The Wii U was a combination of too many mistakes to the point where it would have been insanely difficult for Nintendo to manage to save it.
- The marketing was fucking awful. Some of the marketing they actually did have were just down right cringy as well.
- The whole selling point of the system was supposed to be the Gamepad, but yet barely any games used the damn thing in interesting ways or even big ways as part of a game. Remember how Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze literally just had the gamepad screen as a black screen that didn't even show anything?
- A huge ass first year drought where for months there was nothing new releasing on it outside of maybe 1 or 2 games.
- The messaging was so off point about what the Wii U was from the beginning that a lot of people honestly thought it was just a add-on for the original Wii.
- The name of the system. I personally didn't think the name Wii U was that bad, but they could have done better to differentiate it more from the original Wii.
- It seems like the controller was so expensive to the point where Nintendo put themselves in a bad situation with it and couldn't do some of the things they originally wanted to with it. Remember how originally people were gonna be able to buy more than one gamepad? That never panned out unless you bought another Wii U system.
- The cost of the gamepad seemed to also continue to be a problem since I would guess that's why they weren't able to drop the console's price to try to bring up sales without taking a loss. It was an expensive thing to produce, an integral part of the system and selling point, that they didn't even know what to do with and they couldn't just drop it.
I know that companies can take years in advance to think of and design a new system, but the Wii U just seemed like something that wasn't well thought out enough imo considering all the problems it had.
