What do you guys think led to the Wii U's failure? Ik this has probably been talked about quite a bit already, but I wanna see your most recent perspective on this.

From my perspective here in the U.S, I think the Wii U failed because it felt too similiar to the Wii which not only left a lot of confusion regarding what the Wii U actually was, but it failed to provide the same hook or gimmick that made stuff like the Wii & Switch successful.

Way too many times during the Wii U era I've seen people who were completely confused about what the Wii U actually was and heard a ton of different (& wrong) stories about what the Wii U was from people. Of course the biggest story I heard was many people thinking it was just a controller add-on for the original Wii, but I've also met a person who thought the Wii U was exclusively a handheld, had many people call the Wii U "a Wii" or a "Wii 2", even have someone completely forget the name calling it the "Wii I" of all things lol. It actually felt rare to find someone who actually truly understood what a Wii U was, which was a next gen console succeeding the Wii. Feel like this was a pretty big part in why the Wii U failed.

Also, even if someone were to understand what the Wii U was, I don't think it's main gimmick was really impressive enough at all for most people to feel the need to spend 300+$ on it. It really felt like it was just marketed as a Wii with a new controller, and many people weren't impressed enough with a second screen gamepad controller. I feel like many people saw through it and realized the gamepad wasn't really that innovative to change the game drastically and offer a completely new experience that you couldn't find elsewhere.

When looking at the Wii, it's gimmick at the time was highly impressive and never really seen before which was motion controls. Motion controls made the Wii seem like you can actually mimic real life sports and other things with real movements in your living room, that gimmick impressed people and many non gamers since its controls were so simple.

When looking at the Switch, the idea of playing full console games on the TV and on the go whenever you want was a great gimmick that impressed many people enough to spend 300+$ on it.

The Wii U however, really did essentially just feel like a Wii with a tablet controller, which didn't change the game enough like those other systems did. I feel like that was the biggest reason the Wii U failed, marketing and a lack of an impressive gimmick that stood out to people.

I see many other people mentioned how the Wii U lacked ambitious games as well which hurt it as well. And I also do believe this to a certain extent, too many Wii U games felt way too safe and didn't push the boundaries like you'd expect for Nintendo's first HD system. Many of these games felt too similar to games you'd find on the 3DS or Wii which shouldn't happen on a system that was leagues ahead of those systems in performance. For example, NSMBU felt way too similar to NSMB DS/Wii/2 for anyone to give much attention or care about the game that much.

And while I believe a game like Mario 3D World is an amazing game, I don't think it shouldve been the Wii U's main 3D Mario game since it felt too safe and similiar to 3D Land on the 3DS. I felt like a unique and ambitous game like Mario odyssey would've definitely generated more waves of interest in the Wii U just seeing Mario in a city with real humans for the first time, or the first time we'd see lyrical music in a Mario game

The awful advertising focusing on the new controller and overly aimed at the casual market is what I think hurt the Wii U the most. The name also wasn't the best, but the Xbox One also had an awful name and sold decently well.

I do wonder how things would have turned out differently if the likes of Splatoon and Super Mario Maker were out at launch to show people how the Gamepad could be used. Nintendo Land was a decent use of the Gamepad for multiplayer, but New Super Mario Bros. U barely did anything with it.

I can only speak for myself. I never really saw the point of the Wii U. It just felt kinda awkward. It didn't quite know what it wanted to be and the main features, second screen and all that, was barely used in a way that it felt truly like something that really enhanced the games. I mean, the fact that almost all heavy hitters from the Wii U got ported over to the single-screen Switch just fine is quite telling, isn't it? Nintendo solved a problem that never existed.

A 12-year-old CPU, a 2008 GPU, a dated and proprietary API, a clunky controller, a high price for an underpowered console, and wretched and confusing marketing. Is it a Wii 2 or a new controller? What is it? A gimmick that could not fully deliver.  Nintendo could not decide what demographic to aim for, which led to bad third-party relations since Nintendo was still taking an old-fashioned approach. Aka, you come to us; we don't come to you, and if we do, do it our way. Nintendo seemed to think PS4/Xbox 720 was further out than they were. Wii U game boxes looked too similar to Wii from the spine—terrible name.

Wii U had good games but Nintendo's marketing only got worse. Not to mention Nintendo's divided attention also developing for 3DS helped create droughts for Wii U. Wii U doesn't have a single reason. It was a comedy of errors.

It was a bad console for a number of reasons, but mainly there was nothing exciting about it.

• No killer apps
• Demo Kiosks did more to highlight how slow it was than anything
• One controller
• Controller was cumbersome
• Overpriced
• Half-baked concepts few people cared about
• Ugly hardware

It was basically the opposite of the Wii and Switch.
Wii and Switch had killer apps at launch: Breath of the Wild and Wii Sports
Wii and Switch were fast, you turned on the console, and it was on. You clicked back into your game, and you were in. No 3-4 minutes of loading for even the simplest games.
Wii had 4 controllers, Switch could play with 8 players via Bluetooth, 12 with WiFi - and everyone gets their own screen.
Wii and Switch had simple and intuitive controllers with greater capabilities and versatility.
Wii and Switch were priced like it was a deal out of the gate.
Wii and Switch had great concepts that tens of millions desperately wanted (remember the E3 stampede?)
Wii and Switch are two of the prettiest gaming consoles ever made.

There was a reason so many were calling the Wii U a stopgap.

The concept of “here’s a separate screen” felt forced.
The concept of “asymmetric gameplay” felt more like an excuse for the hardware limitation of “one actual Wii U controller… but you can hook up your Wii controllers too” than anything that had a revolution cooking behind it - like the motion controls on Wii, the touch screen on DS, or the hybridization on Switch.

“Off screen play!” Yeah… that was tacky. The hardware wasn’t capable of doing that anywhere near adequately. Nintendo didn’t even bother to hook it up to the WiFi networks which at least would have allowed me to play anywhere in my house instead of just the living room… most of the living room, near the back the screen would flicker. But Switch I can take out to my hammock in the summer.

The plus side about Wii U is that it was sandwiched between the Wii/DS and the Switch. That meant it didn’t hurt as much as the Gamecube did, which came after the fall from grace that was the N64. I don’t know. Consoles like that always had at least a few memorable games: Wii U had XCX, which is one of my favourite games of all time… take out Wii Fit (really more of a continuation of Wii) and Earthbound… and Wii Mode (which I regret transferring over), and XCX might be about 90% of my playtime on Wii U. 

It’s interesting how Mario Kart 8 was made for Wii U… but with the Wii U features the game is a C+/B-; but on Switch, everyone with their own screens, up to 12 players local via WiFi, the game becomes the definitive Mario Kart experience, A+/S arguably the best racing game ever made.

I still don't buy what everyone seems to always claim - that people thought it was a $350 controller instead of a new system. I mean maybe some of the Wii audience thought that, the type of people who had never bought a video game system other than a Wii, but anyone who remotely is interested in video games knew that it was the successor system to the Wii. So not understanding that it was a new system is definitely not what let to its horrible sales.

As someone who has owned every Nintendo console other than the Wii U, I can tell you why:

1. Asymmetric gameplay seemed way more awkward than it was interesting.
By making the system have one big massive unique controller, and then everyone else had to have Wii controllers, it seemed like Nintendo wanted it to be primarily a one player system, but oh by the way if you happen to have Wii controllers laying around other people can be like secondary players. It felt like one of those games where one person gets to do most of the play but they tack on a second player who can technically play but barely does anything (I think Mario Galaxy had that, where player 2 could just control the cursor to pick up the little star bits or whatever) but applied to an entire system! Really just an awful idea.

I know Nintendo wanted people to think it was this unique experience and then for the 100 million users who have a Wii you get the benefit of not needing to buy extra controllers like you normally need to with a new system, but instead it came off as a single player system with a big awkward controller where everyone else in multiplayer were second class players.

2. This awkward one-player focused experience costs $100 more than the super fun Wii experience cost. And it was clear the extra cost was due the big awkward single-player controller. So Nintendo was charging a premium for something uninteresting and awkward.

3. No killer app.
Wii sold 100 million because everyone was playing Wii Sports and having a blast and if you didn't have a Wii everyone was like uhh why are you still playing with boring regular controllers, you gotta get a Wii! If you go to someone's house and they had a Wii it was like omg let's play some Wii! And then of course it backed up Wii Sports with a bunch of other fun casual games, as well as some great traditional experience games. Switch launched on the back of the revolutionary BotW, had a great Mario Kart just after launch which while not new was new to most people, followed it up with Mario Odyssey, and plenty more smash hits in the years to come. While both of those systems had main features (motion control, play anywhere) that enticed people, they launched with games everyone had to have and had lots of other great experiences. Wii U...while it no doubt had some good games, can't really think of a single game that stands out or comes off as a system seller.

Nintendo pretty much needs to launch with an amazing Zelda or Mario game, or it needs to have some other unique game at launch that everyone wants to play. Not launching with a fantastic mainline Mario or Zelda game is a guaranteed huge blunder for Nintendo. SNES launched with Super Mario World. N64 launched with Super Mario 64 (but because third parties entirely left Nintendo it barely had any games coming out which is what caused it to have low sales). Gamecube, what do you know, no big impressive must have Mario/Zelda launch game (though Rogue Squadron 2 was incredible) and the system sold really poorly. Wii had Wii Sports and also Twilight Princess but it sold primarily because of word of mouth about Wii Sports. Switch launched with BotW. Switch 2 will no doubt launch with the next 3D Mario game. Looks like the Wii U had a lot of launch games but there was no killer game. Heck it launched with a 2D Mario, and worse, it was the third NSMB game, so it wasn't even a new experience. And from playing that game on Switch, its a pretty mediocre Mario game too. 2D Mario is very popular, but the series is not worthy of a must have launch game and hasn't been since the SNES. You don't buy a brand new system because of a 2D game, especially not one that doesn't even feel new.

Wii U should have launched with Mario 3D World, but even that wouldn't have been enough. It's an incredible game, one of my favorite Mario games, but for years until I finally played it I thought it was just Nintendo being lazy and not wanting to make a full 3D Mario so they went with a 3D Mario game in 2D Mario style gameplay. It wasn't until I bought it just to try it out that I realized how wrong I was. That is not the sort of game that sells systems. And then Wii U didn't even have a Zelda game until the Switch launched, and that game was the killer app for the Switch.

So Wii U had no big Mario/Zelda or unique must have launch game, no system selling Mario game at any point, and no system selling Zelda game until it became the Switch's system seller.

4. The 'hook' of the Wii U - that you could play on the game pad screen when other people were using the TV - only works for people with a busy TV household. This is a complete non-feature for any single person, or for any family that has a separate video game TV and main TV (for example, growing up we had the TV with the video games in the basement, while the main TV was in the family room). So in tons of homes the idea of being able to keep gaming while someone else was using the TV isn't even a problem. That seemed to be the big problem that Nintendo was trying to solve with the Wii U, but it wasn't a problem for probably most people.


Summary:
System was doubly designed around two features that were either awkward or was a solution to a problem that isn't a big problem - awkward one-player focused asymmetric controller setup that nobody wanted, and playing while someone else is using the TV. And you had to pay $100 extra for these two unwanted features compared to Nintendo's previous system. No killer 3D Mario/Zelda launch game. No killer must have game in general.

1. No games. That is an exaggeration, because the games the WiiU had were actually good. But Nintendo got into the same problem with the switch to HD that Sony and Microsoft had: Xbox 360 and PS3 had a slow start because game development exploded in time, so they initially had a very sparse library. Same happened with WiiU, even though they made the transition much later. I remember I bought the WiiU on launch because of the 'launch window' games. Turned out the launch window was actually more than a year, as I got Pikmin 3 only so much later. For a classic launch lineup their announcement seemed good, but it was actually the lineup for a whole year, which was bad.

2. Missing focus. Or maybe bad focus. I never heard Nintendo to put so much focus in marketing on 3rd-parties. How they had designed everything for 3rd-parties. How they had partnerships, even unprecented ones (with EA). Turns out the mythical 3rd-parties abandoned the system pretty much in the first month. With the focus of the WiiU being 3rd-parties this meant the system suddenly had no focus. Compare that to Switch, for which Nintendo mentioned before launch 3rd-party support only at the side and focused on their own games and the abilities of the system. And then the 3rd-parties came afterwards.

maybe I'm being a bit too reductive, though if Nintendo had choosen not to stick with the "Wii" branding (which appealed mostly to the casual base, but they had already long abandoned Nintendo by this point), if Nintendo had set up a far more steady stream of first-party releases (first 12m of Wii U were utterly terrible, only featuring NSMBU, Zombii U, Nintendo Land, and Pikmin 3), if Nintendo hadn't choose such an aggressive pricing model ($350 for Wii U when you could purchase PS4/XBOne for $300 is not a great look), THEN the Wii U may have had a chance. You need to convince consumers that this is a system they NEED! Nintendo failed horribly at conveying this.

Bad marketing and an expensive controller (Great controller imo, just needed condensing).