the Wii was big, like really big, so big that Nintendo had to ask themselves how they could make something that big again. but what?

they needed a big demographic, aka the same casuals who bought the Wii, but they needed to know what the casuals liked, and the casuals liked tablets.

the solution - make a console and a tablet have a baby. it would have all the best pars of a console and a tablet. but instead it had all the worst parts of a tablet and a console.

the gamepad was expensive, so they had to make cuts. the hardware was now very underpowered in order to keep it affordable. what they were left with was an underpowered console that nobody knew how to make games for because it had a tablet controller.

the PS4 and Xbox One then came to market, with better hardware, and no tablet controller making it easier to make games for. so the devs abandoned the Wii U.

but what about that sweet sweet casual market Nintendo had going for it? it turns out they stopped existing, which really hit them hard because Nintendo was banking on casuals so hard that they forgot to advertise the Wii U so nobody knew what it was. also people loved the PS4 and Xbox One so much that they advertised themselves on top of actual advertising.

so the Wii U failed due to bad marketing, a small games library, tough competition, and bad hardware.

Wii brought about a sharp rise in video game entertainment. Eventually it had to fall. And WiiU came during that next era in my opinion.

Anyone who enjoyed the WiiU knows that the games were fine. If people were really interested in gaming that would have gotten through despite the name, the clunkiness of the gamepad, the price, the look, whatever.

At the end of the day if the system failed people can feel justified in pointing to any aspect and saying "that's it!" For all we know the carry-over of the Wii-branding may have helped if the era was as fruitful as the Wii era. Maybe Nintendo Land's use of the gamepad could have brought about a youtube type sensation similar to the Wii had motion gaming not already saturated that medium.

It's hard to say really, but saying that an entire system failed because of price and/or naming is over-simplified(even if it was right), and a bit of a sheepish analysis.

I still know people to this day that did not even know the WiiU was a thing. They all know what the Switch is, but they thought this was the next console for nintendo since the Wii.

Had they had a bettet name and advertising, it could jave had a much better life. For years the PS360 still got ports. Had the WiiU sold, it would have had them too.

Ah, I completely forgot about the Tingle tuner. I didn't have a GBA so never used it at the time.  It was nice to use the gamepad to swap items with the touchscreen in WIndwaker HD yet could have done without it.

I guess the second screen experience died with the WiiU, nobody talks about smart glass anymore either. It was nice in Lego city undercover, much easier to mark things on the map, yet not $100 extra nice or whatever the gamepad added.

Anyway I hope Nintendo and others put plenty of new games on the Switch next to salvaging the WiiU as I don't intend to buy all the same games again.

Let the poor, old, senile man live his dreams, Rol. Now Kimishima doesn't seem to give him anymore fun time.

Others have already said a lot of the things I would point out but another thing that made the Wii U suffer before the NX hype train went into high gear was that they were either creatively lazy or unambitious with most of their 1st party games. Outside of a couple of titles like Xenoblade X, Splatoon, MK8 and Smash 4, the majority of their games were just Nintendo going into autopilot with so many 2D platformers, minigame collections and sequels/retreads of established formulas without any real changes or increased content/depth. It's like they knew the Wii U was a dud from the start and decided to hold back the majority of their ambitious ideas for the Switch.

Outside of launch, I think it only got 2 first party games in its first year. Pikmin 3 and 3D World. Nintendo themselves didn't support the Wii U. A lot of people bring up bad 3rd party support, but it was better than what Nintendo had to offer. It was also really expensive.

Edit: oh I forgot a remake of the WW. Which was released digital first for a month. Why would they do that?

The marketing and name were terrible. They caused so much confusion for many people. Also, the price was too high, but Nintendo refused to drop it because they made it too costly to do so.

It was a half baked, overpriced, difficult to understand console. Nintendo didn't even know how to get the best out of its "main feature". Mario Maker arguably is the best use of the Gamepad to this day. It had 32GB of Storage...as a home console which is kind of unacceptable. Nintendo had a hard time putting out content in a timely fashion because they were so behind in HD game development and uh...it didn't have a real 3D Mario. Well, that last one really doesn't count but you get my points. The Switch is what the Wii U wanted to be and should have been but it came too late. Perhaps the greatest mistakes were made when Nintendo thought Wii U would sell on its "Wii" name alone and lastly hmm...calling it the FUCKING "WII U".

Lack of games I think.