What should Nintendo have done instead of Wii U?

[d21lewis]

RolStoppable said:

Shiken said:
All they really needed to do was name it something else and deliver more system sellers at the same caliber as BotW, Mario Odyssey, and Fire Emblem Three houses. Also a better ad campaign would have gone a long way as well. 3rd parties really did not abandon it till sales dropped off (didn't take long), so I like to think it still would have gotten decent support if Nintendo did not lean too much on the Wii namesake and gave more system sellers.

The WiiU had some great games, but lacked a decent number of huge system selling titles.

That's plain wrong. Before the Wii U launched, more than 75% of the upcoming multiplatform games for the PS3 and 360 were not announced for the Wii U.

d21lewis said:
I've only read the first 25 or so posts. I disagree with few things.
-I don't think the Wii U was a GameCube 2. The Gamecube was a "normal" console with powerful hardware and decent third party support. The Wii U was a bit of a mess. I just don't know any other way to say it.

-Some people say they should have just stuck to the Wii route. I also disagree. While awesome at the time and still improved upon to this day, the motion control trend was on the decline. Nintendo couldn't have known this while developing the Wii U. Hell, Microsoft banked everything on Kinect as well. People just preferred what already worked.

-As for re-purchasing VC games, you actually kinda did. You just got a super discount. I think games were like $1.50 if you already had them on the Wii. Wii Ware was free, though.

Hindsight is 20/20 they say but I just don't know what Nintendo could have done. I just know that (while I personally really enjoyed the Wii U) releasing a console that was less capable than 8 year old machines already on the market was a bad idea. Releasing at a higher price point was a bad idea. Naming it after a brand that was already fading or left a bad taste in people's mouths was a bad idea. Letting 3rd parties carry your launch lineup was a mistake.

Reads like a response to my post from early in the thread.

1. That's how you choose to remember the GameCube, but its decent third party support began to fall apart in 2003 already, hence why more and more multiplatform games were only on the PS2 and Xbox. If you look at the extended timeframe of the past 15+ years and how Nintendo consoles got shafted by third parties, it should become apparent that being a "normal" console or not doesn't really matter. The Gamepad was not an alien controller; after all, it had the same sticks and buttons as other consoles, so it can't count as an excuse to forego ports. Look at Switch and begin to wonder why certain third parties aren't making use of the myriad of options to put games on the system despite Switch selling so well. The three major options are exclusives, multiplats and ports of older games. The latter sidesteps any concerns about processing power because Switch is more powerful than older consoles and can bank on the historically proven fact that people buy old games again when they can be played on the go.

2. You don't like the Wii, that isn't lost on me either. The thing is that the Wii doesn't belong in the same category as Kinect because the Wii was far more than motion controls. For example, Mario Kart and Super Mario Bros. aren't big sellers because of motion controls, they always sell.

3. You could play all of your VC games from the Wii on the Wii U at no extra cost through backwards compatibility. You only paid a small fee if you didn't want to use BC.

4. Switch could be called less capable than the Wii U for its time (Switch is notably weaker than even the original XB1), but that isn't hurting Switch. Likewise, the price isn't a big factor either. Think of the GameCube which was sold for $100 three years after its launch; that still didn't help because the real problems were elsewhere. Naming something after a successful product isn't a problem as long as the new product honors what people liked about the original product; but that's where the Wii U went wrong and upended the table. You get full marks for your last sentence though.

In closing, by now you should know that you are usually out of sync with the market when it comes to what is good about Nintendo consoles. I can understand why it is offputting to you that somebody suggests that Nintendo should have done something that you wouldn't like, but if you think about it for a minute, that might just be what can make Nintendo successful.

I guess the things you said are the things that stood out. Didn't pay attention to who wrote it. I'll reply one by one, though:

1. I agree with you. Even when the GameCube got ports of PS2/XB games, they were often missing content. Often the GC port was waaay after the other versions. GC was still my go to for multiplats until it died. I said decent 3rd party support. No argument about Nintendo getting the shaft from 3rd parties, either. BUT this post isn't about the entire history of Nintendo. It's about the Wii U. The Wii U came out 8 years after the Xbox 360 and couldn't even run games as well. The Wii U didn't even have N64 level support after the first year. It launched with games like Mass Effect 3 for $60 when other consoles were getting ME1-3 for (if I remember correctly) the same price or less. I loved the Gamepad. It was still too expensive and underutilized, though. The Gamepad "gimmick" did more harm than good. 

2. I loved the Wii. Not my least favorite Nintendo console (that honor belongs to the N64) but many people just purchased it for the motion controls and when they got bored with that, they moved in. Not even sure how you got that impression. SM Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3 were amongst my favorite games of the generation. It's a gaming machine. I like gaming. Nintendo is my favorite gaming company. Seriously. Wtf?

3. Yeah. I forgot about that. You could play them in "Wii Mode". To play them without switching to Wii Mode cost $1.50 each or something like that.

4. You keep talking about the Switch in a Wii U conversation. The Switch is a different beast. The Switch offers a feature that people love and thus, people buy it. The Wii offered a feature that people loved and thus, people bought it. The Wii U offered a feature that people didn't love. The Wii U offered ports of the exact same games that people could buy on other devices for cheaper. The Wii U cost more than those other consoles and ran those games even worse than the other consoles. That's a problem.

It did offer some really good exclusives, though. That just wasn't enough.

-In closing, there isn't a Nintendo console that I haven't purchased. They're my favorite console maker/game company. I stick by them through thick and thin. I've bought everything they've made since 1996 on day one except for the Wii because I couldn't find one no matter how hard I tried. I think you have me confused with someone else. I just said that I have no idea what they should have done. I just pointed out some things that I thought were mistakes. Nobody's suggestions offend me. It's not that serious.

*Edit* As for the part about Kinect: The Kinect was wildly successful for Microsoft and Xbox 360. The sales made the Xbox 360 actually sell better than the PS3 for the year--the only time that happened since the PS3 launched. With the Xbox One, Microsoft banked on lighting striking again but this time the audience wasn't there. Microsoft themselves didn't have compelling software for their own mandatory accessory.

The Wii U did a similar thing. Yes, they didn't have games like Wii Sports for the casual fan but they still banked on the Wii name. They still marketed it like a family console. They still emphasized a "gimmick" (for lack of a better word) over hardware power. This time, it didn't work. Yes, it worked for the Switch a few years later but again, this time it was a gimmick that people wanted.

--I went back and looked at your suggestions. I have no problem with any of them, actually. I just didn't remember any of them when I made my post. Not sure if any of them would have turned the tied, though.

Last edited by d21lewis - on 01 January 2020