Wii U: If You'd Designed the Wii U, How Would You Make it More Appealing as a system/SKU?

[NightDragon83]

fordy said:

NightDragon83 said:
#1: Get rid of that stupid, awkward, clunky tablet controller. This alone would also solve several other problems with the system...

#2: Make it more powerful. Now that there's no expensive tablet required, we can spend a bit more on the inner workings of the console so that it's not a generation behind again.

#3: Design the system so that it doesn't look EXACTLY LIKE THE WII. This will also help to clear up the confusion that still persists among general consumers and casuals who aren't sure if the "Wii U" is just a peripheral for the Wii or not.

#4: Launch the system with games that don't look like Wii games in HD. It's REALLY hard trying to sell a new console to serious gamers when you're charging more money than current gen consoles, and the games you're launching with look WORSE than on current gen consoles.

#5: Change the name. Words cannot describe how stupid the "Wii U" name is, how it sounds, and why anyone thought this was a brilliant idea is still a mystery.

Do all those things, launch the console at $299, give it an online infrastructure that doesn't suck and also doesn't feel like its a generation (or two) behind, and for God sakes give the damn thing more internal storage than what a typical $10 USB thumb drive has these days.

#1 and #2 constitute that Nintendo take a "same old shit" strategy of the other big 2 manufacturers, which I doubt they'd want to get into "Red ocean" strategy, considering what happened the last time that they did that with the GameCube.

#4 is difficult in the fact that Nintendo's IP does not show vast improvements with graphical leaps, due to the character design. That would involve having to make things more "realistic".

#3 and #5 have some merit to them. Some people saw the U stylus from Ubisoft on the Wii and assumed that the Wii U was just a Wii with a bundled stylus. The average consumer doesn't keep track of 3rd party goods, they just assume something on a Nintendo console is Nintendo's doing...

- Well, you gotta admit that Nintendo has their own version of the "same old shit" strategy, where every gen they rely solely on Mario and co. to sell consoles, these days more than ever before.  People buy PlayStations and Xboxes for a variety of reasons that have changed each generation, but with Nintendo it's always Mario and Zelda or bust.

- There was a time when Nintendo's IPs DID in fact display vast improvements and graphical leaps, but that was back when Nintendo actually put out new hardware that was a huge leap over its predecessor and on par with the leading technology of the day.  The jumps from SMB1-3 to SMW, and then to SM64, and then to SSB / Sunshine for example were all huge despite retaining similar art styles and not needing to go for the ultra realistic look.  Now we have Galaxy / 3D World which hardly show any improvements over their predecessors, and the NSMB titles, which all look similar from the DS right on up to the Wii U.