By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Nuvendil on 04 April 2016
Edit Thread
Megaoverlord12 said:
Nuvendil said:

Indeed.  Too bad the Wii U was never marketed as a whole worth anything.  I feel 100% confident it could have blown right by the Gamecube and been on its way to N64 numbers.  And if that had happened it would have more than one hat in this ring probably.  MK8 would have easily passed 10mil and Smash could add a few mil as well.  Shame. 

I to this day wonder what would have happened if the Wii U was in development for another year to reach rough technical parity with the XB1/PS4, or at the very least have more than New Super and Nintendo Land at launch. While marketing would have helped, I don't think anything could have saved the Wii U's disastrous launch due to complete lack of exclusives at launch that anybody cared about.

I think it could have.  The launch lineup was still serviceable.  And they had numerous chances.  2013's holiday they had Super Mario 3D World but they didn't bundle it and their advertising was repulsively bad.  After E3 2014, there was a ton of positivity surrounding the Wii U, all Nintendo had to do was strike while the iron was hot.  People were paying attention but they still didn't go as hard as they should have.  2014 was really their bigger chance:  MS and Sony had no exclusive heavy hitters coming, the Big Three of the year (Destiny, Watch Dogs, and Titanfall) didn't go over nearly was well as many hoped.  If they had bundles Smash, marketed the system itself hard, and had some great deals they would have had a real chance success.  But they didn't bundle ANY of their games from 2014 after MK8.  And there were no ads for the system showing off the backlog at any point in 2014.  And don't get me started on their absurd stubbornness about sticking to that $299 price.  It should have been $250 for Holiday 2014 and dropped to that price permanently when Splatoon launched.  Their marketing screwups are numerous and systematically undercut all their marketing successes.  No hardware improvements can save a poorly marketed product.

But I do feel a LOT (as in nearly all) the Wii U's problems stem from a rush to market in order to get the drop on Sony and MS.  I mean the gamepad is one of my favorite controllers but it SCREAMS early design.  With a year of time it could have been streamlined into a much better looking and more comfortable form that would have gone over so much better and freed up some cost to be allocated to hardware specs.  Also, losing F-Zero for the launch was a huge blow; it would have provided a much needed showpiece.  As it stands, the Wii U didn't have a true showpiece until Mario Kart 8.