What people dislike about Wii U hardware?

[Otter]

Hardware wise it was relatively expensive whilst being  very dated and the gamepad was simply not a compelling gimmick. Just as the 360/PS3 era was ending Nintendo was playing catch up with a Wii branded HD console but without any of things that made those systems a success like next gen technology, or the promise of a new generation of third party games.

Nor did they have what makes a Nintendo system great; compelling first party titles. Sure its end of life library was pretty solid but getting there took a while and it had the biggest game droughts we've seen in modern console history. Meanwhile the Wii brand was itself dead in the water and considered fad-like.

The Switch took 4 years of Wii U software efforts and repackaged them into portable, sleeker, more technologically exciting package. Targeted Nintendo's core core audience and delivered a really great piece of tech with software support released in quick succession to show it off. If the Wii U launched with Breadth of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 I'm sure it would have sold at least double what it actually did. I can't stress enough that the Switch was also boasting pretty amazing hardware, they could of gone for a more powerful chip but what is in it was still impressive for something so small in 2017. Even on more powerful mobile devices you were simply not going to get something that BOTW running on it because they lacked the dedicated software.

Last edited by Otter - on 05 July 2021