What should Nintendo have done instead of Wii U?

[The_Liquid_Laser]

The Switch is my second favorite system of all time and it could end up being the first depending on how the next few years go.  Having said that, I would prefer an alternate reality where the Switch may never have existed.  Nintendo should have made a "Super Wii" instead of the Wii U.  They should have doubled down on the direction they were heading with the Wii.

Basically this means more motion controls and fitness games.  It means more emphasis on the Virtual Console and smaller digital only games.  It means more focus on old school 2D games.  They ditch the gamepad and bundle in motion+ controls instead.  Launch price would be $250.  Modifications to the Wii U game library would look like this:

New Games
Super Wii Sports Resort (bundled at launch), Super Wii Fit, Super Excitetruck, Arms, Ring Fit Adventure (these last 2 would be released a generation earlier)

Games to Keep
Anything that uses motion controls, is 2D or embraces the old school feel:
Mario Kart 8, Smash Bros. 4, DK Tropical Freeze, NSMB (U) (this should be more polished though), Mario Maker, BotW, Hyrule Warriors, etc....

Games that Would Never Have Been Made
3D games that fit the N64 & Gamecube philosophy: Super Mario 3D Land, Captain Toad, Nintendo Land, Pikmin 3, etc....

Virtual Console/eShop
Nintendo keeps expanding this.  They add more games to the Virtual Console (NES, SNES, N64, etc...), and they start doing Indie Directs a generation earlier.  They also release a few games like Snipperclips and Boxboy as digital only and promote them.

This is the direction that Nintendo should have taken.  And the fact is that if they had kept in this direction, they would have ended up with a ton more third party games on the Super Wii as well.  Would they have gotten AAA games like GTA5?  No.  But all the third party devs that came out for the Wii would have come back for the Super Wii.  Just Dance would have sold better.  Other games would have gotten more complex.  Yesterday's Boom Blox could have evolved into a River City Ransom type game with motion controls.  

The thing about the Super Wii is that it could have been the modern Super NES.  I love the NES, but most people like the Super NES better, because it took the best NES games and made them even better: longer, more complex, better graphics and more polish.  Most people prefer Link to the Past and Super Metroid to their predecessors, not realizing how vital the NES versions were to making these games happen.  Well, that was also the potential of a Super Wii, complex and more polished motion control games like we had never seen before.

As much as I love the Switch, I think a Super Wii would have been better for gaming.  Gaming, as a whole, is getting stale.  Motion controls brought the promise of a whole new type of game, and a whole new customer base that would fund these new types of games.  That is exactly what gaming needed (and still needs).  However the Wii U sabotaged this new customer base and motion control games.  I long for what could have been.