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A "TRIBUTE" TO THE WII U - by Mr Biffo

14/2/2017

43 Comments

 
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Little Jeremy - please - ask yourself: if you'd been Nintendo would you have done it any differently with the Wii U... at the start at least? You're coming off the back of the most successful hardware launch in your history, with unprecedented brand awareness; you look around, and everyone's got their faces in their phones or iPads...

Of course you'd release a new type of Wii, which blended everything that made the original great with some sort of a touchscreen controller. We're living in a dual-screen world now. It's smart to embrace that, probably.

See... that's the thing: the Wii U gets a lot of stick, but it's mostly from the lofty, arrogant, perch of the hindsight bird. On paper, the Wii U isn't an obvious balls-up. We didn't know until it was over that Nintendo had behaved like the corporate equivalent of a dirty fox thrashing around in a bath. If they'd announced that they were releasing a console with a controller that was basically a couple of raw carrots dangling from a bell, then maybe we could've all leant back on our sofas and exhaled... "This isn't going to go well".

I mean, at the time - before it came out - I think most of us thought that the idea, in principle, was reasonable enough. Even the name - after we'd all mocked the Wii for sounding like "wee", only to realise that it was actually quite clever - seemed okay. We didn't want to make the same mistake twice (something which Nintendo would never do... oh... a-hahahahahahahaahahaaaaaa!).

"Oh yeah... yeah... so, the original name meant, like... 'we', and this one means, y'know... 'we-you'... uh... so... yeah."

Yes, alright. It doesn't work as well, but I defy anybody to admit they knew that Nintendo was stumbling into a flop-hole. Relatively speaking, of course. After all, around 13.5 million Wii Us were sold over its lifetime. That's still a lot of Wii Us... but, well, not so good when you consider that around 26 million Xbox Ones have been sold, and 53.4 million PS4s - in less than the time it took the Wii U to finish mashing its own face against a wall.
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JOURNEY TO THE EARTH'S CORE
One of Nintendo's stated aims with the Wii U was to bring back the "core" gamers it felt had been lost with the Wii.

​Though the Wii itself had sold phenomenally well, it was also something of a failure in certain respects, and didn't make as much money as Nintendo had wanted.

""The Wii was able to reach a large number of new consumers who had never played games before by bringing hands-on experiences with its Wii Sports and Wii Fit," Nintendo's then-CEO, the late Satoru Iwata, bellowed at investors. 

"However, we could not adequately create the situation that such new consumers played games frequently or for long, consistent periods. As a result, we could not sustain a good level of profit."

That makes sense, but within Iwata's statement can also be found the seeds of the Wii U's downfall. The hardcore gamer audience is the one to which Sony and Microsoft cater. That market was pretty much all swallowed up, and would continue to be so. Part of the appeal to that audience is the visual experience - high-powered machines, sexy-sexy high-tech toys, which are at the cutting edge of stuff.

There's literally nothing sexy about the Wii U. It's the console equivalent of a boar shuffling around with its head stuck in a fishnet stocking, while Sexual Healing is played on a leaky bagpipe by a fiftysomething accountant.

The bulky controller - with its slightly fuzzy touch-screen - looks and feels like a cheap tablet computer that you'd find on the end of an aisle at Morrisons. Furthermore, over the course of the Wii U's life, it is pretty evident that it simply didn't have the oomph to compete with its rival machines. The decision had been taken instead to go head-to-head with the ageing Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 - not the consoles that were just over the horizon. That was mistake number one, in a series of fifty.

Whereas the Wii seemed to step outside the console war, and do its own thing, Nintendo's stated aim with the Wii U was to reclaim its place at the heart of the games industry. It picked a fight with the playground jocks by hiding behind a hedge and throwing conkers at them.

Therefore, you've got to wonder why the company chose to hobble its chances from the off by releasing such an esoteric and - relatively speaking - underpowered machine, which felt like a relic from the previous generation. Perhaps they were all drunk.

WII U-RO
​Still, the European launch line-up for the Wii U - released just in time for Christmas 2012 - was the most bountiful in Nintendo's history. Inevitably, it was 80% filler, and it's unlikely anybody was picking up a Wii U on the strength of Rise of the Guardians: The Video Game. 

That said, Nintendo's stated aim of reclaiming core gamers got off to a good start; amid the landfill kiddie games were Assassin's Creed 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, and Batman Arkham City: Armoured Edition. The good news for Wii U owners was that the games were graphically comparable to their PS3 and Xbox 360 counterparts. The bad news came, again, when you remembered that the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were only a year away.

Of the day one Wii U exclusives, few made real use of the Wii U controller, and its dismal 3.5 hour battery life. Nintendo Land was a decent enough demonstration of its capabilities, but hardly a new Wii Sports. Whereas the Wii's motion controllers were affordable enough for two players to go head to head, buying a second Wii U controller was an expensive proposition. As a result, the multiplayer games in Nintendo Land would mostly use both a screen and Wii controllers - muddying the message of what exactly the machine could do.

Nintendo's biggest launch title was New Super Mario Bros. U - a return to Mario's side-scrolling origins that was never going to make the same impact as, say, Super Mario World or Super Mario 64. It's inexplicable, really.

One oft overlooked highlight of the launch was UbiSoft's Zombi U. A clever first-person survival horror, which felt very different to Resident Evil, it unfortunately has the postscript that Ubisoft shortly afterwards stopped supporting the Wii U with exclusives, due to lack of sales.
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RADAR LOVE?
Rapidly, the Wii U slipped off the radar of the core gaming audience that Nintendo had the intention to court.

The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 offered the things that their audiences demanded, while the Wii U had the misfortune to be too little too late, an underpowered console with an unwanted control system, and precious few of the sorts of defining games for which Nintendo is best remembered.

Once it became clear that it wasn't the sales phenomenon Nintendo needed, third-party support evaporated like a tepid fruit drink left on the dashboard in a Florida carpark.

There are great first-party games on there - Super Mario 3D World, Splatoon, Mario Maker - but when you look across the entire span of the Wii U's three-and-a-bit years of existence, the classics are spread so thinly you can see Shigeru Miyamoto's plums through them.

Where were the sort of big, noisy, Nintendo games of the past, which demanded your attention? It's as if Nintendo fundamentally misunderstood the very audience it was attempting to court this time around, and set out to test the loyalty of its own core fanbase.

SO SORRY
Of late, there has been something of a trend in Wii U apologists, to bury their heads in the sand/up Nintendo's arse and paint everything in Nintendo's garden/colon as rosy. The Wii U wasn't a failure, they insist, because 13 million were sold. Taken at face value, that's a reasonable argument... but it crumbles to flakes, like a psoriatic scalp, once you give it a rub:

  • The Wii U sold 85 million units fewer than its predecessor.
  • It lost third party support because of those low sales.
  • It failed entirely to capture the audience Nintendo was aiming at.
  • In the process, it also alienated the non-core audience which had loved the Wii.

Place it on your turntable of spin at 45rpm if you must, but that's not great. Nintendo displayed an almost profound inability to learn from either its mistakes or its successes. The Wii U, as a result of Nintendo's inexplicable behaviour, became a machine for nobody - one which has now been throttled prematurely to make way for its successor. 

However you wish to paint the picture, the Wii U was, is, and always shall be, one of Nintendo's greatest failures. It's hard to ascertain whether its litany of missteps were the result of arrogance or isolation, or just bog-standard bad management. Regardless, almost everything about the Wii U has the sniff of Amiga CD-32 about it - Nintendo displaying the sorts of desperate last-chance-saloon errors which consumed the likes of Commodore, Sega, and Atari.

One console balls-up does not spell the end for a company of Nintendo's size and legacy... but history tells us that it can certainly be a signpost on the road to the end.

If the Switch isn't a respectable hit, a very different Nintendo could emerge. History is like a garlic korma; it repeats.

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
​A TRIBUTE TO THE NINTENDO WII - BY MR BIFFO
A TRIBUTE TO THE GAMECUBE - BY MR BIFFO
A TRIBUTE TO THE NINTENDO 64 - BY MR BIFFO

A TRIBUTE TO THE SUPER NINTENDO - BY MR BIFFO

43 Comments
DD
14/2/2017 11:37:30 am

A blight the Wii U solely for Mario Kart. It sat there idle until the release of Xenoblade Chronicles X. It's now sat there idle again.

I will be buying Zelda Breath of the Wind for Wiii U, not the Switch due to its piss poor launch title line up (ahahahaha?!) So it will see life again.

Admittedly I don't get as much time these days to play, but I am at heart a huge Nintendo fanboy. I have to say I am truely worried about their future. I can't see them developing hardware again if the Switch fails, and the signs are worrying.

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DD
14/2/2017 11:38:54 am

^^ Damn iPhone typos sorry ^^

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Darren Lock link
14/2/2017 12:31:12 pm

It's all about third-party support. Nintendo on its own, doesn't have enough grunt to support its own consoles. Time is money and developers don't have the time to figure out what to do with Nintendo's strange consoles.

"What features can we bring to a remote touch screen device that are unique?"

"Oh fuck it - let's just port this to the PS4 & Xbox One instead"

The Wii U is the Switch - the Switch is the Wii U - both underpowered games consoles, featuring functions that set it apart from ANY OTHER platform, and even at this early stage, third-party developers are already thumbing their noses at the console.

It's like watching a car crash in slow motion - all because Nintendo are obsessed with controllers and control methods.

Then it struck me that one area where this worked recently is Mario Run, where they designed a game so simple that you can use one thumb to control gameplay. Even though I enjoy it, it's hardly setting the gaming scene alight...and this is from Nintendo... They constantly keep putting the cart before the horse, thinking that innovation equals compelling gaming when most folks want Call of Duty 27: The One Where We Go Back to WWI And Shoot The Hun in the Face.

Think about it.

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Michael E
15/2/2017 08:07:14 pm

I don't think third party support matters for Nintendo consoles and neither do the PS4 or XBox One. It was smart phones and ipads that are the biggest concern since they offer accessible family friendly gaming at a far cheaper price point than Nintendo.
If it had not been for those devices Nintendo would have had the young gamer market pretty much to itself and would have done very well indeed.

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Da5e
14/2/2017 12:48:13 pm

Bayonetta 2, though.

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Ben
14/2/2017 01:10:57 pm

The Wii U was a flop, at this point it's really beyond debate, but there were a bunch of great, exclusive games on there that a lot of people didn't get to experience:

Bayonetta 2
Super Mario 3D World
MarioKart 8
Xenoblade Chronicles
Captain Toad Treasure Tracker
Super Smash Bros
Wonderful 101
Zombi U
Pikmin 3
Mario Maker
Splatoon
Rayman Legends
Shovel Knight
Windwaker HD

etc.

I was late to the Wii U party in my fancy sceptics hat and
had a lot of fun with mine for as long as it lasted and credit to Nintendo for their valiant effort in supporting the format almost singlehandedly after practically every third party that had pledged support bailed within the first year...However, having damned the thing with faint praise, I'll be approaching the new console even more cautiously at an even later date in my sceptics hat and matching naysayers trousers; I just hope Biffers isn't writing the same thing about the Switch in 4 years time, because it's not looking like Nintendo have learnt from any of their mistakes.

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Wariospeedwagon
14/2/2017 01:21:36 pm

Shipped units be damned! There's too many fantastic games on Wii U to consider it a failure. Coupled with the original Wii's entire catalogue I won't be moving it from under my TV for quite a while yet.



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Mr Biffo
14/2/2017 01:30:00 pm

Yeah... but if it proves to have damaged Nintendo's bottom line, and the brand... and most of those great games weren't played or ignored... then... well... y'know?

Crabby Zambo
14/2/2017 03:57:27 pm

I'm probably getting one soon for the new Zelda, looking forward to...some of these as well. It's telling that even on this humble list you had to put two multi-plats and a rerelease at the bottom...

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Ben
14/2/2017 04:33:09 pm

None of those were multi platform releases at launch were they? But yes, that list isn't long enough to sustain a platform, even for the Wii U's short lifespan

Spiney O'Sullivan
14/2/2017 06:25:00 pm

Rayman Legends, Shovel Knight, and even ZombiU made it onto other systems.

Mario Kart 8 and Smash Bros U are great exclusives, though they make almost no noteworthy use of the Wii's gimmic. Wii U Party is good for what it is, too, as it actually finds good uses for the Gamepad, with some good 3 vs 1 multiplayer games there.

But on the whole, the thing has basically made the GameCube look like a success. And I liked the GameCube...

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Trevordfarm
14/2/2017 01:19:39 pm

As well as non-committal gamers, the Wii had a large install base as a second console. It was unusual for most console owners to buy a rival console until this date. It was helped by arriving in most territories in line with the PS3 and only shortly after XBox 360. In fact, in practice it was ahead of those, as key unit selling titles didn't arrive for the mainstream consoles for a year, while the Wii came with its killer app out of the box.

In fact, in some territories, for nearly a year the Wii had an attachment rate - the ratio of software to hardware sales - of less than one. Families had effectively bought a bowling game, and so had second console owners who wanted something casual for parties.

The Wii U had a lot of marketing problems - not least that let it be confused with a peripheral. It was also timed very inconveniently for existing console owning homes. The 'hook' of games your non-gaming friends and family would like was deliberately backgrounded, and certainly dampened by the second-screen hardware, which urged single player, sofa play.

In my view, these woes can - unusually - be reduced to one umbrella problem: they were marketing to split audiences. Having finished mining a new market, they didn't abandon or separaye it, but instead were now trying to bridge it to the profitable core market. There are products and markets where this has worked, but they are scarce. Wii U's story is the more typical outcome.

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TrevorDFarm
14/2/2017 01:25:36 pm

Mr Biffo, what would your view of the Nintendo Switch be if the Wii U hadn't been released, and the Switch had been launched, say 18 months earlier?

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Mr Biffo
14/2/2017 01:28:49 pm

Hmm. I'd probably still be underwhelmed by the paucity of launch games. I'm actually looking forward to playing on the Switch - it feels very Nintendo-y. I just wish there were going to be more things to play on it from day one.

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DEAN
14/2/2017 01:28:06 pm

I bought my daughter and son a Wii U and they both love it. There's some great games on it; they're better served on the Wii U than on any other thing ever.
Big words, Dean, but what are you saying?

MARIO Kart 8, Wii Party U, MARIO games (all),.... Jesus, I'm bored already but look, there's loads of games on there for them and that's before you get into backwards compatibility and virtual console. More games than most people could shake a wiimote at (awful but essential).

Fuck 3rd party shit. Buy a 360/PS4 if you want that.
GTA. COD. Shitfest 6. FIFA. Seriously, buying a console to play them is like buying a tv and DVD player to watch transformers movies.

The Wii U's problem is that the controller is like an iPad designed purely to house Steve Jobs' Remnant soul. In a mocking way.

It's abysmally bad - and if I still sound too on the fence let me reassure you with this - I hate it!

Can't wait for the Switch, though - WHOOP - not long now!

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Incredulous David
14/2/2017 04:41:59 pm

How is buying a console to play GTA a bad thing? Are you seriously suggesting that GTA is comparable to Transformers whereas Toad's Treasure Hunt is, what, Seven Samurai? Just by dint of it being a Nintendo game and the former being third party?

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DEAN
14/2/2017 11:28:21 pm

Dave, that's funny but some of what I said was said in furious anger!

PeskyFletch
15/2/2017 06:15:38 pm

Those shots in the rain though

Ben
14/2/2017 01:28:48 pm

The Wii U failed mainly because it looked like a very expensive addon for the Wii IMHO. It followed the naming style of Wii Play, Wii Draw, Wii Fit etc. Had it been visibly marketed as a successor to the Wii and, possibly more importantly, visibly named as a successor (Wii 2, WiiHD or even The New Wii) I'm convinced that it would have sold significantly better than it did.

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Biscuits the character
14/2/2017 04:09:11 pm

If the Game store in Swindon can be taken as an indication of the public at large, this is absolutely true. 90% of people asking about WiiU thought it was just the screen controller, and wanted to know what it was for.

The branding was an absolute joke; as trevordfarm notes above, the decision to barely change the name between consoles was probably an attempt to bridge the gap between an old, long-since-disinterested-and-disgruntled non-gamer customer base, and a new, imaginary, hardcore-gamers-that-like-weak-specs-and-gimmicks customer base.

In the end it just about managed to hang onto hardcore Nintendo fans, which should really have been the very, very bare minimum

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Biscuits again
14/2/2017 04:46:49 pm

I will add that I think Nintendo should have called it something completely different - people were excited about Nintendo again after the Wii, but somewhat disenfranchised with the Wii itself, is how I perceived things

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Super Bad Advice
14/2/2017 02:05:33 pm

Yep, the Wii U was floppier than one of those rubbish puppet toys where you push the underside to make them fall over, rammed onto the end of a broom to enforce permanent limpness. But then again, I've had some ace times with mine (re)playing the Zelda titles with my daughter and also the new/exclusive stuff. That's the oddness of Nintendo - even their worst mess-ups have some sort of interesting factor to them and there's always gems in there too.

I'm still excited for the Switch (though with some concerns) because when you look at the Wii U launch - launch line up aside - it does look like the big N have learned a few lessons. There's no faffing about with needing controllers cannibalised from another console. It looks slick rather than like a Chinese knock-off of a real console. It (crucially) has the Joycona as 'Wiimote 2.0's - that simple 'you can hand it to your gran and she'll understand what to do' element is back, sorely lacking with the Wii U's slab (it's confusing enough just figuring out how to turn it on/off from the pad). It doesn't need token second screen content to make full use of the system.

I think there's a chance that if Ninty can address the flow of games, and get some interesting non-game deals like Netflix sorted fairly soon after launch, it could build some proper momentum.

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Kara Van Park
14/2/2017 02:22:00 pm

It's always telling how a fan posts a list of games and it never fails to have a remaster from two generations ago, some incidental indie game and some Japanese obscurist malarky that most people couldn't care for.

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Pricko
14/2/2017 04:15:56 pm

The only invalid one is the remaster, indie games and Japanese games are still games available for a system

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Kara Van Park
14/2/2017 05:28:44 pm

If you list about a dozen of the best games over three years and Shovel Knight is one of them, I'm not forking out £250 for the system.

Spiney O'Sullivan
14/2/2017 06:16:03 pm

Indeed. I love Wind Waker, but touting an HD remaster of an already excellent old game as something to brag about just makes the console seem even sadder.

I actually think the Gamecube version holds up visually anyway, and the new lighting effects mean the remaster will age worse than the old one...

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The Obvious
14/2/2017 05:06:40 pm

It's a complete fallacy that the Xbox and PS4 cater for a "hardcore gamer audience". Their consoles are closer in spec to a handheld than true hardcore gamer hardware (aka the PC). They are absolutely NOT high powered and their terrible hardware limitations defile the quality of PC games now—which are lazy cheap console ports that are inefficiently coded and waste so much of the PC’s power.

To me, the Wii U was incredibly appealing and the tablet was a brilliant concept, particularly for local play party games; Nintendo Land is still played today…unlike the Wii Sports flash-in-the-pan. It was a no brainer day 1 purchase, unlike the Wii, which was very cosmetic in its new motion control functionality. It’s touchscreen controller might not have been retina quality 10-point touch, but it did exactly what it set out to do (for those that bothered to code for it), and I can’t see it having done that better if it did have that functionality. In all the best ranked games (even relative to the other platforms), not once did those games feel like they were somehow inferior because of the phantom ‘hardware limitations’. Hardware is only limiting if it prevents a great gaming concept from being a fun gaming concept.

All three consoles offered the things their core audiences demanded. It just so happens that the Sony and MS consoles appealed to a broader audience (FIFA 26 anyone… COD 15?); you’ll never go broke appealing to the lowest common denominator. Fickle and profit-only-centric third parties will only go where the green is rather than where the respectability is. Unless you’re a greasy shareholder, the best statistic as a gamer you can take away from the Wii U is that its games were the highest ranked across the consoles. Why as a gamer would you care about anything else? Unless you’re stupid. In terms of gaming experience and quality, the Wii U was the most successful console since the SNES (the frustrating gameplay in Mario Kart 8 aside).

And because Nintendo do alas need to stroke their shareholders, we now have the Switch… the most uninteresting console of recent memory, directly pandering to the lowest common denominator of the gaming ecosphere. Even their games, now developed by younger teams looks to have cancer. Open world Zelda, Mario in an American city, excessive character crossovers (Link in Mario kart?!), pay-to-play online networking, nothing special about the hardware and only a single screen so no backwards compatibility. Sad times.

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Brandon Content
14/2/2017 08:46:36 pm

My favourite thing about WiiU was the little toys

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Spiney O'Sullivan
15/2/2017 12:51:58 am

But Link was already in Mario Kart 8 on the WiiU as DLC?

Also Mario Kart 8 was tremendously fun...

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The Obvious
15/2/2017 09:03:52 am

All mario karts are fun; there's no such thing as a 'bad game' when it comes to mario kart. But 8 was frustrating as hell and one of the weakest (except graphically)--at least to us mario kart purists who still favour the original for many reasons. MK8 plays like a shitstorm of teeth-grinding cluster-fuck weapons attacks, as many of the more recent games also have. And I should have said "inklings" instead of Link earlier to make the point clearer.

Spiney O'Sullivan
15/2/2017 12:10:27 pm

Ah, this is where I'm often at odds with a lot of people on Mario Kart. I didn't have a SNES, so I don't really have much nostalgia for the original. For me, MK64 was the first one I absolutely loved playing, followed by MKDS. Plus I really love the gravity-bending shenanigans of MK8.

That said, I will happily concede that MK8's battle mode is a complete and utter disappointment. They'd have been better not even implementing one.

The Obvious
15/2/2017 12:39:39 pm

Agreed. I could write a thesis on the mario kart series... I really want to play MK8 more; every time I finish, I'm fuming mad with frustration. Every time I finish playing the original (with ppl who know how to play it), I'm laughing and smiling. What else can I say. Had some happy times with 64 back in the day (and all of them really).

Kelvin Green link
14/2/2017 06:48:14 pm

I will defend the Wii to the end of my days but even I wasn't enthused by the WiiU. The only game that grabbed me was Xenoblade X -- because the first one is ace -- but I wasn't going to buy a new console for just one game.

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Nick
15/2/2017 09:24:44 am

Xenoblade X really was wonderful and pretty much the only game I played between Christmas and April last year. Like many others though it didn't make much use of the game pad beyond map and menu screens. It should be an easy port to the Switch and I wouldn't be surprised to see some of remaster/1.5 release after Xenoblade 2.

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Mrtankthreat
14/2/2017 07:13:53 pm

"I think most of us thought that the idea, in principle, was reasonable enough"

Did most of us though? Most of the issues the Wii U had (terrible name, lack of games, underpowered etc) were mentioned from the get go. I remember being highly skeptical of it myself and after having already been burned by the Wii with it's rubbish gimmick I was wary of the whole pad thing.

Maybe it was a lack of imagination on my part but I couldn't see what was going to be so great about having a second screen. You can only really look at one screen at once and I didn't see what could possibly be on the pad that you couldn't have on a pause screen menu. And when I asked people who seemed excited about the possibilities what more it was going to offer, the responses I got reminded me very much of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpy95b-H6Vg

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Spiney O'Sullivan
15/2/2017 12:53:28 am

It's good for 3 vs 1 multiplayer games, but nothing else. The second screen ends up either unused, or a distraction from the main screen. It's the same problem the DS has, but on a bigger scale.

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Starbuck
14/2/2017 07:37:41 pm

The Wii U has been my favourite console (and I used to have a Pong machine!), and will remain massively loved in our household for a long time to come - an unexpectedly large backlog of games to get through, with life yet in the Wii originals too (son currently rediscovering Mario Galaxy).

Definitely the best option for families with kids. And to see Mario Maker shape their design skills over time is something else!

Shame it never had the price drop.

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Beefkr10z
14/2/2017 08:50:47 pm

I wonder how much a DS/3DS card slot in the controller would have changed the system's fortunes?
Nevertheless, I love my Wii U, but find it hard to argue any of the criticisms applied here.

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Vid Sicious
14/2/2017 09:58:31 pm

I can't wait for Skyrim on the Switch! I hope it's £45.

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PeskyFletch
15/2/2017 06:21:24 pm

Volumetric god rays don't pay for themselves

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johncross85
15/2/2017 08:13:17 am

For me it feels like Nintendo has been on a slide since the heyday of the SNES. With the notable exceptions of the DS and Wii its been downhill all the way.

The videogame market completely changed when Sony realised there was more money to be made selling consoles to people with their own income than to kids.

Nintendo briefly also pulled the trick of unlocking a new market - hyper casual gamers that wouldn't normally dream of buying a console but who got sucked in by Brain Training and Wii Sports. But those hyper-casuals fall into 2 camps: one-offs that buy a Wii and a game then live with it for ever and people better served by an iPhone.

So Nintendo lost their new market as quickly as they found it. Now they seem to think their only option is to find a new new market - maybe cool kids that want to play multiplayer games while at rooftop parties.... And so the slide continues...

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Oliver Wright
16/2/2017 05:49:23 pm

I really wish Nintendo would go software-only. Nobody wants their goofy underpowered consoles, so if they could just release the eight or nine good games on actual consoles that people actually own, maybe they'd make more money.

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The Obvious
20/2/2017 02:55:37 pm

If the Wii U had been marketed in a way that didn't make it appear to be an optional Wii peripheral, say by naming it something more obvious, such as "Wii 2" and having the sequel branding all over the hardware so even an idiot could see it was a new console, it would probably have been much more successful. Optional peripherals don't sell; platforms do--something VR should take note of...

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