The WiiU name confusion

[DonFerrari]

Hiku said:

That might be more commonly heard by store employees. People who come on these forums probably don't associate with people who would confuse the two. I can see how it might confuse some parents who go in to buy a new Wii game for their child.
Some stories were going around from store employees about confused customers. Some made signs that explained the difference.



As for how much the WiiU name decreased the sales numbers of the console? I don't think it has affected it much at all.

DonFerrari said:

At others, how would the name generate confusion for WiiU but wasn't a problem on snes/nes (that many wouldn't know standed for super) or master system/Mega Drive or genesis? Or how would they know if x360 or ps3 was better Xbox or ps2 or x1 versus ps4?

Well I think in the case of Super Nintendo, the word indicates a difference in the name a bit more clearly than just one added letter at the end. And back then the game cases were different in shape and size from NES to SNES. While I believe the shape and size of the Wii and Wii U cases are the same, or similar.
Master System and Mega Drive are quite different names, so I don't think it should case any confusion. And as for Playstation 2 to Playstation 3, I think most people are aware that sequels are often branded with an ascending number, and associate it as such.
This is undoubtedly the reason why Microsoft feel they can't name their consoles with a proper numerical order. Because they would always be one number behind Playstation, and sound inferior to some casual buyers.

Hiku... differentiate PS1,2,3,4 apart is easy on that... I'm saying that if the confusion was such a big problem how would the consumer associate that PS1 or N64 or Dreamcast was better? In brazil a lot of people only know of Snes and have no idea it meant Super NES (we mostly got botlegged versions of the console and games for NES), what is better a Master or a Mega system? I think the amount of dumb buyers is really small for that to be the biggest part of the problem... on the parents buying gifts for the kids I agree it can generate some problem on the SW, but when Stores just have the console itself since Wii isn't getting space on shelves anymore I don't think that is influential...

The most I can give for the confusion is that people that don't game, don't inform themselves and wouldn't be able to easily differentiate Wii from WiiU. But that in itself shows they were a bad public to get anyway since they don't care much about gaming and buy a lot less SW than other costumers...