NOTE: The headline of this article is somewhat misleading. I recommend reading the full article; Reggie wasn't saying that the Wii U ONLY failed due to the slow rollout of major exclusives. He points to other factors as well, such as Nintendo Land failing to be the "Wii Sports equivalent" Nintendo wanted it to be.
Posted by MewWeebTwo
10 Comments
I absolutely love Nintendo Land but it’s not the game’s fault.
The underlying gimmick of the Wii Remote is a much easier sell than a second clunky screen at a time when everyone was buying sleek iPads.
Against the context of a terrible name and marketing, it was doomed. Even people I knew who heard if the Wii U didn’t know about Nintendo Land but loved it when they played it
I will always say that the Wii U’s main failure is that it didn’t have any must-have games at launch. If it had launched with something of the calibre of Zelda, 3D Mario or Mario Kart I don’t think any of the other issues with the name or marketing would have been as much of a problem.
People would have seen a brand new game that they really wanted to play and realised that in order to do so they needed to buy this new console. Instead they had a pretty basic party game and a 2D Mario that looked basically the same as the one they already had on the Wii. No wonder it wasn’t obvious that it was a new console.
The marketing killed it. Everyone thought it was a Wii accessory due to most ads only showing the Gamepad. Not everyone was in a rush to buy it as a result.
The name was vague and the casual audience thought it was an expensive accessory, the gamepad was clunky, almost nobody wanted a second screen, the launch games where poor from what i remember but most of all the ui was bloated and slow as hell
Mario Maker needed to be a launch title and then Mario Kart 8 sometime after that. That combined with a better console name and marketing would have really changed things.
Mario Maker would have really sold the second screen concept to the masses.
The wii u failed because Nintendo didn’t donany advertising foe it and thought because the wii was so successful that they didn’t needed it. Fixed the headline.
Well, I don’t want to contradict anyone, but isn’t the Switch 2 in a similar position, yet still selling exceptionally well? While we lack Zelda and 3D Mario titles, we certainly have a wider variety of games available.
To be honest, I don’t believe that was the primary issue. The marketing strategy was simply ineffective. As a Nintendo fan, I was completely unaware of the WiiU until its release. I mistakenly thought it was a new game controller and therefore chose to ignore it for a year.
I still believe that if they had named it Wii 2, it would have sold more, albeit not significantly more. While I adore the Wii, the majority of its buyers were casual gamers who were eager to experiment with the Wiimote’s unique features. Unfortunately, these players won’t be returning for a second generation because they already possess the first one, and the gamepad’s appeal wasn’t sufficient to entice them.
The Switch, on the other hand, executed this strategy flawlessly. Instead of relying solely on a gimmick to generate sales, they focused on their extensive game library. They achieved this by fusing handheld and home consoles, creating a single development pipeline, therefore producing more games. Additionally, they emphasized the convenience factor of “play anywhere, anytime.”
I am a big Nintendo fan but I didn’t get one until very late (and as a gift, I wouldn’t have bought one myself) because there was no games I really needed.
Sure, some looked fun like Mario 3D World, but I also saw them as a step down from previous Mario games (I don’t think this now).
But a lack of Zelda really did it
Wii U failed because your announcement of it was so botched that most people thought it was a Wii peripheral and never bothered to learn more about it after that.
Isn’t it what’s currently happening with switch2?