Looking back at why the Wii U failed

[JackHandy]

As always, so much attention is paid to the X's and O's of the situation, which makes sense. When something goes wrong, it's only natural to try to focus on that sort of thing. But over the course of the past few decades, I've noticed that in the console industry, it's really less about what you're offering, and more about getting people to think that what you're offering is what they want. Because think about it, how often does a console explode out of the gates because of some sort of objectively good decision? Are any of you old enough to remember the Wii, pre-launch? Everyone was laughing their asses off. None of us thought it would sell. All of us thought it was close to, if not the dumbest idea in the history of the industry... and then look what happened. Same could be said for the Switch. No, it wasn't quite as severe, but most of us were like, well, there goes Nintendo. lol

The reason the Wii-U failed was more about people at that time just being convinced that the other options were better. Whether that's marketing, some sort of bad luck, timing, or whatever... who knows. But the games on that system were great, and the sales of the Switch ports prove it. It just failed because people weren't convinced it was the right console to own.