This is the Wii U:

Shown here: Wii U

This is the problem(main) with the Wii U:

Depicted: Not the Wii U

The following are images showing the Wii U along with its problem.

Exhibit A:

Blue = Wii U, Else = Wii U peripheral. Wii U console is hidden from view like an unwanted stepchild by its brighter but dependent companion. http://images.eurogamer.net/ Standard press image.

Exhibit B:

Blue = Wii U, Else = Wii U perpheral. Not depicted anywhere: actual console. nintendo.com

Exhibit C:

Blue = Wii U, Red = Wii U peripheral. Wii U Bundle Box. amazon.com

Exhibit D:

yellow and purple: Wii U, Else = Wii U peripherals. Here we can see, the wii u console thrown to its back of its very own promotional poster. Being behind its friggen power cord and component cord. Red = Logo obscured by component cord. http://wiiudaily.com/

Exhibit E:

Blue = Wii U, Red = Wii U Peripheral. This is 2015 promotion from their website. Still haven't learned their lesson I see. nintendo.com

If you don't get it yet, let me just spell it out for you. With regard to the Wii U, Nintendo doesn't know how to market. The Wii U tablet is a great an arguably neccesary peripheral, a device the Wii U was basically built around. But Nintendo's obsession with the Tablet made them forget about the console itself. This is why the year lead the WIi U had on its competitor's didn't count for shit.

In Contrast:

How to Market

I agree it is a big problem, in its early life (first 2 years lol) people didn´t even knew that WiiU was a console because the gamepad gets all the attention and the name is too similar, also the console itself is so little and discrete that it could be confused with a Wii on those ads.

By the time people knew about the WiiU being a whole new console the competition was already on the market and the WiiU was already abandoned by the third parties.

I'm glad nintendo is around. You know year after year Sony and Microsoft will release consoles with only the smallest of differences and you generally pick one as the experience is so similar; we don't need a third clone. They do weird things that, while often not popular, are different. I love the Wii U and enjoy the experience, it's just that most people only get one console and you've access to far less games on Nintendo's console.

As much as we blame marketing I don't see this console selling well under any circumstances without third party support and a better online experience.

The reason behind this issue really is that the console itself doesn't look too different from the original Wii.

Hence, they showed off the gamepad to highlight the difference but it backfired and came off as a peripheral. What they should've done was design the console itself to have a more unique appearance in the first place.

I think that marketing screwup combined with the name is what really hurt the WiiU in the longrun..

Pretty much this and the name could have been better.

Nothing too wrong with those images as the focus should be on the gamepad. Just the rest is what let it down/

Yeah, I noticed how they barely even show the console itself.

I think it doesn't help that the Wii U looks very similar to the original Wii, and doesn't have a unique design.

To be honest it would have help A LOT if the launch of the console would have included a game like Super Mario Maker or Splatoon (or both) games that make the console feel like something really new and a great showcase for the possibilites of the gamepad. Instead of that they released games that looked a lot like its predecessors on Wii (NSMBU, WIIU sports, Tropical Freeze, etc), they weren´t succesfull on making the console feel new as a whole, of course the confusing name, design and marketing is a biiig part too but I´m pretty sure WiiU would be in a totally diferent scenario if SMM and Splatoon were the launch games.

The Wii U is a great console, which is why I'm perpetually disatisfied in the way it was treated. As much as third party support and online seem like obvious issues, there just symptoms of the fact that Nintendo failed to capture the public's intrest like they did with the Wii, which had pretty inferior 3rd party and rudimentary online as well. The issue is that Nintendo treated the Wii U exactly like they treated the WIi and expected lightning to strike twice.

The reason for not showing the console as much as the games and the controllers worked was because of how drastically different the Wii was from the Game Cube. Meanwhile, when the Wii U came out as the only 8th gen console around, people bought Wii's thinking they could just get the tablet seperatly and use it on the Wii. I mean why spend 200$ on a Wii U when you could get a wii for 99$ and buy the tablet by itself.

Someone please paint me a picture of a consumer who doesn't want the Wii U because all they know is the controller, and would suddenly want it because they saw more of the console itself. Because I'm starting to see this as a sort of straw man argument. The type of consumer who is really that clueless already doesn't want it. If they're not drawn in by the controller concept (or, you know, the games on the system), then how is anything else going to help?

I agree that this a *a* problem with the Wii U, but it's not *the* problem. The biggest problem is that people just don't want the games on it enough to buy it. But that's not something that a lot of people want to accept.