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Forums - Nintendo - Would the Wii U be better off as an addon?

 

Well would it...

It would have performed better, financially. 3 25.00%
 
It would have performed b... 0 0%
 
It would have performed b... 1 8.33%
 
It would suck shrooms. 8 66.67%
 
Total:12
Ljink96 on 26 January 2016

Before I present the post, I would like to go over the past. For the record, addons have provided little success for gaming companies in the past. The Sega CD, Turbografx CD, Sega 32X, and of slew of other platforms at least attempted to tout beefed up capabilities with an addon. This was most of the time, not the case especially with the Sega 32X. At least these addons had a clear objective.

Fastforward to at least 2002 where development for the Wii was already underway, Shigeru Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata are collaborating on the Revolution along with many other engineers and designers. Here's where Wii U was actually born. Yup, in 2002 (at least) albeit without a GamePad concept. Miyamoto wanted the Wii to be an HD console. He wanted to go in the direction of the future. However, Iwata had a different plan for Wii. He wanted the revolution to be just that, a revolution in gaming and decided that  HD would better suit a successor. And yeah, that was Wii U.

When the Wii U arrives, people are saying that they thought it was an addon. But obviously, that wasn't true. It had its own conroller, games, and totally new architecture and design. It was a successor!!! However...would it have been better for the Wii U to be an addon? I mean, look. The Wii was already a powerhouse console (in terms of hardware and software sales, not raw power) People still knew the name. If the Wii U was a HD addon, would it have fared better on Nintendo's financial side? The GamePad wouldn't be a $180 factor into the price. The addon would provide HD gaming capability and maybe even a slight upgrade to the OS.

The addon would have been much cheaper and the base console would be in 100 million homes!

But now on to reality, the Wii U brought things to the table that the Wii could never accomplish, even with an addon. The GamePad, a marvelously underused device, Miiverse, Amiibo...it would be too much to manage I think. But I think it would have been enough to edge it out with the PS3 and Xbox360 until 8th gen consoles arrived.

My verdict: Yes, Wii U would have been better off as an addon.

What do you think? I know I didn't hit all the pros and cons of both sides. I'm not biased, I will listen to what you have to say! Please, say a thing!



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Thunderbird77 on 26 January 2016

What kind of question is that? Wii U is a console, an add on is something totally different.



Ljink96 on 26 January 2016
Ka-pi96 said:
I find it hard to imagine how that would even work. Plugging something extra in to the Wii to make it capable of playing newer HD games?

So the games Nintendo released on the Wii U would either be exclusive to this add on (which probably wouldn't do well because addons rarely do), or held back so that they could be played on the regular Wii console too. Wouldn't be surprised if it had even less 3rd party support than the Wii U did in its current form.

Nintendo made a lot of mistakes with the Wii U but I don't think making it an actual console rather than an add on was one of them.

It does sound relatively farfetched. Or even impossible, but it's fun to speculate. Maybe if the Wii utilized something like a USB addon or something? Maybe an attachment for the bottom if development had gotten that far. You can run Wii U games from a USB 2.0 port. Maybe the addon could be like an Apple TV looking device with its own disc slot, ports, etc. The games would be exclusive to the addon but you'd only have to pay for the addon and games with maybe...extra resources coming from the Wii? I don't know.





V-r0cK on 26 January 2016

Nintendo discusses the idea of the Wii U being an add-on as they looked to Sega with the Sega CD and 32X and said "no thanks" lol



Ljink96 on 26 January 2016
Thunderbird77 said:

What kind of question is that? Wii U is a console, an add on is something totally different.

Don't kill the messanger bro. I'm just aware that "so many people"thought the Wii U was an addon and I just wanted to speculate how that would have been done or if it could have been done. It's possible. Probably not reasonable, but possible.





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WoodenPints on 26 January 2016

I think a lot of people to this day still think Wii U is actually an addon :(



Ultrashroomz on 26 January 2016

If anything, making it an add-on would've been worse, especially when we consider how poorly other add-ons did back then, such as the 32X for the Genesis.



"Just for comparison Uncharted 4 was 20x bigger than Splatoon 2. This shows the huge difference between Sony's first-party games and Nintendo's first-party games."

bigtakilla on 26 January 2016
Ljink96 said:

Before I present the post, I would like to go over the past. For the record, addons have provided little success for gaming companies in the past. The Sega CD, Turbografx CD, Sega 32X, and of slew of other platforms at least attempted to tout beefed up capabilities with an addon. This was most of the time, not the case especially with the Sega 32X. At least these addons had a clear objective.

Fastforward to at least 2002 where development for the Wii was already underway, Shigeru Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata are collaborating on the Revolution along with many other engineers and designers. Here's where Wii U was actually born. Yup, in 2002 (at least) albeit without a GamePad concept. Miyamoto wanted the Wii to be an HD console. He wanted to go in the direction of the future. However, Iwata had a different plan for Wii. He wanted the revolution to be just that, a revolution in gaming and decided that  HD would better suit a successor. And yeah, that was Wii U.

When the Wii U arrives, people are saying that they thought it was an addon. But obviously, that wasn't true. It had its own conroller, games, and totally new architecture and design. It was a successor!!! However...would it have been better for the Wii U to be an addon? I mean, look. The Wii was already a powerhouse console (in terms of hardware and software sales, not raw power) People still knew the name. If the Wii U was a HD addon, would it have fared better on Nintendo's financial side? The GamePad wouldn't be a $180 factor into the price. The addon would provide HD gaming capability and maybe even a slight upgrade to the OS.

The addon would have been much cheaper and the base console would be in 100 million homes!

But now on to reality, the Wii U brought things to the table that the Wii could never accomplish, even with an addon. The GamePad, a marvelously underused device, Miiverse, Amiibo...it would be too much to manage I think. But I think it would have been enough to edge it out with the PS3 and Xbox360 until 8th gen consoles arrived.

My verdict: Yes, Wii U would have been better off as an addon.

What do you think? I know I didn't hit all the pros and cons of both sides. I'm not biased, I will listen to what you have to say! Please, say a thing!

I think it's a little more difficult than just making Wii games HD. For instance it would have to have its own optical drive due to the Wii not using Bluray. It would have to have its own video output, being the Wii didn't have a HDMI output. 

Basically as an addon it wouldn't be able to use anything from the Wii, it would just connect to it.





PerturbedKitty on 26 January 2016

what the fuck? NO
wii sales took a shit after the 4th year anyway. the gamepad wasnt going to save it.



bigtakilla on 26 January 2016
PerturbedKitty said:
what the fuck? NO
wii sales took a shit after the 4th year anyway. the gamepad wasnt going to save it.

And their's no way to make the Wii play games in HD. It isn't a small boost in ram/ect like the Sega Cd or 32X, it's an entirely different architecture. Why isn't a bluray player just an add on to a dvd player? Because it doesn't work like that. Different media drives, and different video outputs.