Opinion: Wii U’s Failure Had Little To Do With The Gamepad.

[JackHandy]

You are correct ;)

With gaming, the reasons people give for the success and failure of consoles are usually wrong. Or they're failing to tell the whole story. In this case, the main reason why Wii-U failed was timing. Wii kids were still kids, just older. And when you hit that in-between age, you tend to want something a little... well... grown up. As gamers, we all know most of that is BS, that a great game is a great game etc. But not at a certain age. And this is why the Switch mainly exploded (and why suddenly, all those Wii-U titles that nobody wanted became best-sellers). The kids that were raised on Wii were suddenly in college, or out of high school, far enough away from their own faulty pathology, and with some of their own money to boot. It wasn't the form factor, although that did play a role. It was the timing. It's always about the timing. Always.

Also, if a console can pick up the "thing to own" moniker out of the gates, it's pretty much set in stone to succeed. People love to be cool. They need to be cool and accepted by their peers and society. So as soon as something becomes that, forget about it. The rest can just go take a lunch. It's over.