AngryLittleAlchemist said:
Hate to be that guy but, the "Wii U is a confusing name and it doomed the console to be seen as a peripheral" has always stood as a pretty bad argument in my opinion. I mean for one, names really don't matter that much. If enough people buy a console initially and it gets a lot of buzz, people are going to find out it's a brand spanking new machine whether or not they were initially confused. And early adopters are almost always enthusiasts, so assuming sales would have continued to be decent after the Wii U's initial launch month (where Wii U was only like, 120k behind the Switch), casuals would have become informed one way or another. People weren't even this confused when the idea of "generations" was literally new to much of the American gaming audience - you can find plenty of news reports about how parents felt they were being "ripped off" for having to buy a "new Nintendo", because they didn't understand why they'd have to buy a similar product. Yet they still ended up buying a SNES. So parents not even in the know, who didn't have access to the internet, and were in an environment where gaming wasn't as big as it is nowadays, still got the message that it was atleast a product worth purchasing one way or another. None of that is to say that the Wii U name did the console favors, but like, it's certainly not the #1 reason that console failed, it's probably not even a big reason to be honest. Nobody uses this argument for systems that had names that, in a vacuum, were just as odd ... such as Xbox 360. I don't think a lot of people even use it for the Vita, despite the fact that you could easily apply the same argument (calling the PS Vita the PSP2 instead of Vita, calling Wii U the Wii 2 instead of Wii U). Even if we wanted to argue people confused the Wii U as a peripheral and not a successor, it wouldn't be because of the name, it would be because of Nintendo's terrible E3 2011 reveal where all they show is the controller being used like an extra accessory (and even then, how much of the potential audience, casuals included, were watching E3 2011?). It feels pretty revisionist to be honest. Like a way of saying if not for this one major mistake, the Wii U would at least be somewhat competitive. Not saying that everytime this is brought up that's the point that's trying to be put across, but I certainly don't think it's that helpful of a point to bring up to begin with. If anything the Xbox Series X naming conventions are much more confusing to someone not in the know and, that console will sell way more than the Wii U. |
Okay, I'm not going to read that wall of text considering you started off with an outlandish claim that the name confusion is a bad argument for its bad performance. It absolutely was CRIPPLED by the name. There were TONS of people that didn't even know it was a new console. And not just casuals. For example, my best friend growing up is a HUGE gamer (PC, Xbox, Nintendo) and he had NO idea it was a console (he thought it was just a controller upgrade to the Wii). This is a hardcore gamer, like the guy who games in his basement for 8 hours a day and drinks mountain dew kind of gamer, and HE was ignorant about it. He was more of a gamer than most gamers were that I knew, and he didn't know.
