This i have to agree with.

Lack of identity is what hamstrung the Wii U right out of the gate. If Nintendo wanted to go whole-hog on a red ocean console, they should have. If they wanted to make a proper Wii successor, they should have. This caters to nobody.

It's like the GameCube in a way. In both cases it was clear they wanted to make a console to compete with Sony (and/or Microsoft in the latter case) on their own terms, but old man Yokoi's design philosophy is so embedded in the brains of Nintendo engineers that they just can't bring themselves to make a parallel-competitive console.

You guys disliked the ad because you weren't the target. It was aimed at 12 year olds that like to go to raves with their parents and live in cubes. Amongst those that fall into that demographic, I can assure you that the ad worked very well.

I don't know.  I mean the PS4 commercial I remember showed two guys singing about spending the day together and the Xbox One commercial I remember showed live action and didn't even show Kinect.  Going off of memory, of course.  I'm sure the reality was different. Now Nintendo's ad was horrible but the other two didn't really show much, either.

Somehow the Playstation/Xbox crowd was just more excited and more informed.  I still blame Nintendo because their commercial was shitty but at least the competition showed the "spirit" of their new console.  Not some family friendly, wanna be cool, safe crap.

I think since the PS3, it has been obvious that everytime they change the number its a new model of the system

also in the ps4 uk ad:

they show all the prior versions of the consoles, The new one (ps4), the controller, the console again(ps4), the games it plays, more game it plays, then reiterates that there have been 3 previous editions, and this is the new one "for the players" Even the Xb1's football ad:

No games, but they showed the what the console could do, its controller, the console, and the kinect pretty much the entire time

Meanwhile, in that Wii U ad, I managed to pickout the console in at least 5 shots, only one of them was in focus, and I really could have only picked it out because I was explicitly looking for it. The Wii U console was never in the line of sight.

It is the subtle things that matter.

Playstation has already established that when it adds a new number its a new version, not a peripheral, even though the perfect day commercial was basically like the live action cod commercials, the PS4 logo at the end says "Hey, this is not on PS3, a new console must have come out."

Even though, I think Xbox One is a trite name, MS has made every Xbox logo different, from the green x, to the white circle with the x in it, to the chrome orb with an X on a green or black background.

A new controller is not an sufficient to purport that a new system is launching.

In fact, I think the reason PS4 is dominating right now is because, the only things that give the Wii U and Xbox One their identities are peripherals, gamepad and kinect respectively.

Everything about the PS4 drastically differs from the PS3.

Nintendo's marketing department is just aweful, so disconnected from whats going on in the gaming industry.

I agree. The only time they showed the console was when it was below the TV and its not that clear to see. People must have just thought it was a wii (if they even noticed it) and the wii U was just the tablet.

Looking back, yeah, they could have done waaaay better.

Yeah I don't watch TV that often so when I do I usually never see Wii U ads. But it's also over the internet and in stores as well. I see ads for the Xbox One and PS4 on my sites but never for the Wii U. The same goes for when I walk into electronics stores like Best Buy. They'll have posters about the Xbox One and PS4, but none of the Wii U.

No argument here. I guess that's why you're the doctor and I'm the patient.

No argument here.  I guess that's why you're the RolStoppable and I've stopped rolling.