I knew it wouldn't sell like the Wii because the GamePad controller looked just as complicated as the PS3 and 360's controller except with a HUGE screen in the middle.

But I didn't expect it to sell like this.

I still want to know how Nintendo did their market research for the GamePad controller. It does seem to appeal to the Japanese gamers who like hand-held gaming more than console.

Frankly, yes.

I pretty much called it from the beginning. I was baffled after their E3 2011 presentation, and I was fimrly convinced it would fail. Everything from the pricing, marketing, hardware, competition, third-party support, and design screamed that this wouldn't work even then, and basically all of those panned out as I expected.

Not flop, but I did maintain that it would do considerably worse than the Wii. I did not expect it to perform like it has though.

I'm not trying to be facetious here, but I'm honestly curious as to why people are so surprised. Was it that the Wii was doing so well, and people thought the casual audience would stick around? Or did people just have more faith in the Nintendo brand that they thought it wouldn't turn out this way?

that might be for the best. Cause those were wonky

I was taken in at the beginning, I'd seen the E3 demos and believed it may have a high power cpu and decent graphics. I expected it to do well. Then the info started leaking about weak spec and the hardware being no where close to performing like those E3 demos. Then came the info about the gpu being 352 gflops when there were rumours before that it was 600 gflops or more. Anyway expectations just went lower and lower and I realised we were back in a wii situation of a console approximately a generation behind in performance. Then saw the games which were frankly weaker than 360 and PS3 and I wondered if there was a market for it when it couldn't compete with regards multiformat games etc and much of the casual game market was now phones and tablets.

So yes I expected success when I thought it was a reasonable spec console but then turned to expecting failure when I realised it was another scam attempt by Nintendo to sell ridiculously underpowered hardware at high prices though. I still bought one and didn't regret it because I love Nintendo games but I also felt like Nintendo see their customers as something to exploit and rip off.

So peversely I'm glad Nintendo got a good kicking with the wii u. Frankly its not a good console and was never, ever worth the launch price.

Since that time more information has been revealed about the very low performance memory in wii u and the gpu only being 176gflops at 550mhz and the cpu at 1.25ghz.

I just hope Nintendo have learned their lesson and their next generation console will be a fair spec at a fair price with dare I say it third party support. Back to the days of Snes, N64 and Gamecube when NIntendo hardware was competitive and had some important hardware advantages.

Moderated,

-Mr Khan

its as you said the Wii did so well. Surely some of those people who bought it would ahve been interested in the follow up? I knew the casuauls wouldnt stick around but maybe some of those casuals became full fedged gamers. I gutess the brand itself is weaker than even I thought

I thought it was going to sell like pancakes ,if you think it is the only console with free online, backwards compatibility, a "new way to play" and has the word "Wii" on it wich i thought it was going to attract lots of casuals.

At least that is how people who owns it sees it i think, the truth is that it is a 6 year old hardware sold for 300 bucks (350 first), with no third party support and "the new way to play" is a very heavy controller with a second screen that only helps making this old hardware console more expensive.

if this is what you feel why keep supporting them?

I remember not having any sort of clue how it would be received, TBH. That it would depend entirely on how well Nintendo marketed and designed games around the Gamepad. But I never expected it to sell as badly as it did even in my worst-case expectations.