Why did the WiiU fail?

[dark_gh0st_b0y]

Soundwave said:

No I think continuing the Wii brand was entirely the wrong move. Not just the name, the entire concept of the brand ... basically using casual mini-games to sell a platform + some Mario thrown in. 

And yes Wii U did adhere to that formula ... look at it's release list

Nintendo Land, NSMBU, Mario & Sonic Olympics Sochi, Game & Wario, Wii Fit U, Wii Party U, Wii Sports Club, Sing Party, Just Dance ... were all available in year 1 and these are actually sequels to the biggest selling Wii games. Go and actually look at the best selling Wii software .... it's not Zelda or Metroid or Xenoblade or even Animal Crossing. 

Once the mini-game fad burst ... Wii 2/Wii U/Wii Willy Nilly ... they could've called it whatever they wanted. Once people got sick of the whole "shake the controller around like a goof for 2 minutes and play with grandma! Isn't this so much fun!" thing got old and formulaic, Nintendo was fucked with the entire Wii concept no matter what. 

They could've called it Wii 2 or whatever, it wouldn't hav made a difference. 

Thankfully for Switch, they realized this and 1,2 Switch is only a support title and not something that they are making as the main draw. 

you definitely got a good point

while I believe continuing the Wii brand was the right thing to do, they did it all wrong, focused too much on replacing the gold Wii selling point - the Wii-remote - with a huge useless controller, instead of investing on improving the Wii-remote and nunchuck accuracy and features, this way not even people who still love party games liked it

not many people were willing to pay that price for the low-appeal controller, with the hidden option of paying even more for another controller or using the loved but 6-year old controllers...

this caused low sales which is why 3rd parties left shortly, and Nintendo giving up too soon

still, the WiiU is a great console, has a serious quality over quantity library by now, which unfortunately took over 5 years to built