My main issue with the Wii U is that it was bad hardware and somewhat half-baked feeling of it and its OS. The OS was sluggish to the point that it was painful to use. Miiverse was a good idea, poor implementation. You could only hook up one Gamepad that had limited range - the whole "asymmetric gameplay" thing was contrived, no one wanted games like that, and no developer wanted to make games like that. I don't even know what to make of the Wii U eShop: first of all, it was a complete mess, second, the Wii VC didn't work on it, you had to literally go into "emulator mode" and even then, it was not available on the Gamepad at first, and later you still couldn't use Gamepad controls, you had to use a Wii remote - which was utter crap. Of course! You could get around all this with a simple upgrade fee... but the fee wasn't even the problem... the problem was that they only allowed this with a select few games - again, utter crap.
Why did no one want to play it? First of all, unlike the Wii, anyone who came over to play it did NOT have a good time. One Gamepad.
From a consumer perspective, the Gamepad looks cumbersome and slow... and then when you test it and actually see how sluggish the Wii U OS is, it's not possible to be left with a good impression.
The Wii was sleek, fast, and fun. You had 4 Wii remotes, and even in games (like WarioWare) where you passed around a Wii remote between 8 people, it was FUN. I also find this is why the Switch is much more successful, it has that slick/sleek feeling of the Wii.
Anyway, good write up! I enjoyed the read.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
