What people dislike about Wii U hardware?

[Leynos]

Mandalore76 said:

JRPGfan said:

Gamepad alone probably doubled the price of the thing.
If it had launched with a normal controller, they could have halved the price of the unit.
Resulting in much more sales overall (imo).

The gamepad was bulky, heavy, and not optimal to use (most people resorting to buying a pro controller for it, to game with).
And in the games were they really tried to take advantage of the gamepad, the games suffered for it.
(starfox comes to mind)

Anyways, bad sales caused Nintendo to pull developement early on, so there was game droughts, that just made the issue worse.
So it wasnt all just hardware's fault. It was a spiral of alot of things going wrong.

People that say it was just "marketing" are wrong however.
Nintendo brand is so big (so many loyal fans), that even with horrible marketing, if they put out a good device it will sell reguardless.
For people to not buy the Wii U, it was apparent that it wasnt a great product.

It came out, near the end of the gen, and was basically just upto par with the others on the market (that had been out for along time, and was soon moveing on). Soon PS4/XB1 launched, and that took alot of the hype away. At that point it was clear, the Wii U was old gen tech.

Hence another reason I think Nintendo purposefully launches their consoles, mid-gen, away from its competitors.
And why it changed its hardware to be differnt, so it would avoid direct compairsions.

Still, the poor marketing has to take some of the blame.  The Nintendo Switch is a spectacular device, but Nintendo made sure that everyone knew about it by paying for the company's first ever Super Bowl ad.  They didn't just put it out and hope people would notice.  With the Wii U, the marketing and messaging was so bad, that they actually had to put out an ad trying to explain what the thing was... a year after the console had been released!  I don't remember seeing any aggressive TV advertising for the Wii U until it had already been labeled a flop.  The Wii U needed a viral marketing campaign like the "Wii would like to Play" ads. 

And it would have been so simple too.  Just do the same ad where the Nintendo execs show up at your door and say "Wii would like U to play".  Then show off some clips a player using the Gamepad while other players used the screen.  Highlight experiences unique to the Gamepad like the Mario Hide & Seek mini game in Nintendo Land as a draw for kids, and then designing your own hot routes at the line of scrimmage in Madden 13 as a lure for the more hardcore gamers.  And state it very clearly that the system is the successor to the Wii.  It could have been done well and done right, but it wasn't.  

Wii would like to play with U

Wii will Wii Will Rock U (1 minute games showcase as the song plays with matching Wii and U text on screen)

Wii play our way. U play yours. (as it shows the tablet and Wii remotes in multiplayer games reel)

Seriously it's like Nintendo didn't even try. There are so many ways to have word play in marketing for it.

Last edited by Leynos - on 08 July 2021