Baffles the hell out of me as to why Nintendo still hasn't gotten them on Switch yet. In the end I mostly enjoyed the Wii U, but could only ever play it with the Pro Controller. That bulky tablet just stayed in the other room and was only ever used if I had to do a system update, because the update required you to use it
Still love my Wii U. It does have many flaws but also plenty of good games.
I hear that the GameCube hardware is still inside and if you hack a Wii U you'll basically have 3 consoles in 1. I'd like to do that, never owned a Nintendo console
I keep my Wii U for Xenoblade Chronicles X. It still hasn’t been ported to the switch yet.
@Bearer of Bad news 13 I still have that too. So good. Remember when I got devils third for $5 at target. Now it's god knows how much.
The Wii U is hands down the best Nintendo console for backwards compatibility when modded, especially for Gamecube games. It supports gc games (backups, not discs) + gc controllers natively (controllers just need the Wii U GC controller adapter.) It supports nearly every title on the Gamecube natively and displays all the games in a very crisp 480p through HDMI and arguably gives you the cleanest picture overall for those games (even over an actual Gamecube.) It also can play DS, N64, NES, SNES and obviously Wii games, as well, all in HD. The Wii U of course also has some great games of its own that never got re-released, like the Wind Waker and Twilight Princess HD remakes. It actually overall turned out to be a really awesome hidden gem of a console.
@@ReallyRyan.
Can you use the Wii U gamepad/pro controller to play GC games or do you specifically need a GC controller? And if so - do you need an original one or can you use those kinda GameCube controllers that Nintendo released for Smash on Wii U?
Background at @7:44 😂
I'd love to know where I can find that cover of the Zeal theme used in the beginning.
I had one and tbh, I thought it was pretty good. The lack of 3rd party support did kill it though and don't get me started on the woeful battery life.
I honestly think the biggest problem was the name. Other than gamers, no one knew what it was.
This was done durin the peak of "consoles should do more then just video games" trend which did nothing to boost sales.
I still can't get over how the first video they showed on the initial reveal depicts someone turning off the game with a TV remote and switching to baseball instead.
You'd think that on a basic level, showing off your product by having people in the ad immediately switching to doing something else that is presumably more interesting than your product, would be an instant no-no. Baffling.
Great Video (as usual)!
Was wondering if you might consider doing one on the whole Xbox One (always on)/Don Mattrick/ “deal with it” tweet fiasco(in 2013).
The main thing that caused me to be pissed with Nintendo was the fact that I had FINALLY gotten a Wii with only a handful of games (there was only a handful that looked all that fun to me) only to hear about the Wii U being released less than a year later.
So I just got an expensive console and now they were shifting to a new console? When I barely found any fun games for the console I have already? So I wasn't to interested in getting it, then it didn't seem long before the Switch had rumors or was announced probably cause the Wii U didn't do so well. Also Nintendo's first party games never went down in price, except like 10 years after the fact maybe if you find them at a local walmart or something?
I remember I got Mario Brothers Wii for my Wii when it was finally down to like $20 at a local walmart and this was like at least 5-10 years after it originally came out. I was excited to finally play a new mario game only to be met with the same game play I had experienced in the past, just with new graphics and maybe a few new features. After about a half an hour I shut it off and put it back on the shelf and haven't touched it since. Felt like such a rip off.
Over time Nintendo has just gotten worse with them claiming any and all videos with their IP's in them on youtube to steal money away from content creators. To ignoring the joystick drift for so long until court orders went out and people were still getting used or still broken joycons back after waiting like 2 weeks for a fix. There is also what was touched on in the video about video game preservation where it seems like they don't want you to own games for a long time, they want you to keep buying the same games over and over again on their different store fronts. Thus why I always preferred physical copies of games.
I still have old SNES, Gameboy (original), N64, Gamecube, Virtual Boy, and Wii games that I can play whenever. But nowadays if you get a game on their monthly plan and then decide to stop paying for said subscription you lose those games. Oh and also they copied Microsofts crapy idea of making you pay to play online which Sony also copied as well. So way to many things I dislike with their consoles nowadays for me to waste my hard earned money on.
Reggies coping is absolutely hilarious.
I think I agree that the name alone was just such a big mistep. After 3 home consoles having unique names with the Nintendo 64, Gamecube, and Wii. The next console sharing the name with the previous one it threw off that pattern... I loved the wii but had fallen more into PC gaming by the time the Wii U had released. Not only did I not hear anything about the Wii U prior to it being released. I remember being in a wal-mart and seeing the gamepad for the first time and legit thinking it was just a new controller for the original Wii. I think a lot of people shared my experience.
I was hoping yall were going to mention Iwatta cutting his salary after the failure of the wii u. and then he died :/
I picked up my Wii U at Goodwill long after the switch had been released and immediately fell in love with it. Nintendo Land was really cool and they implemented the game pad in so many cool and unique ways into the various games. I have Switch now and I still often miss some of the features of the classic Wii U! Had I known how cool they were I would have bought one on day one.
I would take it back to Goodwill because garbage belongs there.
@@LUCKO2022the wii u is not garbage I haven't played my switch in months since I've hacked my wii u
@@Greenish_BT
Garbage
@Greenish_BT
Wow a hacked Wii U. So impressive. So you can run emulators on it. Oh gee golly. It is not like I can't do that to my PC which is hooked up to my TV via HDMI. You sure got me.
@@LUCKO2022 Jesus christ I ain't wasting 2000 bucks on a pc that will become obsolete in a month just to play nintendo land
Wii U was a tragedy because it had virtually no marketing. The Wii had tons of marketing. I didn't know the Wii U existed until I got a switch.
The Wii U was a confusing console. I thought it was a tablet add on for the wii
I remember my dad got me a Wii U for Christmas when it first came out back as a teen and I loved it. Good times.
The thing that I dislikethe most about the wii-u is the screen feels really cheap like its plastic and it scratches really easily. The screen on my wii-u is cloudy from all the scratches on it.
Despite its massive failure Iwata put his employees first, taking pay cuts so no one would lose their jobs amass the Wii U's poor performance. A true leader.
With Sony announcing Project Q, I've been wondering what Nintendo did to make remote play so stable on the Wii U GamePad. I've used remote play across Steam Link, Xbox and PlayStation, and it's never been as good of an experience.
The Wii U itself broadcast a very low latency wifi signal, which the Gamepad connected to. And they seemed to use a compression technique that worked with the hardware while being as low latency as possible. The downside to their methods were the range though, and likely the resolution had to be low to keep the latency low and less intensive for the Wii U
It wasn’t stable at all… duck you talking about
Never get tired of seeing that kick ass Zelda demo. Goddamn do I wish that became a full game on the Switch.
I just bought a 32 GB today for 40$ and....I can't connect to the internet and play games because the B button is messed up on the gamepad.
So I heard this story of a Nintendo in house game developer who made a game that failed and was visited by miyamoto and police at his home and then he disappeared. Could you find out more on this story please? I cant find anything on my internet searches about it anymore. It disappeared as well.
dafuq
The Wii U is a great case study in how bad marketing can sink a good product
Sony proved that with PS4 and PS5. Those consoles had mediocre content but good marketing.
@@Noname15514 Are you just talking about when they launched? I think the 4 has great games, but I was kind of late to the PS4 bandwagon so I don't really know what was out back in 2013-2015. But I think the PS4 was handed success because their two competitors both tripped out the gate and face planted. And while I love the Wii U, I think they kind of doomed it by barely matching the graphics of the PS3. The game pad could do some pretty creative things, but mostly for casual games. For most others, the game pad couldn't do much to offset the fact that the console was a generation out of sync.
It was more than just marketing. Lacked games, lacked proper tech, and so many games relied on that dual screen gimmick. For example, the Star Fox Wii U Controls were an embarrassment.
@@Walrus286 Star Fox Zero is actually underrated.
Calling it Wii 2 would have changed history
Could
I picked up my Wii U in a bundle sale from Toys'r'Us in December of 2013, I believe it was around $300 for the 32GB model with Super Mario Bros Wii U packed in (which itself included Luigi U on the disc), along with two other games from a selection TrU offered with the bundle, and if I remember correctly I picked AC3 and ME3. I had already had an Xbox One since launch day (about a month or so) and PS4 was very hard to find so I didn't get one of those until February or so of 2014. The Wii U dominated my gaming time for quite a while in that span, it was just simple fun that generally didn't require the insane patches/downloads to run right out of the box, and in fact many games included OS/Firmware updates on the disc if they required a specific version to run. The following year or so was a GREAT time to have one, because games were selling extremely cheap all over the place and were regularly in BOGO deals at places like Best Buy and Newegg. One game that oddly got a lot of play on that system when friends visited was Tekken Tag 2, because I got it from Newegg for $11 or $12. The render resolution was definitely lower than X360 or PS3, but it ran perfectly at 60FPS so it was still a lot of fun.
It simply cannot be overstated how well the dual-screen setup worked when a developer really put time into it. In Tekken Tag 2, it showed a move list. In Lego City Undercover it had a myriad of features depending on what you were doing, such as an x-ray scanner, your radio, a map, etc, the character in-game literally had the same tablet so it was like you got to have it too. ME3 used it for a map. Deus Ex Human Revolution used it for inventory screen and I believe sniper scope. In SMB Wii U if you did multi-player, the tablet player actually had a completely different role and could modify the map. Star Fox allowed you to use it as cockpit view separate from the TV screen. Breath of the Wild utilized it for a multitude of functions as well, and though I haven't played it on the Switch I suspect that aspect of interactivity alone being missing from Switch would detract from the experience compared to Wii U. Many excellent ideas that just worked well and realistically you won't experience much anything like it unless you play those games.
Good times all around though, I'm just trying to keep mine alive as long as possible.
breath of the wild was originally going to use the pad, but they ended up canning the features as they only cared about the switch sales by the time it released.
I remember thinking the screen was a Wii peripheral until my brother got one on launch day and I actually got to see the console.
I'm just glad most of Nintendo's amazing exclusives from this console found renewed life and success on the switch.
Now where the hell is Wind Waker and Twilight Princess HD
The Switch really gave us a perspective on Wii U's massive failure when its best selling game: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which is a port, outsold the Wii U itself by 3x
@@w21aaaaa The Switch itself outselling the Wii U in its first year was also a big indicator, which surprised even me. I was confident the Switch was going to sell better, but I expected the first year to be a respectable 8-10 million, not well into 8 figures.
Sometimes you gotta fail in life. Look at Nintendo now with its huge Switch success.
‘Hey, it’s time to watch some baseball’
Wow! It’s just like being in a totally human house!
As a lifelong nintendo fan, I knew from the start that the Wii U was a new console apart from Wii, but remember seeing most friends and colleagues at college thinking it was an add on...
Ironically, I wasn't interested in the console at launch due to the lack nintendo games I wanted (new Legend of Zelda, new 3D Mario, new Mario Kart, or new Metroid). I liked the fact there were more 3rd party games in contrast to Wii but it wasn't enough to entice me to buy it.
Only came around to getting one on 2014 because of Mario Kart 8 and Mario 3D Land. Still have the console to this day, and love playing it.
The failure of Wii U is one of gaming's greatest tragedies. What should have become the new standard was ruined by bad marketing and turned the public off of asymmetric gameplay for a decade.
The marketing was bad but you can't put all the blame on it. Nintendo didn't release a single proper game utilizing the second screen in a meaningful way. It was a bad decision to base the entire system around a gimmick that nobody had an idea what to do with.
@@Golemoid You absolutely can put all the blame on marketing when the majority of consumers, reviewers, and media outlets had no idea what the product was years after its release. Quality games wouldn't have saved a platform everyone saw as an add on with a price tag the same as what they already bought.
What a different a properly executed marketing campaign makes with the Switch poised to break the all time console sales record by the end of the year.
@@BronzeLincolns81 You can't polish a turd. After an entire long generation of gimmicky controllers, stale graphics and lacking 3rd party on Nintendo part, the last thing people wanted was another console that did just that. It was weaker than the PS3, but almost as expensive as PS4. The controller was pointless and there was no games. No amount of marketing magic would convince people that Wii U is worth their money. Pretty much the only people who bought it were the hardcore Nintendo fans and almost nobody else.
Switch sold well because:
a) it's a handheld first and foremost, Nintendo handhelds always sell well.
b) Zelda on release day and Mario the same year. Wii U had NO new Zelda or 3D Mario.
c) people were obsessed with graphics and resolution when 8th gen started, not so much halfway in. So low specs were devastating for Wii U but not the Switch. And it was actually quite powerful for a handheld.
d) Switch was marketed well because the gimmick was marketable. People wanted a hybrid system, so it was an easy sell. Nobody wanted a weak home console with a useless tablet controller that isn't even portable. Marketing won't help you if your product is crap.
Ignoring all those factors and saying it's all because of marketing is, well... ignorant. Sony never had good marketing either, but their products speak for themselves. Wii U was just a dud and that's all there is to it.
@@Golemoid
for whatever reason youtube erased half my response.
The WiiU being thought of as a peripheral is well documented. No one is going to buy what they already have at the price of what they already have and better graphics weren't gonna save it.
Part of marketing is communicating to the consumer what a product is. Nintendo failed miserably at this and had people thinking this was a $300 add to a Wii. The casual consumers who made the Wii the winner over the PS3 and XB1 weren't gonna buy an add on for that much.
As far as 3rd party support, the Switch doesn't have that either. No big time 3rd party AAA titles on Switch as it's being carried solely by their inhouse and first party lineup.
@@BronzeLincolns81 Some people were confused at first, but the idea that if they knew Wii U was a new console then it would sell just as well as Wii or Switch, is just crazy talk.
By the time MK8 and SSB4 have released, everybody already knew what it was. But at that point PS4 and XB1 were already out, and nobody cared about what was effectively a last gen system. When proper next gen games like Fallout 4 and Witcher 3 started coming out, it was obvious to everyone that Wii U was an obsolete system. Even Nintendo have abandoned it at that point.
Wii U was not just a terrible core gaming console, but also a bad Wii successor. There was no Wii sports at launch, and barely anything else to attract that casual audience. They have moved on to mobile, and came back for the Switch.
I could go on and on, Wii U was a failure on every level. But you want to pretend those problems don't exist, and that it failed solely because of external reasons.
Wii U was ahead of it's time and definitely showed it was with the switch prospering from the Wii U ground work. It definitely should have been an attachment for the original Wii somehow.
The WiiU had some decent features with the tablet. I played hundreds of hours playing Monster Hunter Ultimate 3. The online was great and the use of the second screen was handy with being able to use items, map, text, and speak into mic if enabled.
Anyone else find it funny listening to this guy read "GetWrecked" at the end?
The narrator has such a professional voice that reading online usernames is hilarious.
I have a feeling this one is going to be one of your best videos of all time.
Nintendo is basically SEGA and the WiiU was their Dreamcast. A console far ahead of its time, had some really damn good games, with interesting features that never saw their potential because the company making it didn't market it very well. The only difference is Nintendo didn't drop out after failing, and went on to sort of learn from their mistakes with the Switch.
It also helped they weren’t failing even before that, since they still had a lot of money stowed away in the event of something bad happening
Only a matter of time before a GVMERS do a tragedy on Microsoft’s Xbox One. LOT to digest on that screwup.
I wouldn't say the Wii U was ahead of its time, quite the opposite. Don't get me wrong it had some great games and I still have mine, but I wouldn't compare it to Dreamcast which genunely was ahead of its time.
How was it ahead of it’s time 😂you really just watched this entire video and STILL think it’s ahead of it’s time 🤦♂️
@@Skullet in the Wii U’s defense it did outsell Sega’s Dreamcast by 3.4 million units. But it’s still a minimal consolation considering it went toe to toe with Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s mighty PlayStation 4.
I had a wii u and up until the switch was easily my favorite console. So many good games, and the game pad was an absolute life saver when people were watching the tv.
I still remember the tv commercials coaching chuldren on how to explain to their parents that the WiiU isn't "another wii"
Y'all deserve more subs if only for the fact that these are soothing to sleep to
Today its sucessor is known by Project Q.
Wasn't until some years after the Wii U's launch that I realized it was it's own console..
I haven't been into console gaming since the N64 though.
Perhaps a rare case where burying the lead might have helped.
Besides the name and initial marketing needing to be better (and some architectural issues), Super Mario Maker really should have been the launch title instead of NSMBU (BOTW would have been awesome, but just not a realistic possibility given when Skyward Sword released). It made a decent splash when it did come out in 2015, but would have been much more helpful early on in “explaining” the tablet controller.
I got Wii U on launch day. I still have it. NintendoLand got the most play time overall in my family! 🤩 What games did ya’ll play the most??
I waited a year to buy it because of a poorly timed and lengthy bought of unemployment. My list of favorites include a few oddballs... Rayman, Tank! Tank! Tank!, Splatoon and (I'm not joking) Devil's Third.
rayman legends was HUGE for me and monster hunter 3 ultimate
I love Xenoblade Chronicles X! I wish they would bring it to Switch, I bought my Wii U specifically for that game and still have it for that reason.
Sorry if this is off topic, but Steve Pettit legit sounds like Brian Mathis, who is the voice of Elias Ainsworth in The Ancient Magus' Bride. Had to do some searching as I legit thought it was the same person xD
The Wii U crawled, got kicked in the gut, fell off a cliff, landed in a volcano, caught on fire, got shut up into the air during the eruption, flew into the sun, and then came crashing down like Icarus all so the Nintendo Switch could lay with the lions and soar with the eagles!
I absolutely love Wii-U. It's a fantastic HD legacy console that you could *own* a huge digital library of Nintendo's greatest hits on. Now, the Virtual Console isn't even offered as an alternative to Switch Online. Nintendo shut down the eShops to close any avenues of playing their retro catalogue other than their subscription model, the original hardware, or emulation - which they aggressively try to criminalize. The Wii-U was in truth, a much more consumer friendly console to enthusiasts who value ownership. Definitely my 2nd favorite Nintendo platform next to GameCube.
$50 a year isn't the astronomical back breaking price people are making it out to be. When you're dealing with piraters who have no desire to pay for anything, something other than free is considered highway robbery.
Glad to see Reggie got to retire on a high note. Sad Iwata never got to see the Switch
I have also own a Wii U and it plugged in at my Mum's house! It is a very average system with a neat idea in the Game pad but that thing needed bigger range. I think there are alot of rose tinted spectacles on when looking at it. However it was this failure that created the Switch and if Nintendo can get the Switch 2 right, they may have an even bigger hit.
I just replayed through BoTW the month before on my Zelda Edition WiiU. I forgot how underutilized the pad was in that game. Used the WiiU Pro controller, which has the best feel of any controller I’ve ever used.
Truly a shame WiiU didn’t become more successful.
Thank you for all your work Iwata. It was a pleasure to enjoy your work. I'm sorry you departed in such a low phase. Thank you very much. ❤
The Wii u was just to ahead of it's time. It definitely inspired consoles like the steam deck and other handhelds like that.
Sony is set to release a control pad just like that of the WiiU sometime this year.
Well yes but also no. It cannot leave the house the console is in.
Forced Motion Controls and REALLY bad gamepad where you had to see there to fully enjoy the game. Meaning looking at your TV and your tablet controller for all the info. Instead of everything just beeing on Tv.
It was the name. Most people were convinced it was just a different Wii SKU, as if it was a PS3 Slim or something. Honestly even introducing a "Wii HD" with just the base unit and then giving the option for the tablet controller (like the 360 Kinect) would have netted them far more sales.
A new GVMERS episode is always a good time! Thanks for all your hard work!
Edit: I wish we lived in a world where your channel didnt have to submit scripted shovel ware ads to fund your work. Mech arena is a dime a dozen mobile app that expects you to pay to play and stay up to date. It goes against your channels thorough dismantling of what goes wrong with games down to false advertisement, lies, lack of interest and funding, etc. I get it. Ads like that offer you money you need, but it sucks for everyone.
I don't care what anyone says the Wii U is still one of my favorite consoles if not the best in my opinion. Say what you want about marketing but the console itself was a great concept and an amazing console in of itself not to mention an amazing game library that the ports on Switch only prove how great those games are.
There's a handful of unique games which require dual screen and you can't play anywhere else. This bugs me from a preservation standpoint.
I think dual screen has merit, it wasn't explored enough. Even the portable dual screen is now gone with the DS/3DS line going offline (that was explored plenty though).