| HylianSwordsman said: And what did you think the moment you saw the Wii controller? Why didn't you think that would stink? You probably did. What did you think the moment you saw the DS? Did you think that one would stink? I hope not, because it did even better. And guess which one the Wii U is more like? The DS. There's no predicting skills here. The Wii U failed for the same reasons the Wii and DS succeeded. Nintendo failed/succeeded to convince people that their latest weird device was the next great way to play games. Why'd they succeed with Wii and DS and not with Wii U? It seems pretty obvious to me that it's marketing. Which do you, as the average consumer, want to buy? The one with the ad with the catchy Japanese music and two Japanese guys bowing to you and saying "Wii would like to play" and people using the controller and having fun playing in a way no one's really seen before, or the one with the dubstep and a few pictures of the console with no illustration of why the controller is special? You knew nothing ahead of time, anymore than you did last generation. The Wii U's problem is mainly marketing, a difficult but not impossible problem to fix. The Xbone's problem is bad PR, a difficult but not impossible problem to fix. PS4 on the other hand is winning due to insane brand power, but not even that will save it if Sony doesn't start delivering on games, otherwise people will drop it like they dropped the Wii as soon as Nintendo stopped bringing the games back in 2011. |
The bolded is a huge lie. Nintendo themselves admits they were trying to make a console that could cater to core gamers as well with Wii U. That was not the audience of the Wii. I don't have time to go find them but I had arguments on this very forum about how Nintendo could not cater to both successfully because the things the core gamers want will make the Wii U unnattractive to the Wii's audience.
During the unveil of the Wii controller and the DS I was not yet a member of this site. I joined as of May 2007.
I would argue that neither Wii U or X1 failed due to marketing. Wii U because they hardly market it and X1 because they spend a ton on it and it's still not moving consoles. Wii U and Xbox One failed because they alienated their previous audience. In the Xbox's case it's previous audience was people whom wanted HD style gaming on the cheap in the US and English speaking nations. Being the most expensive option in the region by 100 dollars pretty much screwed that advantage the 360 had. GamePad raised the cost of the Wii U out of the expanded audience price range and intimidated them with it's bulky, intimidating and unintuitive controller.
