At the time of its release, the manner on how it they’d marketed that was confusing as they showcased the Wii U gamepad as if its a portable console (its not) since its rather the main controller for the Wii U console. I was in high school when the console was first revealed, my reaction to that was “WTF?” as I thought the gamepad was portable, as the ads often flex that it can be (or the way they showed it came off as that).
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I think the name was confusing, but it really only exasperated more fundamental issues. The product wasn’t that appealing for most people.
The gamepad was a cool trick, but ultimately not being portable made it seem sorta pointless? I mean, that’s cool that you can play it while someone else watches TV. But all the nifty ideas around asymmetric multiplayer or supplemental touchscreen controls/displays just come across as gimmicks.The gamepad was big and clunky and near permanently paired to one system.
Third party support was never strong there, and the bits that were withdrew almost immediately. Nintendo themselves were struggling to out games out quickly, with the transition to HD, plus their studios’ attention divided into making 3DS games.
The system was no powerhouse, so by the time other next-gen consoles released, it looked left behind. Unlike the Wii or the Switch, it didn’t have an especially compelling gimmick or pricepoint to make up for that.
(I say this as a Nintendo nerd that had and loved the Wii U, just my impressions of how others perceived it.)
I think the name was bad, but I also don’t think its failure is as simple as just that.
It’s a commercial flop. Console didn’t sold enough, compared to it’s predecessor Wii, and the other consoles. Even the XBOX One sold 4 times than Wii U. Let this sink in. And having only a few consoles in the wild also means, less software is sold. The original XBOX sold 24 million and that is even almost twice as much as the Wii U.
- XBOX sold 24 million
- Wii sold 101.63 million
- Wii U sold 13.56 million
- XBOX One sold 58 million
- Playstation 4 sold 117.2 million
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles
IMHO it wasnt the name. The Wii was succesful because of the motion controls. Gaming was seen as a thing for kids, ugly nerds and couch potatoes. Probably still is to a certain degree but 20 years ago gaming acceptance was in whole different spot in the normie mindset compared to today. Nintendo was able to capture the non-gaming audience because they made gaming look active. Be it physically with the Wiis motion controls or these “mind jogging” games or whatever the fuck they were called on the DS. My mother bought a Wii back then… for herself. Wii Sports and that balance board thingy was her jam. She used that thing for a decade to stay fit. The mother of a friend had a DS which was used exclusivly by her for those puzzle/math games. Normies had Wii parties where they played Wii Sport together and bragged about the sore muscles they got the next day at work.
Yeah, well and then came a new box with a shitty Ipad as the main gimmick? While the normies started to play on their phone/tablet or just moved on to do something entirely different like idk joining a book club or nordic walking. Because the Wii was never about the games for them. At the same time they couldnt catch the core gamers attention because the Wii U could barely surpass the performance of the previous gen while the Xbox One and PS4 were on the horizon.
Because it didn’t sell well.
Usually the thing that’s mentioned as a big marketing mistake is the name.
If you were already looking into it you’d probably know it was a new console. But to casual gaming enthusiasts (and those were a huge part of the wii/DS success), or to people that just didn’t follow Nintendo news closely, it really wasn’t clear.
Some believed “Wii U” was just a new attachment for a wii, or just a new wii edition, rather than an actual different console with about halfway gen7-8 capabilities.
They did the exact same mistakes with the "3"DS and only survived a very rocky launch with a quick repricing and a lot more marketing. Wii U never really recovered.
Yeah, I was (and am) a pretty avid gamer and I didn’t know that it wasn’t just a tablet for the Wii until years later when it came up on some podcast where they were like “yeah, doesn’t help that everyone just thought it was a new accessory for the Wii”. A large number of other kids that I knew had Wiis. I never knew anyone who even mentioned the Wii U irl.
I’m also just now finding out that the 3DS apparently wasn’t just the newest DS model like the DS->DSi? lol
3DS was a new system and significantly more powerful than DS.
You can see it mostly on what 3D games on DS look like in comparison, they were generally very limited. Of course 3DS had a rather low resolution (though already higher than DS), but it could do a lot more. Roughly, imagine going from N64 to Gamecube or Wii visually.
3DS also had a few specific abilities, obviously stereoscopic 3D, but also an analog stick (of sort, but still making a huge difference), console to console passive communication (street pass), NFC reader, and motion sensing (surprisingly great for aiming, made shooting in Zelda games a breeze).
3DS actually had its own new model with the “new 3DS” (that name… they never learn).
This one was mostly the same but more convenient. A lot more stable 3D, especially if you’re combining it with motion which was basically impossible before, a second (rather shit) analog stick, a second pair of triggers. You could have these new inputs on a standard 3DS through an accessory, so they just integrated them.
New 3DS was also more powerful, but a game needed to be specifically made or updated for the n3DS to access that extra power. Very few games were updated, and even fewer were exclusive to new, only notable one probably being Xenoblade Chronicles.
The name is usually what people blame, but if that’s the case why did they succeed with NES being followed up by SNES? Or Game Boy followed by Game Boy Color and then Game Boy Advance?
Hard to fault them for following a pattern that had worked great for them in the past.
Basically way larger audience. The big thing in gaming around 2005-ish is that everyone is a potential gamer, including people who mostly don’t care about or are not used to specific console releases.
Also I’d argue a “Super” is a clearer mark of upgrade than a single, very random letter or number (that is specifically not used like a version number like “GameMachine 4” but instead a weird portmanteau).
Also counterpoint : Nintendo of America used a lot of marketing to try and make people stop calling consoles “a Nintendo”, and part of this was the lack of distinction between NES and SNES (the other part was confusion with the competition).
Time for a new account already?
Got one example: when I bought mine in 2015 the young guy (probably late teens/early twenties) getting it out of the cabinet for me didn’t even know what it was.
The confusing name was the biggest reason I think. I was trying to sell it to customers back then and so many just couldn’t grasp the name of it and got the two consoles mixed up.
It’s not just the name. For many the tablet functionality didn’t click with them too. Any casual (non gamer) owner of a Wii didn’t have any reason to buy a Wii U. They were happy with Wii Sports and he controls. And hardcore gamers wanted to have something normal they can play games on it, like the other consoles have it. The tablet looked like a pointless big device, instead having a normal controller. Name was a problem too off course, but it was more than that.
