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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - What should Nintendo have done instead of Wii U?

A Wii 2 would have done much better than the Wii U for various reasons. Not having the gamepad would go a long way towards undoing the confusion over whether it was a new console or a peripheral. It would have had much more appeal. Not having the gamepad would also have made the system cheaper.

Not sure if a Wii 2 could match the success the Switch has had the last 3 years or the success of the original Wii, but it would have sold much more than the Wii U, and the technology for a system like the Switch simply didn't exist in 2012.

The other big thing they should have done was make the system more powerful, especially its CPU. There is no excuse for releasing a system with a CPU that weak in 2012. GPU, RAM, and bandwidth should have been improved as well, but the CPU was the biggest problem. The early 3rd party games would have fared much better if the CPU was up to snuff. Even if they still used the PowerPC architecture they should have been able to manage that. And with the money saved on the gamepad there'd be more financial leeway to improve the system's specs.



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Pemalite said:
Cerebralbore101 said:

In technology a hybrid is a device that takes some or all of the functions of two different devices and combines them into a single device.

That is exactly what the Wii U tried to achieve and what the Switch succeeded with.
It just had inherent technological limitations which limited it's mobile range.

The main difference with the Wii U is that Nintendo tried to take a home console and sprinkle portability into it... Where-as the Switch Nintendo took a portable console and tried to sprinkle fixed-home console into it.

Both approaches make them Hybrids.

I have my Wii U in the lounge room and will happily play Zelda: Breath of the wild in two rooms over in bed... Without a TV. You can't do that with an Xbox or Playstation natively.

Cerebralbore101 said:

I get what you are trying to say here. You are trying to say that walking around your house while playing is a function of a portable. And since Wii U combines that function and the home console function, it is thus a hybrid. I disagree with that though, because doing something poorly does not make a hybrid. A washer designed to spin your clothes out, at extreme speeds, until they are just slightly damp wouldn't qualify as a hybrid. An MP3 player with Wi-Fi calling (edit: and no ability to connect to a phone tower) wouldn't qualify as a smartphone. 

How well something does/doesn't do is ultimately irrelevant. If I bought a washer with a dryer function and it failed to dry my clothes, it would be classed as a washer only.

The Switch is absolutely a rubbish device for a fixed home-console, but a terrific portable one, but we still classify it as a Hybrid.
The WiiU is a rubbish portable console... And arguably a rubbish fixed console later in it's lifespan from a hardware perspective.

The WiiU can certainly be classed as a semi-portable device.

Cerebralbore101 said:

The WiiU has a TV display output as well, which is a key feature of a hybrid console.

Yes, having TV display output is a key feature of a hybrid. We agree, but you said it as if it somehow damages my argument. What's your point? 

You tried to frame the Switch as being unique with this feature, which it certainly is not.

The Switch and Wii U actually have allot in common when you think about it from a design philosophy standpoint.

Both have a tablet-like form factor with controls strapped to the side of a display... Just one has the processing hardware in a base station and streams it to a display... Where-as the other has the hardware in the display part of the device and streams it to a base station/dock.

Cerebralbore101 said:

No. All perfectly relevant.

How so? Explain. 

That not all Switch devices are hybrids.

Cerebralbore101 said:

No, Switch does both equally well. We've had three generations of Nintendo home consoles (Wii, Wii U, Switch) being weaker machines than the contemporary competing home consoles. So as far as the Nintendo home console aspect is concerned Switch doesn't cut corners. Wii U on the other hand is a pseudo-portable, with only a very small selection of mainline Nintendo games actually having the off-TV play functionality. Most Nintendo games required both the gamepad screen and the TV screen to play. I can't speak for non-Nintendo games though, because Wii U had terrible 3rd party support that I didn't get into. 

You calling the Wii U a portable is as wrong as trying to call a motorcycle with a sidecar a car. 

Or trying to call this thing being dragged by a motorcycle a car. 

No. The Switch is terrible at being a fixed console, it's underpowered for the task... The portable display tends to hide allot of it's power deficiencies.
Heck, some Switch variants are useless at being a fixed console entirely which omit such capability entirely.

The WiiU released at a time when it was going up against the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, so for that it didn't do to bad, sadly Nintendo released it at a time when we were starting to talk about next-gen consoles, which it fell short of.

You do recognize that the WiiU is "pseudo-portable" - Meaning it's a Hybrid of several console approaches. (Fixed and Portable.)

And no, I am not calling the WiiU a pure portable machine. It's a hybrid with limitations.

I am trying to avoid double buying Wii U games for Switch. Plus Wii U is cheap to collect for at the moment.

What I would really like is for Nintendo 64 and Gamecube Virtual console on Switch!

Cerebralbore101 said:

My and Pemalite's disagreement cuts to the core of what Nintendo did wrong with the Wii U. It's like they wanted a cherry that tastes like an orange, but forgot about the key aspects of being fruit. Their end product was a piece of tree bark from a cherry tree that smelled faintly of oranges. 

Actually agree with you here. It's a failure on Nintendo's behalf on communicating what their device was ultimately supposed to be.

That is exactly what the Wii U tried to achieve and what the Switch succeeded with.
It just had inherent technological limitations which limited it's mobile range.

Yes, exactly! Tried to achieve. The phrase "Tried to Achieve" implies that it failed to incorporate the functions of two devices. That would make it not a hybrid, in the same sense that a flying device that failed to fly is not a plane. 

 If I bought a washer with a dryer function and it failed to dry my clothes, it would be classed as a washer only.

Yes, that's exactly my point. Wii U fails in it's portability functions on so many levels. It can't play the vast majority of Nintendo's portable IPs. It can't be taken outside of the house, which is the main point of a portable game system. I don't care if Wii U kind of sort of let's you play on the go. That's the same thing as a washer/dryer combo kind of sort of drying my clothes, but still leaving them damp. Wii U gets classified as a home console for the same reason our hypothetical washer/dryer combo gets classified as a washer. 

The Switch is absolutely a rubbish device for a fixed home-console, but a terrific portable one, but we still classify it as a Hybrid.
The WiiU is a rubbish portable console... And arguably a rubbish fixed console later in it's lifespan from a hardware perspective.

Switch is a better home console than Wii U. Switch as gotten a great many AAA PS4/XB1 games like Dragonball FighterZ, Witcher 3, Divinity, DragonQuest 11 etc. Despite the fact that both Wii U, and Switch will have spent the majority of their lives as contemporary to the PS4/XB1, Wii U has almost zero AAA XB1/PS4 games in its library. Hell, Switch arguably has a better library of AAA games than XB1! If I were to take my PS4 library, cut out the PS4 exclusives, and add in XB1 exclusives it would be smaller than my Switch collection. 

You tried to frame the Switch as being unique with this feature, which it certainly is not.

No I didn't. You simply misread me there. 

That not all Switch devices are hybrids.

So what? Not all Vita devices are portable. We have Vita TV after all. But that won't cause anybody to declare that Vita isn't a portable. 

Imagine the following argument... 

Man A: PS4 isn't a portable, because it can't leave the house. 

Man B: So? Vita TV can't leave the house. By your argument Vita isn't a portable!

The existence of Vita TV has zero bearing on Man A's argument. The existence of Switch Lite has zero bearing on my argument. Both are irrelevant. 

No. The Switch is terrible at being a fixed console, it's underpowered for the task... The portable display tends to hide allot of it's power deficiencies.

That doesn't make any sense. If I'm using Switch in fixed console mode I'm outputting to my TV, not the portable display. So how would the portable display hide it's power deficiencies?

The WiiU released at a time when it was going up against the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, so for that it didn't do to bad, sadly Nintendo released it at a time when we were starting to talk about next-gen consoles, which it fell short of.

Consoles need to be judged according to whatever other consoles they spend the majority of their lives prior to obsoletion next to. For example: PS2 should be judged by comparing it to GameCube and Xbox, since PS3 made it obsolete by November 2006. 

I know you are trying to talk from a hardware perspective, but hardware power is almost always a useless metric for the greatness of a game system. By your argument the OG Gameboy was a bad handheld system, because the GameGear had color screens. 

You do recognize that the WiiU is "pseudo-portable" - Meaning it's a Hybrid of several console approaches. (Fixed and Portable.)

Pseudo means to have the appearance of something, but not actually being the thing it is pretending to be. 

What I would really like is for Nintendo 64 and Gamecube Virtual console on Switch!

Yeah, how Nintendo hasn't managed to just keep the Wii VC up, active and updated is beyond me. At this point you should be able to play 100% of Nintendo owned games on Switch, no problem. Every last Nintendo game from NES to Wii U should at the very least be a digital download title on Switch. The only exception would be things that Nintendo no longer holds the rights to. 



The naming was disastrous. When it comes to Nintendo their “sequel” consoles never sell as good as as their predecessors (NES/SNES, DS/3DS). And of course, the timing. They should’ve either released it one/two years earlier or develop something on pair with PS4 and release it later.



RolStoppable said:
JWeinCom said:

Obviously Super Mario Maker alone wouldn't have singlehandedly saved the Wii U. Wasn't trying to argue that, cause that'd be stupid.  The basic point I was trying to make is this.  If we could think of ways that the Wii U could have sold better (for instance Mario Maker at launch), then we can't claim that the actual sales reflected the full potential of the Wii U concept.  

Of course, the fact that a remake of NSMBU is selling better than Mario Maker 2 does throw a wrench in my logic.  Even as someone who liked NSMBU a lot that surprises me.  

As for Miyamoto, I feel that actually supports my point.  Firstly, I don't he did half bad all things considered.  Mario Maker was a decent hit.  Based on the sales bump from its launch, it contributed towards at least 100,000 Wii U sales. Which isn't bad for a single title.  And, I think it would have been more impactful if the Wii U wasn't already covered in the stench of failure.  Star Fox Zero doesn't seem to have had an impact.  But for two years one hit doesn't seem bad.  Especially since Star Fox was on a short dev cycle and was partially farmed out to another developer.

The bigger issue is this.  Miyamoto got that order in 2014?  Doesn't that kind of scream wtf to you?  Wasn't that the kind of conversation that really should have happened around 2010 at the latest?  Why didn't he have something ready (like Mario Maker) to show off the Gamepad at launch?  Shouldn't some other developers have had similar marching orders (if they did their output doesn't show it)?  

 Maybe all of Nintendo's devs could have been working their hardest to make the Gamepad an attractive concept and it still would have tanked just as bad or even worse.  But since the effort was so obviously bungled, we can't really say how much appeal the concept had.

As for the system seller and smash stuff, it makes sense in my head, but I can't quite make it make sense in writing, so I'm going to have to just concede that for now.

I hope you realize that your basic point makes you look like a Wii U apologist. So what if we can't claim that the Wii U concept reached its full sales potential when it's clear that any reasonable estimate for this hypothetical full potential would still leave the Wii U firmly in failure territory. Using your method of simple yes or no questions, could the Wii U have been a success if it had reached its full sales potential?

Miyamoto got that order in early 2014 because he convinced the board of directors that the 2012/2013 games are sufficient to sell the Wii U. After 2013 had ended with miserable sales, investors were asking about Nintendo's plan for the Wii U going forward and how they intend to communicate the value of the Gamepad, an issue that was apparent to everyone. Miyamoto was the guy who wanted the Gamepad, but it looks like he got caught off-guard when it became necessary to produce real show-off titles; turned out that he didn't have many ideas at all.

Remember, he was the general producer, that's the position within the company that makes the calls which games get greenlit and made. It's not like Miyamoto was limited by any kind of power struggle between the conception of the Wii U and the years after its launch. There absolutely was a concerted effort to make the Wii U sell. There can be discussion about the semantics of which game should released when, but if we keep the big picture in mind, no matter how we arrange the pieces of the puzzle, the result for the Wii U concept is failure. And again, this concept wasn't something totally new; it was evolved from the GC to GBA connectivity, so ideas for game design were dating back to 2002. What was put into Nintendo Land was already most of what Miyamoto and Nintendo's other developers could come up with.

Shiken said:

Seems you either forgot that the WiiU had games like...

(meaningless list)

...Or you have a completely jaded view of what the word "abandoned" means, as those games would not have been there without some kind of active support.  In fact, some would say the WiiU had better 3rd party support in its first year than the Switch did.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/85fcod/the_wii_u_had_46_aaa_third_party_titles_in_its/?utm_source=amp&utm_medium=&utm_content=post_body

I remember why the Wii U had its first software drought right after launch. It's because January/February 2013 titles like Tomb Raider and Dead Space 3 were never in the works for the Wii U; IIRC the Wii U didn't see any new retail release in January/February 2013 and that's not because there was nothing at all coming out for the PS3 and 360. You made the statement that third parties didn't really abandon the Wii U until sales dropped off, but games were already not coming to the Wii U before sales data could have any influence on decisions.

Now you could play the semantics game and say that I am wrong because abandonment requires to be somewhere in the first place, but we are both aware of the context that it's about whether or not low sales were the reason for the bad third party support the Wii U received.

In any case, you'd be better off by looking up which 2013 multiplats didn't release on the Wii U instead of looking up which ones did. The comparison to Switch has no relevance because it is about whether the Wii U's third party support was good and if low hardware sales were the neckbreaker.

No... it's not being a Wii U apologist... The whole point of this topic, and what we were discussing before you joined it, is about Monday morning quarterbacking the Wii U.  Which involves discussing exactly why it failed.  I'm not trying to argue it wasn't a failure, but I think the failure has at least as much to do with bad marketing and software support than it had to do with the appeal or lack thereof of the gamepad.  So... what you're arguing now is kind of irrelevant to what was actually being discussed.  

As for whether or not the Wii U could have been a success if the concept was better realized, I honestly can't really answer that. If you give me a criteria for what you mean by failure, I can probably give you a yes or no answer.  I don't think it would have won its generation or anything, but I think it's possible that it could have at least moved an extra ten million units or so possibly 20.

There were just so many bad decisions made about the Wii U that really had nothing to whatsoever with the Gamepad.  Not just bad decisions, just truly baffling decisions.  For instance, instead of releasing an actual sequel to Wii Sports, making a remake, not including anything from Resort, releasing it digitally only with only two games at launch, and initially offering it with a bizarre rental program.  Wii Fit U somehow being delayed while not adding much content, and again being initially launched digitally through buying a pedometer. The name, showing off only the controller at first, etc etc.  

My opinion is that the Gamepad could have been more appealing.  Unless I were to do some serious market research or invent a time machine, I can't really prove that.  What I think is a pretty obvious fact though is that the situation was fucked up in so many other ways that we can't conclude exactly what the appeal of the Gamepad was based on the overall Wii U sales.  The Gamepad was a quarterback playing behind an offensive line of geriatrics and getting sacked every play.  Maybe the quarterback does totally suck, and would still get sacked every play behind a decent line, but we can't really know.



h2ohno said:
A Wii 2 would have done much better than the Wii U for various reasons. Not having the gamepad would go a long way towards undoing the confusion over whether it was a new console or a peripheral. It would have had much more appeal. Not having the gamepad would also have made the system cheaper.

Not sure if a Wii 2 could match the success the Switch has had the last 3 years or the success of the original Wii, but it would have sold much more than the Wii U, and the technology for a system like the Switch simply didn't exist in 2012.

The other big thing they should have done was make the system more powerful, especially its CPU. There is no excuse for releasing a system with a CPU that weak in 2012. GPU, RAM, and bandwidth should have been improved as well, but the CPU was the biggest problem. The early 3rd party games would have fared much better if the CPU was up to snuff. Even if they still used the PowerPC architecture they should have been able to manage that. And with the money saved on the gamepad there'd be more financial leeway to improve the system's specs.

Wii U's CPU (Espresso) was sacrificed on the altar of backwards compatibility and power consumption. In order for it to natively play Wii games they stuck with the exact same architecture, which dated back to the Gamecube, and in order to keep power use to a minimum they kept its clocks quite low.



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JWeinCom said:
RolStoppable said:

I hope you realize that your basic point makes you look like a Wii U apologist. So what if we can't claim that the Wii U concept reached its full sales potential when it's clear that any reasonable estimate for this hypothetical full potential would still leave the Wii U firmly in failure territory. Using your method of simple yes or no questions, could the Wii U have been a success if it had reached its full sales potential?

Miyamoto got that order in early 2014 because he convinced the board of directors that the 2012/2013 games are sufficient to sell the Wii U. After 2013 had ended with miserable sales, investors were asking about Nintendo's plan for the Wii U going forward and how they intend to communicate the value of the Gamepad, an issue that was apparent to everyone. Miyamoto was the guy who wanted the Gamepad, but it looks like he got caught off-guard when it became necessary to produce real show-off titles; turned out that he didn't have many ideas at all.

Remember, he was the general producer, that's the position within the company that makes the calls which games get greenlit and made. It's not like Miyamoto was limited by any kind of power struggle between the conception of the Wii U and the years after its launch. There absolutely was a concerted effort to make the Wii U sell. There can be discussion about the semantics of which game should released when, but if we keep the big picture in mind, no matter how we arrange the pieces of the puzzle, the result for the Wii U concept is failure. And again, this concept wasn't something totally new; it was evolved from the GC to GBA connectivity, so ideas for game design were dating back to 2002. What was put into Nintendo Land was already most of what Miyamoto and Nintendo's other developers could come up with.

I remember why the Wii U had its first software drought right after launch. It's because January/February 2013 titles like Tomb Raider and Dead Space 3 were never in the works for the Wii U; IIRC the Wii U didn't see any new retail release in January/February 2013 and that's not because there was nothing at all coming out for the PS3 and 360. You made the statement that third parties didn't really abandon the Wii U until sales dropped off, but games were already not coming to the Wii U before sales data could have any influence on decisions.

Now you could play the semantics game and say that I am wrong because abandonment requires to be somewhere in the first place, but we are both aware of the context that it's about whether or not low sales were the reason for the bad third party support the Wii U received.

In any case, you'd be better off by looking up which 2013 multiplats didn't release on the Wii U instead of looking up which ones did. The comparison to Switch has no relevance because it is about whether the Wii U's third party support was good and if low hardware sales were the neckbreaker.

No... it's not being a Wii U apologist... The whole point of this topic, and what we were discussing before you joined it, is about Monday morning quarterbacking the Wii U.  Which involves discussing exactly why it failed.  I'm not trying to argue it wasn't a failure, but I think the failure has at least as much to do with bad marketing and software support than it had to do with the appeal or lack thereof of the gamepad.  So... what you're arguing now is kind of irrelevant to what was actually being discussed.  

As for whether or not the Wii U could have been a success if the concept was better realized, I honestly can't really answer that. If you give me a criteria for what you mean by failure, I can probably give you a yes or no answer.  I don't think it would have won its generation or anything, but I think it's possible that it could have at least moved an extra ten million units or so possibly 20.

There were just so many bad decisions made about the Wii U that really had nothing to whatsoever with the Gamepad.  Not just bad decisions, just truly baffling decisions.  For instance, instead of releasing an actual sequel to Wii Sports, making a remake, not including anything from Resort, releasing it digitally only with only two games at launch, and initially offering it with a bizarre rental program.  Wii Fit U somehow being delayed while not adding much content, and again being initially launched digitally through buying a pedometer. The name, showing off only the controller at first, etc etc.  

My opinion is that the Gamepad could have been more appealing.  Unless I were to do some serious market research or invent a time machine, I can't really prove that.  What I think is a pretty obvious fact though is that the situation was fucked up in so many other ways that we can't conclude exactly what the appeal of the Gamepad was based on the overall Wii U sales.  The Gamepad was a quarterback playing behind an offensive line of geriatrics and getting sacked every play.  Maybe the quarterback does totally suck, and would still get sacked every play behind a decent line, but we can't really know.

You mention that the Wii U could have done better if the concept was realized. But, going back to something Rol said, the Wii U had it's "Proof of concept" game and it was Nintendo Land. That showed everything Nintendo could have done with the Wii U and it was even bundled in with the system. But it never created the same effect the Wii had. If anything, the Wii U's initial sales were all on the back of New Super Mario Bros U which had a 60% attach rate. Customers were never interested in the gamepad.

This also ignores the other problems it brought that wouldn't have been there had the Gamepad been there. It would have driven the cost down as they didn't have to have the tablet controller. Also, developers may have been more willing to port games as they didn't have to worry about the Gamepad. Even if the system had games that realized it's potential (if it had any at all), it doesn't account for the fact that it created new problems that a Wii HD wouldn't have had. 

This is an aside, but it was clear that Nintendo didn't plan to try and "realize the potential." Nintendo had a bad habit of making a few games with the concept and then letting developers figure the rest out. Latter Wii games didn't require motion control. The Wii Motion Plus was only used for Wii Sports Resort and Skyward Sword (not even a Star Fox game which made the most sense). The DS had this problem as well but it was helped by the fact the 3DS was a direct successor to the DS and used the same gimmick. Most likely Nintendo would have made the Gamepad and then let third parties do the rest. Problem was they weren't interested. This is why Miyamoto had to be told to make games that use it despite to anyone on the outside it would be obvious (why made a stupid tablet if you weren't going to use it).

I think trying to blame it on other things (such as marketing) is trying to make excuses for the obvious problem (which is why Rol is saying you sound like an apologist). Think of it this way. The XBox One was considered a failure and it sold about 40 million units. The Wii U sold only 13 million. Even had better games came early in the system's lifespan and tripled sales, it would still be sitting at only 39 million. And, as anyone in this thread expects, these changes would have never tripled sales. The Wii U was endemic of the rot within Nintendo at the time and a lot of that centers around the Gamepad. It was a bad idea and it tainted the console in more ways then one. It was never going to be salvaged. 



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RolStoppable said:
JWeinCom said:

No... it's not being a Wii U apologist... The whole point of this topic, and what we were discussing before you joined it, is about Monday morning quarterbacking the Wii U.  Which involves discussing exactly why it failed.  I'm not trying to argue it wasn't a failure, but I think the failure has at least as much to do with bad marketing and software support than it had to do with the appeal or lack thereof of the gamepad.  So... what you're arguing now is kind of irrelevant to what was actually being discussed.  

As for whether or not the Wii U could have been a success if the concept was better realized, I honestly can't really answer that. If you give me a criteria for what you mean by failure, I can probably give you a yes or no answer.  I don't think it would have won its generation or anything, but I think it's possible that it could have at least moved an extra ten million units or so possibly 20.

There were just so many bad decisions made about the Wii U that really had nothing to whatsoever with the Gamepad.  Not just bad decisions, just truly baffling decisions.  For instance, instead of releasing an actual sequel to Wii Sports, making a remake, not including anything from Resort, releasing it digitally only with only two games at launch, and initially offering it with a bizarre rental program.  Wii Fit U somehow being delayed while not adding much content, and again being initially launched digitally through buying a pedometer. The name, showing off only the controller at first, etc etc.  

My opinion is that the Gamepad could have been more appealing.  Unless I were to do some serious market research or invent a time machine, I can't really prove that.  What I think is a pretty obvious fact though is that the situation was fucked up in so many other ways that we can't conclude exactly what the appeal of the Gamepad was based on the overall Wii U sales.  The Gamepad was a quarterback playing behind an offensive line of geriatrics and getting sacked every play.  Maybe the quarterback does totally suck, and would still get sacked every play behind a decent line, but we can't really know.

Your answer to my question is sufficient. 10-20m extra translates to a clear "no" because that's a bad total both relative to the size of the console market's size at the time and in comparison to its predecessor.

If we stick with the NFL analogy, head coach Miyamoto was starting their third string QB despite their first two being healthy. That the high profile receiver Wii Sports didn't play is because it made no sense to start him when the first QB was being benched; it's well-known that there's no good chemistry between QB3 and WR Wii Sports because they are never on the same page. The O-line consists of Nintendo's long-running IPs like Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros., 2D Mario, 3D Mario, The Legend of Zelda. Nintendo is using the same O-line for Switch, at times just enhanced ports of them. It's not the O-line that is failing the QB, it's the other way around. Simply put, the Gamepad is the type of QB that makes everyone around him worse. Nintendo found new skill position players in Splatoon and Super Mario Maker, but they figured they would perform even better with a competent QB.

The controller is the central piece of a console. It's what people see and figure that is how the games for the console in question are played, it's that self-explanatory even for people who have never bought any consoles. Assigning the QB position to the controller in an NFL analogy makes sense because the QB directs the game. You have freedom to assign the various Nintendo IPs to any other position, so it doesn't have to be like I described it above. In the mid-2010s people wondered if it's even possible for Nintendo to recover, but what they didn't realize is that there wasn't all that much that Nintendo had to change in order to become very successful again. Team owner Nintendo sacked head coach Miyamoto, the QB was sent into the desert and suddenly the whole team performed significantly better again despite not many pieces on the team being changed.

If Nintendo made a Wii 2 (so a console with improved motion controllers), then Wii Sports 3 would have been a logical game to make. But the Wii U had the Gamepad (so no motion controller), so it was logical to not make Wii Sports 3. A whole bunch of bad decisions regarding the Wii U can be traced back to the Gamepad. Software lineup, marketing message, target demographics.

Here's a suggestion for another analogy: The Gamepad is Donald J. Trump. Maybe he does totally suck, maybe it just so happens that he gets bad advice from this staff all the time. We can't really know. So I say vote for Trump in 2020.

If you'd consider that a failure, then sure.  It would have still failed.  I never really argued otherwise, so fine.

You do realize the point of an analogy is to explain a concept via a simple comparison... not to make it hopelessly obtuse?  

But whatever, let's compare those players.

Switch gets Breath of the Wild on day one, which is a brand new ambitious take on the franchise heralded by many as one of the greatest games of all time.  Wii U gets a remake of Windwaker about a year in, a remake of the worst selling 3D entry in the franchise.

Switch gets Mario Odyssey for its first holiday.  Again an ambitious new entry to the franchise.  97 metacritic.  Super Mario 3D World is an expansion of the formula on the 3DS, adding little beyond multiplayer.  Metacritic 93.  And the game is developed by EAD Tokyo's main team rather than the secondary team.

The Wii Fit Team released a slightly modded version of Wii Fit.  And released it first digitally for some reason.  At least 75% of the content is pulled directly from Wii Fit U.  And for some utterly bizarre reason some of the activities from Wii Fit Plus were pulled.  For Switch we get Ring Fit which is a fresh concept with new content and is certainly more ambitious than Wii Fit Plus +.  

They're pulling from the same franchises, but whereas the Switch is getting new and ambitious entries, the Wii U is getting mildly upgraded ports, remakes, and unambitious entries, Switch is getting new and creative titles.  And there's no reason based on the controllers that they couldn't have put these games on the Wii U.  Just happened that way due to various factors completely unrelated to the Gamepad.

Then there's also timing.  If we want really want to stick to the football analogy, Switch had its star players at the beginning of the season.  1-2 Switch, Breath of the Wild, Odyssey, Splatoon 2, Mario Kart 8, ARMS, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Fire Emblem Warriors,  Kirby, Mario/Rabbids, Pokken year one.  

In contrast Wii U's year one first party output consisted of Nintendo Land, NSMBU, a Karaoke game, Lego City Undercover sort of (also on Switch year one), Mario and Sonic at the Olympics, Wind Waker, Pikmin, and Wonderful 101.  Clearly, one of these lineups is much stronger than the other.

Year 2?  Switch gets Pokemon Let's Go, Mario Tennis, Tropical Freeze, Octopath Traveller, Bayonetta, Hyrule Warriors, Smash, and Mario Party.

Wii U gets, Mario Kart 8, Wii Fit U (digital only I believe), Tropical Freeze, Hyrule Warriors, and Smash.  

Whereas the Switch was able to take advantage of players acquired in the last season from day 1, Gamepad didn't get most of these players till halfway through the season or later.  By the time they got Splatoon, they were out of the playoffs, Breath of the Wild came on the field for the kneel down.  The Gamepad posed no obstacle for these titles being on the Wii U, and the Switch hardware didn't really do much to make them possible, with the exception of 1-2 Switch. 

Not to mention the droughts.  From the launch of the Wii U, there was not a single major first party release (unless you want to count Lego City, which I wouldn't) until either 6 months later with Game and Wario, or 9 months later with Pikmin.  That's insane, and again doesn't seem to have any logical connection to the Gamepad.  Any momentum dies off, and press goes from bad to worse.

The Switch was able to plug gaps with Wii U titles, but that's not because of any intrinsic advantage of the Switch's hardware.  It's just a result of better planning, and Nintendo just happening to have first party titles that never saw much of an audience lying around.  That's a huge benefit to the Switch.

As far as Wii Sports goes, I have no idea what you're on about.  Whether or not it made sense (the Wii U has Wii-mote support, and I can easily think of a few sports that could have incorporated the Gamepad) Nintendo did in fact try to launch a Wii Sports product on the Wii U.  They chose to do so in an insanely bizarre way, by launching it in piece meal, launch it digitally only, ignoring everything from Resort, charging 10 dollars for a single game, and trying to sell it via 24 hour rentals.  

This is kind of the same point all over again.  Would Wii Sports Club have failed regardless?  Maybe.  We can only speculate that point.  Would it have had a better chance of success if it was released in a sensible manner?  I'm pretty confident that's a yes. 

So, back to the actual point.  The Gamepad was potentially the issue causing most of Wii U's problems.  Another potential issue is that the entries in respective franchises were just better on the Switch.  Another possible explanation is massive software droughts caused, at least according to Nintendo, by difficulty in adapting to HD, poor software planning overall, and the need to support the 3DS as well, none of which are the fault of the Gamepad.  The console's name and confusing marketing is another potential cause. There are also other potential causes we didn't address.

Of these possible factors, there's no way to say for sure which was the main culprit.  When all of these potential fuck ups happen at once, it's hard to isolate any one cause.  I've acknowledged that I have my opinion, but that's just based on my intuition and interpretation. 

On the other hand, if I understand you correctly, you're claiming you've managed to identify the Gamepad as the main if not sole culprit.  How can you have possibly determined this?

Last edited by JWeinCom - on 03 January 2020

VideoGameAccountant said:
JWeinCom said:

No... it's not being a Wii U apologist... The whole point of this topic, and what we were discussing before you joined it, is about Monday morning quarterbacking the Wii U.  Which involves discussing exactly why it failed.  I'm not trying to argue it wasn't a failure, but I think the failure has at least as much to do with bad marketing and software support than it had to do with the appeal or lack thereof of the gamepad.  So... what you're arguing now is kind of irrelevant to what was actually being discussed.  

As for whether or not the Wii U could have been a success if the concept was better realized, I honestly can't really answer that. If you give me a criteria for what you mean by failure, I can probably give you a yes or no answer.  I don't think it would have won its generation or anything, but I think it's possible that it could have at least moved an extra ten million units or so possibly 20.

There were just so many bad decisions made about the Wii U that really had nothing to whatsoever with the Gamepad.  Not just bad decisions, just truly baffling decisions.  For instance, instead of releasing an actual sequel to Wii Sports, making a remake, not including anything from Resort, releasing it digitally only with only two games at launch, and initially offering it with a bizarre rental program.  Wii Fit U somehow being delayed while not adding much content, and again being initially launched digitally through buying a pedometer. The name, showing off only the controller at first, etc etc.  

My opinion is that the Gamepad could have been more appealing.  Unless I were to do some serious market research or invent a time machine, I can't really prove that.  What I think is a pretty obvious fact though is that the situation was fucked up in so many other ways that we can't conclude exactly what the appeal of the Gamepad was based on the overall Wii U sales.  The Gamepad was a quarterback playing behind an offensive line of geriatrics and getting sacked every play.  Maybe the quarterback does totally suck, and would still get sacked every play behind a decent line, but we can't really know.

You mention that the Wii U could have done better if the concept was realized. But, going back to something Rol said, the Wii U had it's "Proof of concept" game and it was Nintendo Land. That showed everything Nintendo could have done with the Wii U and it was even bundled in with the system. But it never created the same effect the Wii had. If anything, the Wii U's initial sales were all on the back of New Super Mario Bros U which had a 60% attach rate. Customers were never interested in the gamepad.

This also ignores the other problems it brought that wouldn't have been there had the Gamepad been there. It would have driven the cost down as they didn't have to have the tablet controller. Also, developers may have been more willing to port games as they didn't have to worry about the Gamepad. Even if the system had games that realized it's potential (if it had any at all), it doesn't account for the fact that it created new problems that a Wii HD wouldn't have had. 

This is an aside, but it was clear that Nintendo didn't plan to try and "realize the potential." Nintendo had a bad habit of making a few games with the concept and then letting developers figure the rest out. Latter Wii games didn't require motion control. The Wii Motion Plus was only used for Wii Sports Resort and Skyward Sword (not even a Star Fox game which made the most sense). The DS had this problem as well but it was helped by the fact the 3DS was a direct successor to the DS and used the same gimmick. Most likely Nintendo would have made the Gamepad and then let third parties do the rest. Problem was they weren't interested. This is why Miyamoto had to be told to make games that use it despite to anyone on the outside it would be obvious (why made a stupid tablet if you weren't going to use it).

I think trying to blame it on other things (such as marketing) is trying to make excuses for the obvious problem (which is why Rol is saying you sound like an apologist). Think of it this way. The XBox One was considered a failure and it sold about 40 million units. The Wii U sold only 13 million. Even had better games came early in the system's lifespan and tripled sales, it would still be sitting at only 39 million. And, as anyone in this thread expects, these changes would have never tripled sales. The Wii U was endemic of the rot within Nintendo at the time and a lot of that centers around the Gamepad. It was a bad idea and it tainted the console in more ways then one. It was never going to be salvaged. 

Couple of problems with this...

First off, Nintendo Land didn't show off everything that could be done with the system.  No one game is going to show everything that the system can do.  It showed off the basics, and served as an intro to how to use the controller.

Secondly, if I recall correctly it wasn't exactly bundled with the system.  I'm pretty sure it only game with the Deluxe version of the system.  So, for 50 extra dollars, you could get the game and 24 extra GB of memory.  It wasn't the same as Wii Sports where every person who got the system (at least in the US in the early years) was going to get the game and try it out.  Of course, it also just wasn't as strong as a concept as the Wii-mote was.  Also, New Super Mario Bros U was bundled for a lot of the Wii U's lifespan.  

Even with the DS and the Wii, there were at least a few titles showing off the system's premise.  Nintendogs, Kirby Canvas Curse, Wario Ware, Prime Hunters, Brain Age for example on the DS, and Wario Ware, Mario Kart (a lot of people played with tilt controls), Metroid Prime 3, Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Wii Play, Wii Sports Resort, Mario Party, and even Twilight Princess for the Wii.  Motion Plus was an add on which is a whole different issue.  Add ons are very rarely useful outside of a few games, and they fracture the audience. 

The question is whether there were no real games using the Wii U concept because the Gamepad concept just sucked, or because there was some miscommunication, or if the concept was introduced to developers too late in the cycle, or whatever else.  I wasn't there so I don't know.  Personally, when the Wii U came out I thought up a lot of cool ideas that I hoped materialized and never really did, or did too late.  So, I'm inclined to think that if things were managed better they could have come up with more games that supported the Gamepad well.  But, that's just my opinion. 

As for the rest, I'm pretty sure I never said that the Gamepad was an amazing idea that would have certainly sold 100 million if done right.  I just think it could have done a lot better.  If you think 40 million is a failure, then sure it probably would have been a failure regardless.  All I've been saying is that it I think it could have done significantly better than it did.  



Jumpin said:

Actually, sales DO matter on profit when you have a company the size of Nintendo with billions of USD cost in annual expenses which include salary, taxation, operating expenses, corporate expenses, utilities/machinery/travel/property, licensing, R&D, marketing, etc. Most of which was dedicated to their home console business, not handheld. It happened that handheld generated many times more revenue and was able to prop up the company while the home console business failed.

For example, Nintendo's R&D for their home console business alone in 2004 was 180M USD (of a total of 191M USD that year), Gamecube cost 99$USD at retail, and sold 3.92M for the year - R&D alone is valued at HALF of the total Gamecube hardware revenue.

Sorry, Gamecube was nowhere near profitable.

They recouped allot of the Gamecube hardware R&D costs when they released the Wii which used the same hardware base.

AMD now covers allot of the R&D expense for chip design for consoles these days as well, no longer does it make sense for Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft to get chips designed from the ground up.

h2ohno said:
The other big thing they should have done was make the system more powerful, especially its CPU. There is no excuse for releasing a system with a CPU that weak in 2012. GPU, RAM, and bandwidth should have been improved as well, but the CPU was the biggest problem. The early 3rd party games would have fared much better if the CPU was up to snuff. Even if they still used the PowerPC architecture they should have been able to manage that. And with the money saved on the gamepad there'd be more financial leeway to improve the system's specs.

The Wii did have it's Pro's when it came to the CPU though.
Being an out-order-design was a massive efficiency advantage that often goes un-mentioned.

Memory bandwidth was a big big issue, the 12.8GB/s of bandwidth for the system memory is laughable... The eDRAM and eSRAM did help mitigate that somewhat, but it required allot of extra developer effort to make the most of it.

Either way, overall the WiiU was more capable than the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 from a hardware standpoint, not generationaly better however... And the Switch is a big jump in hardware capability even on top of that.

Cerebralbore101 said:

Yes, exactly! Tried to achieve. The phrase "Tried to Achieve" implies that it failed to incorporate the functions of two devices. That would make it not a hybrid, in the same sense that a flying device that failed to fly is not a plane. 

The concept is there, it works, it is just limited, thus it is still a hybrid like the Switch.

Thus a plane "not flying" is not an accurate comparison that backs up your argument.

Cerebralbore101 said:

 If I bought a washer with a dryer function and it failed to dry my clothes, it would be classed as a washer only.

Yes, that's exactly my point. Wii U fails in it's portability functions on so many levels. It can't play the vast majority of Nintendo's portable IPs. It can't be taken outside of the house, which is the main point of a portable game system. I don't care if Wii U kind of sort of let's you play on the go. That's the same thing as a washer/dryer combo kind of sort of drying my clothes, but still leaving them damp. Wii U gets classified as a home console for the same reason our hypothetical washer/dryer combo gets classified as a washer. 

The types of games that run on the device doesn't make it portable or a fixed function... Making that argument entirely redundant.

I can take my WiiU outside and sit on the front lawn with the portable gamepad.

If the WiiU gets classified as a home console, then the Switch gets classified as a portable.

Cerebralbore101 said:

Switch is a better home console than Wii U. Switch as gotten a great many AAA PS4/XB1 games like Dragonball FighterZ, Witcher 3, Divinity, DragonQuest 11 etc. Despite the fact that both Wii U, and Switch will have spent the majority of their lives as contemporary to the PS4/XB1, Wii U has almost zero AAA XB1/PS4 games in its library. Hell, Switch arguably has a better library of AAA games than XB1! If I were to take my PS4 library, cut out the PS4 exclusives, and add in XB1 exclusives it would be smaller than my Switch collection. 

The Switch had better be a better home console, it's using more modern components, with better sales which has resulted in superior developer support.

The ports from the Xbox One and Playstation 4 has been fantastic, but I am not going to pretend that visually FighterZ, Witcher 3, Divinity is going to be the same experience, it's just not.

The WiiU was never going to get the Playstation 4 and Xbox One ports like the Switch, it's hardware feature set just wouldn't allow it, not to mention the sales were non-existent meaning there wasn't a business case for ports to start with.

Cerebralbore101 said:

That not all Switch devices are hybrids.

So what? Not all Vita devices are portable. We have Vita TV after all. But that won't cause anybody to declare that Vita isn't a portable. 

Imagine the following argument... 

Man A: PS4 isn't a portable, because it can't leave the house. 

Man B: So? Vita TV can't leave the house. By your argument Vita isn't a portable!

The existence of Vita TV has zero bearing on Man A's argument. The existence of Switch Lite has zero bearing on my argument. Both are irrelevant. 

The argument would thus become that the Vita TV isn't a portable. Thus not all Vita variants are portable devices.

Same thing with Switch, not all Switch consoles are hybrids.

Cerebralbore101 said:

That doesn't make any sense. If I'm using Switch in fixed console mode I'm outputting to my TV, not the portable display. So how would the portable display hide it's power deficiencies?

It's very simple. Perceived Pixels Per Inch.
The smaller the display, the more difficult it is to discern minute details.

The larger, higher resolution displays tends to show off where the graphics quality of Switch titles falls short, most often it starts with resolution, then draw distances, anti-aliasing, texture filtering and so on.

Which is why in portable mode games can get away with only being 360P/480P where-as if you were to run that same resolution on a 75" TV... It would look like crap.

Cerebralbore101 said:

The WiiU released at a time when it was going up against the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, so for that it didn't do to bad, sadly Nintendo released it at a time when we were starting to talk about next-gen consoles, which it fell short of.

Consoles need to be judged according to whatever other consoles they spend the majority of their lives prior to obsoletion next to. For example: PS2 should be judged by comparing it to GameCube and Xbox, since PS3 made it obsolete by November 2006. 

I know you are trying to talk from a hardware perspective, but hardware power is almost always a useless metric for the greatness of a game system. By your argument the OG Gameboy was a bad handheld system, because the GameGear had color screens. 

And the WiiU was dropped during the 7th gen...

You are right, the Gameboy was a terrible system from a hardware point, that LCD screen wasn't exactly the clearest of displays with significant ghosting and lack of a backlight... But as a Kid, I didn't give a shit, it was still amazing in the 80's.

Cerebralbore101 said:

You do recognize that the WiiU is "pseudo-portable" - Meaning it's a Hybrid of several console approaches. (Fixed and Portable.)

Pseudo means to have the appearance of something, but not actually being the thing it is pretending to be. 

That is one definition.
The other is: "resembling or imitating."

Cerebralbore101 said:

What I would really like is for Nintendo 64 and Gamecube Virtual console on Switch!

Yeah, how Nintendo hasn't managed to just keep the Wii VC up, active and updated is beyond me. At this point you should be able to play 100% of Nintendo owned games on Switch, no problem. Every last Nintendo game from NES to Wii U should at the very least be a digital download title on Switch. The only exception would be things that Nintendo no longer holds the rights to. 

I wouldn't say "no" to compilation cart each for NES/SNES/N64/Gamecube titles either, I am traveling to some of the most remote places of the world where there isn't any internet, so the Switch becomes an off-line only device.

curl-6 said:

Wii U's CPU (Espresso) was sacrificed on the altar of backwards compatibility and power consumption. In order for it to natively play Wii games they stuck with the exact same architecture, which dated back to the Gamecube, and in order to keep power use to a minimum they kept its clocks quite low.

If they clocked the WiiU CPU to around 2.4Ghz, it would have been faster than the Xbox 360 tri-core 3.2Ghz CPU, the in-order-design and lots of cache would have helped tremendously in bolstering IPC.

Still, in saying that... Having such a conservative CPU has meant that porting games to Switch has been a super easy affair, because those ARM cores are far more capable.



--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--

Pemalite said:
curl-6 said:

Wii U's CPU (Espresso) was sacrificed on the altar of backwards compatibility and power consumption. In order for it to natively play Wii games they stuck with the exact same architecture, which dated back to the Gamecube, and in order to keep power use to a minimum they kept its clocks quite low.

If they clocked the WiiU CPU to around 2.4Ghz, it would have been faster than the Xbox 360 tri-core 3.2Ghz CPU, the in-order-design and lots of cache would have helped tremendously in bolstering IPC.

Still, in saying that... Having such a conservative CPU has meant that porting games to Switch has been a super easy affair, because those ARM cores are far more capable.

Yeah, the more CPU-taxing Wii U games like (I assume) BOTW and Hyrule Warriors do run a lot better on Switch. 

What is it that makes the A57s in the Switch better than Espresso, the fact that it's 64-bit versus 32-bit plus superscalar parallelism?

Last edited by curl-6 - on 03 January 2020