What should Nintendo have done instead of Wii U?

[JWeinCom]

curl-6 said:

JWeinCom said:

Star Fox Zero was too little too late.  Xenoblade X and Splatoon basically displayed a minimap IIRC.  And let you super jump which was easily remapped to the dpad for the second game. 

The real potential was in multiplayer as in Nintendoland, which is why they bundled it with the system.  But, then they didn't have anything else using it in that way.

Even Nintendoland was not a killer app though, and didn't stop sales plummeting soon after launch, so I think it's pretty safe to say the whole Gamepad concept was just a largely unwanted one.

No, it's really not safe to say that.  It's safe to say that as it was presented, marketed, and supported, it was unwanted, but beyond that it's speculation.  The fact that a single game was not sufficient to sell the concept doesn't mean the concept couldn't have been successful. Let's say for instance that instead of New Super Mario Bros U, the Wii U launched with Super Mario Maker, which was actually a concept that to a much larger extent showed off the Gamepad, albeit not in the same way as Nintendoland, instead of launching it when the Wii U was already dead.  In this scenario, do you think the Wii U would have sold better?