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).
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.