For Gamers Only 20: Why Wii U is failing

Gamers, it has been 20 amazing weeks of 4GO, and Glenn is up to the fun challenge of running this 20th episode solo. First, 4GO’s position on the disconnecting DualShock 4 bug from episode 19 needs some clarification. After that, Glenn talks the death of Iwata, addiction to video games, stories in military shooters, PSN vs. Xbox Live, and what exactly caused the Wii U to fail and why it’s NOT consumers’ fault.

[DualWielding]

the Wii U is not failing, it already failed

[spacedelete]

the Wii U failed and died whenit released. when even the abandoned and mistreated Vita lifetime sales are better you know tbe situation is dire.

[Spotie]

Actually, it had a really impressive launch. Unfortunately, it just happened to fizzle out afterwards.

[RPGrinder]

Actually, Vita is only outselling the Wii U barely because it had a one year head start. If I am not mistaken, the Wii U is already starting to overtake Vita. This holiday season for sure it will.

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

A combination of terrible advertisement, no great first party experiences at launch, and horribly-done third party ports covering the gap that Nintendo themselves should have filled were why the first year was a short leap followed by a swift descent.
After that it was a mix of slow first party releases, none of the newer third parties trying to fit their games onto it, and everyone under the sun falling back on claiming it was just a Mario machine, instead of giving due credit to indies like Shovel Knight and exclusives like Bayonetta 2.

It didn't help that their E3's were hit&miss at the best of times, and rage-enducing at the worst.

The one good thing to come out of this is that, according to profits charts and sales, the Wii U has been on an upswing as of late, and things like Splatoon and Amiibo are pulling serious cash for them despite all the negativity.

It seems good games and trendy ideas can slowly but surely out-do all but the worst of times.
Of course, when you've hit rock bottom, there's nowhere to go but up...

[InTheLab]

At least we can acknowledge now that the WiiU is a failure and move forward. We are still not at the point where certain fans on this site will accept that it's Nintendo's and only Nintendo's fault, but at least we are back to reality.

[TotallyNotGlenn]

In this episode, we discussed an article from Engadget and a response to it from Forbes that seemed to imply that it was us, the consumers, who were at fault for the Wii U's issues.

[_-EDMIX-_]

I've stated this many, many times. I put blame on the actual company, they seem to be fine with making mistakes time and time again.

Cutting corners, leaving developers out of the loop, not using the money to buy enough teams to actually create content etc.

They made Wii U for Nintendo developers...thats it.

They've been against 3rd party developers for years, they are not making hardware for all, they are making Hardware for THEIR team's visions and if their team doesn't need ram, guess they don't need to spend money on that, graphics? Oh...they are not making any realistic looking games...guess we don't need to spend too much money on that.

By doing this, they avoid competition and the console becomes home to ONLY Nintendo titles selling well.

Look at PS, look at XB.....the best titles on those platforms in terms of sales most of the times come from 3rd party. They are not some how nerfing their system to only support their own concepts.

Nintendo very much seems to be doing that.

Wii U failing has more to do with what Nintendo is doing, NX will fail just as much if they go the same route ie Making a system by Nintendo only for Nintendo lol.

I feel NX will be a handheld that can out to the TV, I feel Wii U might legit be the last Nintendo console (that is exclusively a console anyway).

If they are just going to only create a system around what THEY SOLELY want, they might as well save the money and exclusively stay handheld.

We can have all developers developing on one platform as suppose to Wii U to 3DS etc.

This is as fail as it gets with console sales, were at a point where them selling better then even Gamecube might not even happen......

[RPGrinder]

It is part the customers fault. Part Nintendos.

Nintendo is still the best developer in the industry and it is not even close. They supported the Wii U way more than Sony supported Vita. They abandoned it. Nintendo is still sticking it out with Wii U. That is worth respecting.

If you look at the first party lineups this year. Nintendo is far and away supporting 3DS and Wii U more than Sony is supporting pS4 or Microsoft is supporting X1.

Sure, when you are innovating like Nintendo does, sometimes it goes well (DS, 3DS, Wii) and sometimes you get things like the Wii U.

This extends to the software. Sometimes you get Splatoon, Mario Galaxy, Xenoblade and other times you get Wii music. That is just the way it goes.

I want Nintendo to keep trying.