The success of Switch ports prove the Wii U’s hardware made it fail

Great games sell consoles. We’ve seen companies like Microsoft learn this the hard way with the Xbox One, and a lineup of exclusives is necessary to keep a core player base engaged with your system. But the Wii U’s failure teaches us a different type of lesson. If your console isn’t any good, no amount of acclaimed games can keep it from sinking.

[PhoenixUp]

Wii U’s everything made it fail

[marloc_x]

..not in my house😉

[Zeldafan64]

Same here

[meatnormous]

We still use ours. Not buying a switch just yet.

[PhoenixUp]

Bro I got a Wii U too and I really enjoy it. But that was only after it got discontinued because Nintendo wouldn’t drop the price for the damn thing before killing it.

No matter how much it entertains me, it’s not hard to recognize Wii U as a commercial failure and the reasons why.

[marloc_x]

At least it entertains you Phoenix..
..¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[indyman7777]

marloc_x I see what you did there! You turned his FAKE I like Nintendo BUT.....Comment against him. Good job!

[PhoenixUp]

Yeah it’s a great console to have around

[3-4-5]

Wii U had 10-15 really good games and that was it.

[Prince_TFK]

Now if you were to judge what a good game is by their Metacritic score, the Wii U had at least 40 good games on the system (counting 80% Meta score and up).

http://www.metacritic.com/b...

[RosweeSon]

That’s about 10 more than Xbox1 Currently has.

[Prince_TFK]

Not exactly. The Wii U is a great piece of tech. It just the confusing name that held it down.

[marloc_x]

I agree.

[Vegamyster]

Bad name, advertising, long game droughts and the CPU was a big bottleneck which made most 360/PS3 ports run worse despite the GPU being better than both. The offscreen play was it's only cool feature since only a couple games made good use of its touch screen (Zombiu, Mario Maker ect), other than that it huge mess.

[PhoenixUp]

@ 3-4-5

Wii U has a lot more great games than that amount.

@ Kun

Wii U had way more issues than just its name.

In regard to the name you could say Xbox One was a confusing name yet it still proved to be far more successful than Wii U.

[indyman7777]

Why are you stocking Nintendo articles so you can be the first to comment?

[TekoIie]

So people will now admit that the Nintendo games on there did sell spectacularly well because they're good games and not because there wasn't anything else to play? Because there's much more content on the Switch and the games are selling just as good if not better.

[InKnight7s]

Well you are wrong, Wii U and Xbox One are clear reason that proving you are wrong. Both of these consoles released with so little exclusives and stayed as Multiplat console however, the industry had moved on and choose PS4 to get both multiplat and exclusives. No matter how famous or how old the firm is or whatever services they are providing or even how strong the console is in term of hardware, if there is not enough exclusives and good variety its a done story. Switch had really good start with Kart, Zelda, Splatoon 2, Mario Odd and Pokken. Even if half of these games are ports, but it was from Wii U so for the market it almost like a new game, so it worked for Switch. Furthemore, variety is the key magic, that's why Nintendo choose to keep supporting Bayonetta and even go down to ports old games because they need Variety even though if the sales figures isn't impressive, but the market will act far better for such console. I only harddie fans would like a console just with Mario games or a console justvwith Multiplatforms games with any exclusives to expect. Exclusives matters.

[TekoIie]

"Well you are wrong"

Okay so why does the rest of your comment not tell me why? Tell me how MK8 sold well on the Wii U because there were "barely any games" as many detractors said but can then sell even better on a system that has access to even more content.

According to Wikipedia the Wii U has 757 games and the Switch in just over a year has 1048. So there's some numbers.

"Wii U and Xbox One are clear reason that proving you are wrong. Both of these consoles released with so little exclusives and stayed as Multiplat console however"

The Wii U was a multiplat console...

I'm going to just end it there because most of your comment is completely unrelated to what I've said.

[marloc_x]

..interesting the respective attach rates of exclusives between platforms.

With so many machines playing the same games, I hardly think Nintendo will be the first fade..

[kevnb]

Most people didn’t even understand what the Wii u was.

[superchiller]

I think they understood it well enough, they just didn't want the product.

[Shiken]

Most people I talk to at work to this day still think the WiiU is an add on for the Wii. Hell I have one friend who got it for xmas a while back and it sat in his closet unused because he thought it was for the Wii.

The main reason it failed is because of poor marketing. It would probably done X1 numbers (certainly not PS4, it had its flaws) ic the advertising was handled better. This would have lead to better 3rd party support too, because most games for the first 2 years of PS4 and X1 were cross gen.

There are a number of factors, but advertising and consumer awareness was the biggest factor toward its downfall.

[kevnb]

people on forums knew what it was, the average Joe thought it was an add-on.

[RosweeSon]

People need to educate themselves a little then they never heard of google or wiki 🤦🏻‍♂️

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

In retrospect, looking back on it, the Wii U's biggest road block was not its specs.
It was its advertisement.
Not only were people confused about what it really was, it was also still carrying the Wii's reputation with it, which made it instantly harder to sell to the core gaming crowd.

Switch doesn't suffer from this advertisement problem, hence the games do better there.

[superchiller]

Please, not that old tired argument about advertising. No amount of advertising would have made the Wii U a better console, and the poor specs are the most important reason for its failure. Hardware was very weak and poorly designed, nothing was going to change that.

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

Stop shoving words into other people's mouths; no one said that the advertisement would have made the specs better. That's just idiotic.
Not as idiotic as assuming the specs are why it never sold as well as Nintendo wanted it to, when the Switch is proving that specs don't guarantee a console's failure, but pretty damned close.

It's just a FACT that Nintendo's handling of the Wii U's introduction and subsequent advertisement did more to harm its sales than its specs ever did.

You can deny that all you like, but that doesn't change that the specs weren't the Wii U's biggest issue.

[marloc_x]

using that reasoning schiller..

..why has the Switch outsold it within 1 year?😏

[superchiller]

Wii U was one of the worst designed consoles in recent memory. Very poor hardware specs, gimped by the gamepad gimmick that really didn't improve gameplay, but in many cases made games much worse (like the awful Star Fox Zero). Nintendo clearly bet everything on the gamepad to entice gamers, but it was ultimately nothing more than a bad gimmick.

Unfortunately when it comes to gaming hardware design, Nintendo really doesn't have the resources and expertise to deliver a solid console. They prefer to spend as little as possible on the manufacturing process, to keep costs down and profits up. In the end, gamers lose out.

[mcstorm]

That's not true at all. Nintendo put most of the effort into ways of improving/giving us different ways to play games. look at the jump of controllers from NES to snes to N64 to GameCube. Then changed the game with the Wii and then the wiiu made the way for yu switch in terms of modifying the Wii controllers to the switch but keeping a simmiler design to the wiiu on the switch.

People who talk about power ect seem to forget the n64 and GameCube had more power than the consoles of the same gen apart from the Xbox but they did not work out well for Nintendo and Nintendo make consoles for there IPS not to hold 3rd party hands.

[MrSec84]

Actually it's the hardware vendors that provide said expertise on the system building front.
Tbh though when hardware hobbiests can source their own hardware to make a decent system of their own anyone with said interest could sit in the role of system architect, especially game developers with experience in making use of that technology.

Nintendo's preferences of making a certain input type their priority and limited breathing space for the box are what had the worst effects on Wii U's hardware performance capabilities.

If Nintendo had released a standard console with performance close to XB1, that you could buy an additional tablet add-on to game around the house and through the internet it would have been a much more appealing device.
Especially if it was a $299 console, with a teraflop of AMD GPU performance launching in Fall 2012, with the best versions of 7th gen 3rd party console games and reasonable baseline versions of 8th gen titles coming out in 2013 and beyond.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

[PhoenixUp]

Wii U has the least memorable aesthetic design for a Nintendo console.

More people recognize the Gamepad than the console itself

[marloc_x]

..2012 called, it wants it's trolling back.

[Wrex369]

Advertising, Company Mindset, Hardware limitations, and just Clunky Implentation and befuddling of what a "Nintendo console" is to the base of who they've sold to for decades before.

[Knightofelemia]

I was considering buying a used Wii-U for my collection

[Bronxs15]

That’s a very good point I hadn’t considered. And people say crap hardware didn’t matter it was always about Nintendo’s first party. I guess not.