Mr Puggsly said:
The success Wii had a was a bubble, for the most part that audience is gone. While the core gamers that flocked to PS360 are still buying consoles. You're right, there is a lack of innovation in Wii U's software and that may be a reason the console failed. But again, if Wii U stuck with the Wiimote, it would have performed better. Due to lower price and more interesting controls than gamepad with a screen. |
That's an oversimplification at best. By the same logic, would we say the PS2 was a failure cause it's successor saw a huge drop off? Oddly enough, nobody makes this claim, or claims that the N64 was a failure because of the Gamecube, or that the DS was a failure because the 3DS dropped off, or the PSP was a failure because the Vita dropped off. This logic seems to only get used for the Wii to Wii U transition, because it fits the narrative that many people already had in their head.
If one product successfully sells 100 million units, selling consistently through 5 years, and its successor sells 20 million, the more logical conclusion is that the successor kind of sucks... which it did.
The Wii U uses a very complicated looking controller and focussed mostly on more core games. Nintendo's two biggest casual franchises were released as minor upgrades over their predecessors, and both were launched digitally so they had no shelf presence. Even the launch software, Nintendo Land, really wasn't all that casual. Each minigame (except maybe Mario Chase and Balloon Trip) were more complex than the Wii Sports minigames by several orders of magnitude. Even comments by Miyamoto and Iwata distanced Nintendo from casual gaming.
This just wasn't a casual system. It may have been designed with that in mind at first, but the games lineup just doesn't bear that out.
It's like if I own a pizza place, that is successful for five years. People love my pizza. On the sixth year, I change the menu to entirely burgers, with one burger being a pizza burger. If my customers all left, you wouldn't go "oh you see, the people didn't really like pizza". You'd probably say, "those dumbasses should have probably kept selling pizza".
I try selling burgers for about three years, but it's not working. So I announce that I'm changing the menu once again. If I change my menu back to pizza, will those pizza loving customers come back? Maybe. It could be that they found a better pizza place, or all went on diets and stopped eating pizza entirely. But, I think there's a good chance that I could regain a good portion of them if I start making awesome pizza again.
