Remember when the Wii U was aiming for the "core gamer"?

[javi741]

Tbh it's always been way too late for Nintendo for more core gamers to take seriously as a primary platform for all your mature 3rd party games.

Even if Nintendo were to make a console that's exactly like a PS5 in terms of specs and gets great 3rd party support and great online, I feel like most gamers still wouldn't trust Nintendo enough to leave Xbox & Playstation for Nintendo when it comes to having it as their primary platform for online 3rd party games, Nintendo has refused to compete with that market for way too long for them to try to change their image to work successfully.

Nintendo tried this somewhat with the Gamecube as well, had a system more capable than PS2, developer friendly now opting to use CDs instead of cartridges, and did try to get more 3rd party mature support with exclusives from Capcom like RE4 and others.
The problem is though all of Nintendo's attempts at this always felt lackluster, Nintendo still refused to pursue 3rd parties with the Gamecube at launch, had a console that looked childish in comparision to the others with bright colors. The Wii U was an even more pathetic attempt.

Now its to the point where Nintendo can't ever directly compete with PS/Xbox in that market cause nobody will trust them as being a direct replacement after all the years of refusing to get 3rd party games, high specs, and good online.

However, that's fine. Clearly as the Switch's success has shown they don't need to compete, in fact are better off doing their own thing, it makes them stand out more and less competition since they're so unique that PS/Xbox gamers will get a Switch for a different experience. Having your system also not be defined by its 3rd party games also helps Nintendo's bottom line since their games will be the forefront of their system with the least amount of competition, increasing first party sales which is much more profitable than 3rd party sales, and it's probably the main logic why Nintendo hasn't been very agressive in getting 3rd party support all these years.

But yea looking back at the Wii U's launch seeing Nintendo so confident that they were gonna bring the hardcore gamers back with a console that had an overclocked Gamecube CPU and last gen ports that ran worse was laughable, literally after one year virtually all 3rd parties left the Wii U as there was nothing but 1st party games.
The funniest thing about it to was that I remember Nintendo fans hyping up Devil's Third as the mature 3rd party exclusive that would prove the Wii U to be legit but it ended up getting like a 40 on Metacritic lmao, I swear the Wii U just seemed to fail at everything that gen lol