Arkaign said:
Agreed. :) I want it to do well, and for it to be an affordable device that can get out there more. It's a shame the WiiU sold so poorly. There were a lot of great exclusives on there, but it really needed to hit $199 or so to really stand a chance. Luckily for Nintendo, without the sizable BoM cost that they dealt with on the U, I bet they can pretty much dial in whatever price they want to on the Switch as they go (and like I said, hopefully eventually new models to account for different users, a la 3DS/XL. I want a cheaper console variant, I don't need a screen/battery/dock/etc. Just a box with the basic hardware that has HDMI out and a pro controller and I'm golden. |
I agree with your sentiment that the Wii U deserved better sales. I've had mine since launch day, have a ton of games for it, and never regretted the purchase. However, a $99 pricepoint did nothing to gain ground for the Gamecube. The Wii U could have gotten into the low 20 millions with price cuts perhaps, but then you are talking about Nintendo taking losses on the hardware just to inflate lifetime sales a bit. I think they preferred not to cut off their nose to spite their face. They took what sales they could get at the price they needed to until the Switch was launchable. And at this point, they don't want anyone buying a Wii U, because that's 1 less potential Switch customer, so again no end of life price cut either. It's a shame, yes. But, it was a big picture decision.
I look at the Wii U as an experimental stepping stone to get to the Switch as a viable product. With the gamepad, they were trying to bring the capability of continuing with your console gaming away from the tv all on 1 device, but weren't quite there yet. I remember before the NX speculation/Switch reveal; some people were saying that Nintendo needed to bring out a stop gap console between the dying Wii U and their next gen console since Wii U wasn't likely to last a full gen. What if Wii U was actually the stop-gap console between a dying Wii and the Switch all along?
