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curl-6 on 21 January 2017
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Soundwave said:
curl-6 said:

I think its a bit of an oversimplification to say that the Wii sold only because of it's motion controls.

Some of its biggest sellers, like New Super Mario Bros Wii (28 million) and Smash Bros Brawl, (13 million) use them barely or not at all.

The Wii had more going for it than just motion controls; it was significantly cheaper than the competition, and in addition to blue ocean titles like Wii Sports/Fit, it provided highly desirable "core" games like the dark Ocarina successor Zelda fans had been waiting for since the N64, an epic 3D Mario widely considered one of the best games ever made, the first 2D Mario on a home console since the SNES, etc.

Success in this industry snowballs. So when things go good ... things go *really* good in this business. 

The Wii U had NSMBU and Smash Bros. and Mario Kart and Wii Fit/Party/Sports even as well. And it was cheaper than a PS4 or XB1 as well. 

That sold like shit. 

Wii is just an outlier to be honest. There's never been a console that had the metoric rise it did, followed by the equally fast meteroic crash that it had. It's a unique situation, it likely will never happen again. 

The market in 2006-2010 was vastly different to the market of 2012 onwards. You can't expect the same strategy to pay off in totally different market situations, that's like expecting a boat to work just as well on land as in the water. Wii was a good read of the market of the mid 2000s, Wii U was a very poor read of the market of the early to mid 2010s.