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).
The reasoning behind it was the Wii was called like that because it was a console for everyone, as in “we”. Cue the weird ads with the two middle-aged Japanese men coming to random families with a wii in a suitcase asking “We would like to play!”.
By Wii U time the market had changed a lot. They knew they wouldn’t be able to count on casual gaming alone anymore (mobile apps had absorbed most of it) so they needed to recapture more traditional gamers too. So they added U, as in, “this console is not just the party console, it’s for you, too!”
Yeah, it didn’t work. It was confusing, didn’t really roll off the tongue, and wasn’t different enough from the original wii’s name to get people to notice it. Wii was a one-time trick, it worked because nothing looked or was named like that. They might have had more luck giving the U a completely new coat of paint.
Then again maybe not. They pulled the trick again with the Switch, because new name, and because that name reflected the real clever shtick of it, being a hybrid console. Wii U’s gimmick was rather weak and hard to use well.