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Mandalore76 on 30 May 2019
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DonFerrari said:
Mandalore76 said:

The WiiU was discontinued as a product that wasn't selling well.  But, Nintendo pushed it as best they could (advertising early on could/should have been pushed much harder though to be honest) for just over 4 years until the Switch was ready to launch.  Unlike the Virtual Boy which Nintendo dropped in less than a year.  Or Sega's Dreamcast, which was discontinued after only 1 year 7 months in NA (2 years 4 months including Japan).  The Wii U still has a "Games Page" on Nintendo.com showing release dates updated through April of this year, over 2 years after discontinuation (https://www.nintendo.com/games/game-guide/#filter/:q=&dFR[availability][0]=Available%20now&dFR[platform][0]=Wii%20U&indexName=noa_aem_game_en_us_release_des).  Wii U is still featured all over the "My Nintendo" site with discounts for software and digital content (https://my.nintendo.com/reward_categories).  So, no, they haven't "hidden" or erased the Wii U from memory.

Nintendo's consoles typically change more radically from one system to the next than "every console" by comparison.  But, to put it in terms that you might more readily accept, it was a failure that was a necessary failure to get to where Nintendo wanted to go.  Like the PS3 adding the expensive Bluray drive to pave the way for the PS4, the Wii U gamepad was a necessary step towards the portable application of the Switch.

Putting Virtua Boy in the comparison doesn't make much sense since it was a basically a total catastrophe.

And sorry, but Nintendo didn't pushed the best they could. They certainly could have sold it much cheaper and increased number of releases by increasing the size of the team.

I actually don't remember anything outstanding they tried to make the sales of WiiU good. It seemed more like they saw early on that the system was going to do bad and just bought their time until they were ready for Switch (which probably couldn't have been released earlier, not only because it also is successor to 3DS, but also that technology for the affordable price wasn't ready yet), similar to Sony that as soon as they saw PSVita couldn't be a success they just let it die (versus PS3 where they done all they could because they thought it was still possible to sell good).

Anyway that isn't much relevant. The point I wanted to explain initially is why PS3 is considered a BIGGER MONEY LOSSER than WiiU. And that had to do with selling 85M consoles with a lot of them being 100-200 loss per sale, versus WiiU more or less selling 15M for break even.

I mentioned the Virtual Boy as the only time Nintendo cut and ran from released hardware.  The Wii U didn't receive that kind of treatment.  I acknowledge that Nintendo's advertising of the Wii U was poor.  Something they learned from and immediately rectified with the Switch by paying for a slot for their first Super Bowl ad ever.  When I say Nintendo pushed the Wii U as best they could, I'm speaking strictly regarding software.  Sony starved the Vita of 1st Party titles very early in its life and left it to die as you pointed out.  I think Sony's last 1st party games for Vita released in mid 2014?  Meanwhile, in late 2014 through 2015, Nintendo was still putting out their big guns and unveiling new IP:  Super Smash Bros (November 2014), Mario Party 10 (March 2015), Splatoon (May 2015), Super Mario Maker (September 2015), Yoshi's Wooly World (October 2015)...

I don't dispute your main point about bigger money loser.  I was just countering your statement regarding the Wii U being something Nintendo tried to bury from existence.