Nintendo's Conflicting Hardware and Software Philosophies

[Soundwave]

Purple said:

Soundwave said:
The Wii was never a repeatable formula. That was the problem all along.

The whole concept doesn't work unless you have a NEW incredible type of gimmick/hook to sell the system and Nintendo's R&D failed to supply it (and to be fair, to ask them to replicate that every 5-6 years is unfair, even Apple is having a hard time finding something new with the same impact as the iPod > iPhone > iPad run they've had).

There's no doubt Nintendo were trying to repeat it though. You don't put in a controller that makes up 33% of the total cost of the console unless you have a very good reason. (And I'm guessing here, but a lot of the Wii U's best tech is streaming related, so R&D for it wouldn't have been cheap).

I wonder if EAD just realised there was nothing revolutionary they could do with it from day one. The fact we haven't seen any gamepad features for upcoming games makes me think it may just be an off-tv play accessory from here on out.

The gamepad was probably the best new gimmick/hook that they could come up with. 

The vitality sensor apparently fizzled out in development. Maybe they pondering virtual reality for a while, but that was probably an easy no as it doesn't fit with Nintendo's idea of a "happy, engaged" family room (one person locked off into their own little world in a helmet) and would be far more expensive than the Game Pad even. 

They probably figured people like the touchscreen on the DS and casuals seem to be able to deal with that just fine, so lets build a system around that as the new hook. Maybe it'll save the Japanese console market too. 

A lot of these decisions were probably made around 2010 as well, back before the iPad/tablet revolution had really impacted the full market.