What should Nintendo have done instead of Wii U?

[JWeinCom]

RolStoppable said:

JWeinCom said:

If you'd consider that a failure, then sure.  It would have still failed.  I never really argued otherwise, so fine.

You do realize the point of an analogy is to explain a concept via a simple comparison... not to make it hopelessly obtuse?  

But whatever, let's compare those players.

Switch gets Breath of the Wild on day one, which is a brand new ambitious take on the franchise heralded by many as one of the greatest games of all time.  Wii U gets a remake of Windwaker about a year in, a remake of the worst selling 3D entry in the franchise.

Switch gets Mario Odyssey for its first holiday.  Again an ambitious new entry to the franchise.  97 metacritic.  Super Mario 3D World is an expansion of the formula on the 3DS, adding little beyond multiplayer.  Metacritic 93.  And the game is developed by EAD Tokyo's main team rather than the secondary team.

The Wii Fit Team released a slightly modded version of Wii Fit.  And released it first digitally for some reason.  At least 75% of the content is pulled directly from Wii Fit U.  And for some utterly bizarre reason some of the activities from Wii Fit Plus were pulled.  For Switch we get Ring Fit which is a fresh concept with new content and is certainly more ambitious than Wii Fit Plus +.  

They're pulling from the same franchises, but whereas the Switch is getting new and ambitious entries, the Wii U is getting mildly upgraded ports, remakes, and unambitious entries, Switch is getting new and creative titles.  And there's no reason based on the controllers that they couldn't have put these games on the Wii U.  Just happened that way due to various factors completely unrelated to the Gamepad.

Then there's also timing.  If we want really want to stick to the football analogy, Switch had its star players at the beginning of the season.  1-2 Switch, Breath of the Wild, Odyssey, Splatoon 2, Mario Kart 8, ARMS, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Fire Emblem Warriors,  Kirby, Mario/Rabbids, Pokken year one.  

In contrast Wii U's year one first party output consisted of Nintendo Land, NSMBU, a Karaoke game, Lego City Undercover sort of (also on Switch year one), Mario and Sonic at the Olympics, Wind Waker, Pikmin, and Wonderful 101.  Clearly, one of these lineups is much stronger than the other.

Year 2?  Switch gets Pokemon Let's Go, Mario Tennis, Tropical Freeze, Octopath Traveller, Bayonetta, Hyrule Warriors, Smash, and Mario Party.

Wii U gets, Mario Kart 8, Wii Fit U (digital only I believe), Tropical Freeze, Hyrule Warriors, and Smash.  

Whereas the Switch was able to take advantage of players acquired in the last season from day 1, Gamepad didn't get most of these players till halfway through the season or later.  By the time they got Splatoon, they were out of the playoffs, Breath of the Wild came on the field for the kneel down.  The Gamepad posed no obstacle for these titles being on the Wii U, and the Switch hardware didn't really do much to make them possible, with the exception of 1-2 Switch. 

Not to mention the droughts.  From the launch of the Wii U, there was not a single major first party release (unless you want to count Lego City, which I wouldn't) until either 6 months later with Game and Wario, or 9 months later with Pikmin.  That's insane, and again doesn't seem to have any logical connection to the Gamepad.  Any momentum dies off, and press goes from bad to worse.

The Switch was able to plug gaps with Wii U titles, but that's not because of any intrinsic advantage of the Switch's hardware.  It's just a result of better planning, and Nintendo just happening to have first party titles that never saw much of an audience lying around.  That's a huge benefit to the Switch.

As far as Wii Sports goes, I have no idea what you're on about.  Whether or not it made sense (the Wii U has Wii-mote support, and I can easily think of a few sports that could have incorporated the Gamepad) Nintendo did in fact try to launch a Wii Sports product on the Wii U.  They chose to do so in an insanely bizarre way, by launching it in piece meal, launch it digitally only, ignoring everything from Resort, charging 10 dollars for a single game, and trying to sell it via 24 hour rentals.  

This is kind of the same point all over again.  Would Wii Sports Club have failed regardless?  Maybe.  We can only speculate that point.  Would it have had a better chance of success if it was released in a sensible manner?  I'm pretty confident that's a yes. 

So, back to the actual point.  The Gamepad was potentially the issue causing most of Wii U's problems.  Another potential issue is that the entries in respective franchises were just better on the Switch.  Another possible explanation is massive software droughts caused, at least according to Nintendo, by difficulty in adapting to HD, poor software planning overall, and the need to support the 3DS as well, none of which are the fault of the Gamepad.  The console's name and confusing marketing is another potential cause. There are also other potential causes we didn't address.

Of these possible factors, there's no way to say for sure which was the main culprit.  When all of these potential fuck ups happen at once, it's hard to isolate any one cause.  I've acknowledged that I have my opinion, but that's just based on my intuition and interpretation. 

On the other hand, if I understand you correctly, you're claiming you've managed to identify the Gamepad as the main if not sole culprit.  How can you have possibly determined this?

No, you don't understand me correctly. The Gamepad is the central visible factor that sank the console and the other main factor for failure that isn't in plain sight is Shigeru Miyamoto. Hence why not only the poor QB had to go in order to right the ship, but the head coach as well.

As I've explained before, Miyamoto made the major calls for the Wii U on both hardware and software. I don't need to go over bizarre software decisions because you've already outlined a bunch of blunders in your own post.

As I've also said before, the Wii U was a repackaging of GameCube ideas. The GC to GBA connectivity allowed up to five screens at once. The Wii U was launched with only one additional screen, but Nintendo planned to have the console support two Gamepads at once eventually. What the GameCube and Wii U also have in common are bizarre software decisions for major first party titles. The Wind Waker's artstyle was highly controversial, Super Mario Sunshine also went in a... unique direction, Mario Kart introduced a core feature that wasn't used ever again, the Donkey Kong platformer was controlled with the bongo controller. And of course, Miyamoto was the general producer at the time and called the shots for overall software development.

This probably raises the question why the Wii could succeed with Miyamoto as general producer, but that's easily explained by Nintendo's business suits calling the direction for hardware and software after the disappointing results of the GameCube. That's why games were made to sell, and decisions were based on historic sales data.

With the Wii's success, there was no financial pressure anymore, so the leash got loosened on Miyamoto. He went straight back to embracing his darling console, the GameCube, so Nintendo's fortunes went south again. Wii Sports Club and it's baffling release strategy is a consequence of Miyamoto not planning a Wii Sports 3 at all. It got put together quickly in light of terrible Wii U sales and it was so urgent to have something available that it was first released in digital pieces. But by the time that Nintendo's business side could react, it was essentially already over for the Wii U.

The GC to GBA connectivity as well as the Gamepad fall into the category of Miyamoto enjoying it to create products that are more toy than game. In hindsight it's undeniable that Miyamoto had not enough good ideas to justify the Gamepad's existence. It was a controller that was put out in hopes that other developers would figure out something great to do with it. It wasn't unlike "games" like Wii Music or the Japan-exclusive Mario Artist series where it was up to the imagination of others (in this case, consumers) to make something worthwhile out of the product.

Anyway, the bottom line is that Nintendo wouldn't have made and launched the Wii U if historic sales data had been considered. The Wii U was a culmination of failed ideas while omitting ideas that had succeeded, whether that concerns the hardware itself or many of the games that were made for it or not made for it.

Nintendo's original plan was to use one Gamepad IIRC.  They announced additional support for another Gamepad, but that was only after pretty significant backlash, and they clearly didn't have any games in the pipeline to use that (although the hardware itself was I think able to support 4 video streams pretty early on).  The idea was similar to the GBA, but a little bit different.  Since the Wii-motes were still supported, the idea was for players 2-5 to use motion controls.  So, in a game like Zelda Adventure Nintendo Land, lesser experienced players can be playing a simpler motion control game whereas the Screen player could be playing something a bit more complex. That's the advantage (in some cases) that it had.  Not only could people have a different screen to use, but also a completely different control style.  I think there was a lot more that could have been done with that concept.  

I'm not going to go into the Miyamoto stuff, because I just don't know much about the behind the scenes stuff.  I'll take your word for it, but I don't think that's all that relevant to the discussion.  I'm more interested in the decisions themselves, and not so much with the person making them.

We seem to be in agreement that there were major issues with software, and at least some of those issues were not due to the Gamepad, and that there were bad business decisions which were also not directly related to the Gamepad, and that the Gamepad itself was problematic to at least some degree.  I would assume we'd also agree that the overall marketing was poor.

The only disagreement is how much of the problem was caused by each factor.  I don't think there's any way to accurately determine that.  Do you?