| Jumpin said: My main issue with the Wii U is that it was bad hardware and somewhat half-baked feeling of it and its OS. The OS was sluggish to the point that it was painful to use. Miiverse was a good idea, poor implementation. You could only hook up one Gamepad that had limited range - the whole "asymmetric gameplay" thing was contrived, no one wanted games like that, and no developer wanted to make games like that. I don't even know what to make of the Wii U eShop: first of all, it was a complete mess, second, the Wii VC didn't work on it, you had to literally go into "emulator mode" and even then, it was not available on the Gamepad at first, and later you still couldn't use Gamepad controls, you had to use a Wii remote - which was utter crap. Of course! You could get around all this with a simple upgrade fee... but the fee wasn't even the problem... the problem was that they only allowed this with a select few games - again, utter crap. Why did no one want to play it? First of all, unlike the Wii, anyone who came over to play it did NOT have a good time. One Gamepad. From a consumer perspective, the Gamepad looks cumbersome and slow... and then when you test it and actually see how sluggish the Wii U OS is, it's not possible to be left with a good impression. The Wii was sleek, fast, and fun. You had 4 Wii remotes, and even in games (like WarioWare) where you passed around a Wii remote between 8 people, it was FUN. I also find this is why the Switch is much more successful, it has that slick/sleek feeling of the Wii. Anyway, good write up! I enjoyed the read. |
I had "Wii friends" over (meaning casuals that were Wii owners) and they had a blast with Nintendo Land. That's a decent game as far as mini-game compilations go. In fact there was so much laughter that we got a noise complaint from a neighbour.
Smartphones just killed the Wii U, not that the games weren't fun. Once causals got a taste of free gaming in the much more stylish Apple form factor/ecosystem and the whole "waggle is different!" novelty wore off, that audience just collapsed. None of the people I invited over bought a Wii U, even though they all raved about how fun it was to play it.
Casuals are "casual" for a reason ... they only want to play maybe 4-5 hours tops a week. Video games aren't that big of a deal to them. The problem became when your phone/tablet is capable of filling that 4-5 hours of gaming/week easily and for free with thousands of casual titles, then really what do you need a Wii or Wii U or Wii 2 or Wii Z or Wii X or whatever for. You don't. Certainly not for $50 a game.
Switch is largely having success because its a core gaming device that has brings core style gaming anywhere, any time. Something like 75% of Switch owners also own a PS4 or XB1 according to the NPD for example, and things like Labo and 1,2 Switch are not the top selling games (or even close).
Last edited by Soundwave - on 28 November 2018
