History won’t be kind.
History will most likely judge the Wii U as a misstep. A series of missteps. It’ll remember the name, which was silly. It’ll remember the hardware, which couldn’t compete. It’ll remember the third party support, which felt non-existent.
More profoundly it’ll remember the Wii U concept itself: a concept that, perhaps for the first time, showed a chink in Nintendo’s ability to innovate in the purest sense. In years previous Nintendo had reinvented gaming, almost effortlessly. It had given us the DS and touch screen gaming. It gave us the original Wii, motion controls, and the (transient in hindsight) sense that the future was here in our living rooms. Right now. In our lifetime.
The Wii U was different. We were used to being surprised by Nintendo. But this time we were surprised that we weren’t being surprised. The Wii U was almost shockingly staid and traditional. The Wii U was what Joe Blow might recommend Nintendo do if you asked him on the street. Tablets are in, right? Mobile gaming is a big deal, right? People are tired of motion controls, right? Why don’t you make one of those iPad things…
It’s funny. Nintendo didn’t like press and fans referring to their brand new ‘GamePad’ as a tablet. Probably because that’s precisely what it was, and a poor one at that. It represented an insecurity; as if Nintendo was thoroughly aware it was playing follow the leader and wanted everyone to just conveniently forget that.
And more importantly it was so very un-Nintendo. For the previous decade Nintendo had been Henry Fording the shit out of its audience. Giving us the automobile when we wanted the faster horse. This this time they were giving us the horse and we recognised that. We were looking that gift horse right in the mouth with a ‘hmph’ and a grimace. The Wii U was what we expected from Nintendo, and that never sat right.
History won’t be kind to the Wii U. History won’t remember it in the fondest terms.
But I will. I suspect others will too.
Looking through the drawers of the video games that will soon be gathering dust: a realisation. If I were to count up all the hours spent playing the Wii and compared them to the hours I spent playing the Wii U? The Wii U would win. By a powerful margin. A landslide even.
I loved the Wii U.
I loved Nintendo Land, which was a mainstay in my living room for years. A game we constantly played when family and family came to visit.
I loved Mario Kart 8, which might be the best Mario Kart ever made. I enjoyed Pikmin 3. Wind Waker HD is probably still the most beautiful game ever made. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze was a genuine masterpiece.
I loved loved loved Splatoon, perhaps the most innovative online shooter of this generation — a game that highlights Nintendo’s ability to bend any genre to its whimsical will.
Then there’s Super Mario 3D World. A game I initially dismissed as ‘conservative’. Today, with a three-year-old son in the process of discovering video games it feels sublime.
The Wii U didn’t really prove anything, at least not in the negative sense. History won’t be kind to the Wii U, but it might just represent it as a temporary blip; a moment of uninspired madness. The Wii U proved only that which we already knew: that Nintendo was capable of making mistakes on a grand scale. That Nintendo was capable of taking risks.
That Nintendo is still capable of making incredible, genre defining video games. The Wii U proved that all over again.
History won’t be kind to the Wii U, but I will be. I’ll remember it fondly, and I’ll be sorry to see it go.
Comments
85 responses to “I’m Going To Miss The Wii U”
I bought a Wii U just for Mario Kart 8, money well spent tbh. I wish they would just make games for the other consoles though.
The NX will be the last Nintendo home console.
http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2016/04/NintendoSales_Inline.jpg
The WiiU has undoubtedly BENEFITED from a bounce after the Wii…. Without that you’d be looking at absolutely atrocious numbers.
If the NX doesn’t have the power to hang with the PS4 (so it can get some 3rd party support), or a gimmick that re-captures the public’s attention better than VR, then it’ll fail and they’ll surely have to go 3rd party after this.
I think that would be the best outcome imaginable for gamers even if it’ll be sad.
I want them developing games on their own time, on powerful hardware that’s going to be around longer than a few years, without the pressures of launching games to prop-up a dying hardware division.
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve loved Nintendo consoles in the past, but my last great love was the Gamecube, and I’ve had nothing but disappointment since. It would be sad, but I want them to go 3rd party and focus purely on the games.
The worst part will likely be a few of their less-than-AAA franchises being put indefinitely on the shelf.
I can’t imagine a 3rd party Nintendo releasing Warioware, Pikmin, Starfox, F-Zero, Mario Sports (x50) ect at full retail price on those other systems because they just won’t sell. People aren’t going to buy a stand alone 2D level maker, a 2D platformer or a 12 hour (multiple play throughs) on-rails shooter at full retail when they can get MGS V for $40.
I can see games like F-Zero being released as PSN/ XBL titles at $30 and being Trials style successes though. How about a new Splatoon on Xbox Live? All good things!
The best part would be they could move the Mario, Zelda, Metroid franchises over to the CD Projekt Red/ Rockstar development model and give them long gestation periods and then release them when they’re the best damn games possible.
Hell- they could even makes something NEW!
Nah, it won’t be the last. If the NX is another Wii U sales wise they will be in dire straits and need the next one to succeed. You are forgetting they have stupidly huge stockpiles of cash.
I haven’t forgotten that, but they won’t have stacks of cash for long if the NX sells less than 10 million units as that 30 year trendline would suggest. I don’t think their shareholders will be too keen on them running the business into the ground if the writings on the wall.
They will slowly lose even loyal fans of their games keep diminishing in quality too.
The best thing about it would be that Nintendo would no longer be building the operating systems and back-end online features so we’d actually be able to get Nintendo games on a platform that’s properly functional and doesn’t have ludicrous communication restrictions like friend codes or parochial regional lockouts that everyone else abandoned or all the other stupid stuff they do.
Of all the tech companies, Nintendo probably suffers most from a ‘not invented here’ silo mentality. Doing things differently to everyone else and not bothering to consider industry best practices etc. is only something you can get away with occasionally.
The Wiimote is arguably the only tech they’ve got right since the internet became an important thing for consoles.
And even that’s of tenuous merit from a gamers perspective.
Their basic hardware, OS, multiplayer systems, online stores, pricing models, region locking policies…. everything feels like it’s been dragged kicking and screaming out of 1994.
Up until this generation (and the Wii to a lesser extend) they’ve consistently release 2-3 of the top 10 games of any given generation though. That’s what they do best.
I dunno. I mean, technically you are right, of course, demonstrably so. But I believe that mentality, that unchecked autonomy that has negatively affected the dry, technical aspects you name it’s also what allows Nintendo’s creativity and whim to flourish. I’m pretty happy having a console that’s the third option that doesn’t have ports of the AAA games that the other two consoles (plus PC) have, if that allows the bursts of unabashed brilliance, the revelations that from time to time are allowed to fluorish in this little, personal playground of theirs.
Yep, yep, the WiiU’s controller was mostly never used to full potential and it was probably not the greatest idea to begin with, etc, etc… yet, without it, we wouldn’t have Mario Maker as we know it. Hell, without it, maybe the /idea/ of Mario Maker wouldn’t have crossed their minds, who knows.
Moreover, Nintendo’s little ecosystem flourishes among the community that “gets it”. Those that understand that colourful and cartoony is not equal to childish or simplistic. What’s the point of having Splatoon on the PS4, for example, where the normal fans of that console will dismiss it after comparing things like numbers of polygons and number of shades of brown and lack of blood or gritty realism against other FPSs? The only people who’d benefit from Nintendo going out of the console businesses would be Sony and Microsoft, who’d not only got rid of a trend-setting competitor, but also will inherit the dedicated Nintendo fanbase who’ll have to buy those consoles in order to play those games. Not to mention that the inevitable downsizing of the company after bowing out of that big market has to have an effect on the quality of subsequent games.
No, it is a good thing that Nintendo exists as it is. That they feel confident to keep trying the little experiments that from time to time will explode into the next big thing. That they are capable of producing the games that their many fans expect them to do, never compromising or watering down their vision.
The problem is that even when they come up with creative ideas, the actual technical execution surrounding it is often so awful that it undermines the actual innovation. And sure, when the only roadmap you’re allowed to use is the one you wrote yourself, there are times where you might arrive in places that no one else would. But there’s as many downsides to that as there are upsides.
I’m honestly not sold on the idea that Nintendo are that innovative in the first place, mind you. Most of their innovations on the hardware side come with a massive caveat. The Wii Remote is a really good example. The promise was there. It was immediately obvious what they were getting at and it was very intuitive and accessible. But it also didn’t work properly even after they took a second crack at it with MotionPlus. And the actual technology behind it is basically an evolution of the old light guns.
On the software side, though, things are different. Both Nintendo and Sega had a lot of experimental and interesting ideas. Unfortunately poor hardware execution sent Sega to the bottom (much like it’ll end up sinking Nintendo at this rate) meanwhile I feel like over the last 5-10 years Nintendo has walked a long way back from being truly experimental with their games, instead focusing on making stuff that’s fun, clean and family-friendly. I feel like their approach to game design has become like an anxious overprotective parent at kids’ football, covering their kid in padding and making sure that there’s a constant stream of encouragement from the sidelines. There was a time when they weren’t like that, but all the designers there are in their 50s and 60s and making games for their grandkids. This is as big an issue for them as their silo mentality – where’s the new blood? Miyamoto was a genius, but he’s mortal and he’s going to retire or die eventually. Where’s the new blood? Not saying they’re not there, but from an outsider’s perspective it looks like you’ve got a bunch of old folks at the top that are more and more risk-averse, don’t pay attention to what anyone else is doing because they know better, and aren’t doing any succession planning.
By the way, Nintendo getting out of hardware is not talking about Nintendo going away forever. That’d be bad for everyone. When it comes down to it, their strong point is their software, and I don’t buy the argument they need to be in control of the hardware to still be innovative in software.
That’s a prediction that I’m pretty sure people made of the Wii back in the autumn days of the Gamecube after seeing exactly that same downwards trend. When it comes to Nintendo, success and failure are hard to predict going only by the previous results.
Did you look at graphic I linked?
I’m pretty sure if you were a shareholder you’d be putting a bit more thought into it than that.
The Wii is the ONLY exception to a 30 year downward trend at a time the rest of the industry is either growing or fairly steady, and which even if you just follow the trend line sees the NX shifting about half as many consoles as the Dreamcast ever did.
I think the NX will sell more than the 6-8 million units that trend line suggests, and quickly if Zelda is great, but its needs a BIG turnaround to be a success.
What I don’t understand is why you keep talking about a “trend”. If we were having this discussion on the last days of the GC I would have to remain silent and the best I could offer would be wishful thinking. The steady drop could be translated as ever-decreasing customer will or trust, continued obsolescence or any other worrying trend that indeed would decree imminent doom. But after the huge overturn that the Wii was, the trend simply exist no more or, at the very worst, there’s not enough compelling evidence to say it still exists and that the Wii was a fluke. ONE failure after the big success of the Wii is not enough nor compelling evidence, as it may be as much of a divergent point as the Wii was.
I’m not trying to erase history, just saying that currently there’s not enough evidence to speak of a trend with certainty enough to be able to predict the next step. Yes, the NX needs to be a big turnaround… but didn’t the Wii prove that they are capable of doing it? Hell if I wanted to figure a trend taking only recent values as a data point, I could predict that the NX is “due” to be the Wii to the WiiU’s Gamecube.
Mate the downward line from the NES to the WiiU intersects near-perfectly with every single console except the Wii.
That’s a trend. That’s why I keep using the word, because that’s what it is.
Particularly when the outlier can be clearly explained. The Wii sold 90m machines to parents, old people and ultra-casual gamers who loved Wii Sports.
That’s understandable because that game was a lot of fun… but it’s also lightning in a bottle that going to be extremely hard to capture again, particularly when other companies have aped their success in that area and lots of people were ultimately disillusioned with their Wii’s (as evidenced by the 80m customers who didn’t return for more.
Nintendo’s 3rd party support has been getting worse in line with the trend. The core group of Nintendo fans is shrinking (this is coming from someone who loved the GC and considers the N64 my favourite console ever), it’s putting increasing pressures of game development cycles (lots of smaller, less ambitious titles) and the rate at which AAA classics of Mario Galaxy standard is slowing (maybe stopped).
They’re trends, they’re quantifiable, they’re all bad. They need to pull something out of their ass with the NX and I can’t imagine what it would be. VR looks to the be next WiiMote and then some and it requires a LOT of power…. that not Nintendo’s speciality.
That is a really myopic way of looking at things. Every console nintendo has made has been profitable. They’ve made a single loss in 30+ years.
An then there’s the handhelds. No competitor has ever had a success against any Nintendo handheld going back to 1989. Most of them don’t even survive long enough to register as meaningful competition.
Nintendo’s handhelds have frequently outsold the best-selling home consoles of any concurrent generation.
The third party problem of the home consoles doesn’t exist for their handhelds.
Even Microsoft has published games for the GBA and DS.
Do you really think Nintendo could have bigger cash reserves than Microsoft, and be more profitable than the entirety of Sony (including it’s non-gaming divisions) based on home consoles alone? Especially given the trends you yourself have pointed out?
But that same fact makes the success or failure of their home consoles relatively insignificant to them financially.
When they’ve sold 57 million 3DS handhelds against 8 million Wii U’s, and tell me again how your trend predicts anything particularly meaningful about Nintendo’s future exactly?
Focusing solely on the home consoles means you aren’t seeing the forest for the trees.
You know who is likely to fail in the near future? Sony.
Near every devision they have is making a loss.
It’s quite possible Sony will fail, and Playstation, their only profitable devision will be sold to the highest bidder.
Considerably more likely than predicting Nintendo’s future failure based on the limited data you are using.
But my point is that you cannot predict. That’s all. Would you have been able to predict the WiiMote? No. Pretty sure you didn’t predict the WiiU’s controller. One of them was a success, the other wasn’t. The important thing is that Nintendo always keeps experimenting to recapture that lightning in a bottle. Can you predict the success or failure of their next experiment? No.
Moreover, the loss of customers from the Wii is not exactly or all about what you mention. Industry analysts usually agree that the name of the console was one of the biggest elements to rob the WiiU much of its launch thunder as people believed it was merely an upgraded version of the console. Similarly, the lack of an immediately approachable and iconic game such as WiiSports coupled with the lack of a flagbearer AAA game contributed to a dismal initial perception that coloured the future of the console. In short, there were several mistakes made that contributed to the failure of the WiiU. Reducing it to a “trend” is terribly simplistic and pessimistic and kind of cheap because no matter what results the WiiU achieved (other than overtaking the Wii) you could allege that it’s all part of the downward “trend” helped by the carryover from the Wii.
I don’t think the Wii U benefitted from following the Wii – AT ALL. Non-gamer people (almost everyone) really had no idea that it was different to the Wii. Nintendo screwed up the branding big time because everyone and their dog has a Wii gathering dust in a cupboard and figures they don’t need another one. Hell, when they announced it no one watching the press conference even understood that (iirc they only showed the gamepad).
If they drop the Wii branding on the next console (which I’m sure they will) it will probably do a lot better, and the Wii U would’ve as well.
They’ve dropped 10-15 million customers every generation since the 80’s, then got a boost of 80 million customers between the GC and Wii… and then squandered 90 million between the Wii and the WiiU.
If you take the Wii out of the trendline and go GC to WiiU, that’s a drop of 9.2 million customers. That’s actually the smallest decrease across generations Nintendo have had apart from the Wii. Given what a failure the WiiU has been as far as delivering classic games, I’d have to attribute that to as least SOME customer retention from the Wii era.
Surely at least 1% of the 80 million extra customers the Wii gained actually enjoyed the Wii and decided to buy the next one….
I mean if it was just 1%, that’s still a large chunk of the WiiU’s sales.
If they do drop the home console I hope they keep on doing handheld consoles.
I know we have smartphones that can do fantastic things but playing an action game using only a touchscreen sucks. I like buttons and proper controls, especially when playing something on a bumpy bus ride.
It’ll be fascinating to see what happens in the handheld space.
I give Nintendo plenty of shit, but as far as I’m concerned they’re in a league of their own when it comes to playing games on the move.
It’s a market that they fundamentally understand, and with less online and comparatively simple hardware, it’s actually much similar to the market where Nintendo made their best games.
Pretty much this. It’s sad to think how many people have missed out on this great games machine.
The gamepad made the wii u internet browser the only console experience which didn’t seem like it was inspired by waterboarding.
And watching TV while playing games was awesome.
And miiverse, with all of the absurdly good art, and rampant meme culture.
I think Nintendo failed hard with marketing the thing, they were consistently beaten up in the media by all of their competitors, and bunch of publishers.
But the hardware WAS sound, to the point that the others cooked up half-assed solutions just in case it pulled a wii.
I’ll more miss the false promises and vision that was laid out to us for the Wii-U, not what was delivered. Remember that E3 where Nintendo would have a tablet like controller and it’ll have such cool integration with games and do so many wonderful things….. yeah nah, stock standard DS quality screen with only a handful of titles that used it decently.
Lack of 3rd party support because they went with a system that was spec’d out with legacy hardware was always destined to take that path. I’m not saying what they did was ‘wrong’, I’m just saying that based on their decisions and vision, I couldn’t expect the Wii-U to have done any better than it did.
I hope, oh I so hope that the NintendoNX will have way more forethought than the end cycle of Wii & Wii-U. Nintendo hit a home run with the initial launch of the Wii due to introducing a ‘new’ concept to the masses, and doing it very cheaply. I doubt we’ll see that again and I hope they’re not trying to do another ‘Wii’. I hope they seriously beef up the hardware but knowing them it’s also unlikely. If they get it to xbox one/ps4 current levels than at least its a starting point, I’m hoping for more but also being realistic.
The NX’s hybrid system that’s been rumored is interesting, I don’t think it’ll be 2006 Wii interesting, but interesting nonetheless…. can’t wait for more details, still very excited.
From spending a little time looking at a bunch of rumours, it seems the hybrid idea has fallen out of favour and it will be a straight up home console. Current specs put it above PS4 in terms of power.
Of course all this is rumour, so nothing is concrete.
Awesome !
I just hope they recognize that cheaping out in horsepower and 3rd party support ends up in people using the console less and them earning less revenue. I’ll realistically buy whatever they sell because I still love them, I just want this thing to be a hit.
I think more than anything, the Wii U shines in families with kids.
You might not see them on the top 10 title lists, but Game and Wario, NintendoLand, Rayman Legends, StarFox Zero and Art Academy are all massive hits in our house because the gamepad.
Off-screen play can be a godsend when the kids want to watch TV and I want to get a bit further in Earthbound.
Plus the best titles on the Wii U can all be played in front of young kids, whereas my favourite PS4 titles (Bloodborne, Fallout 4, Diablo 3, The Last Of Us) generally can’t.
I agree with all of this. 100%.
Agreed, for me the Nintendo has always been a family console. In earlier days it almost went kids – Nintendo, teens – xbox, adults – play station.
I can’t speak for others, but I’ll be remembering the Wii U fondly years after I stop using it, which won’t be for a while now.
People will throw on the rose coloured glasses the same way they do with the Dreamcast. It only ever takes one or two good titles to bring the fantastic memories flooding back.
The system launch was a failure, which killed any chance of 3rd party support, which lead to Nintendo’s 1st party games dwindling in ambition and quality as they tried to pump out games to keep the system alive. It still got good games, just not games that justified owning the system unless you were really starved for Nintendo games.
The system honestly didn’t get any games that were shown early at an E3 in a form that was interesting, then fleshed out the year after, then released as a major, innovative title. It just didn’t happen, everything was rushed or cookie-cutter.
Also if this graphic doesn’t convince you that Nintendo should go 3rd party nothing will:
http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2016/04/NintendoSales_Inline.jpg
Let’s assume the WiiU got some kind of bounce from the 100m people who bought a Wii for Wii Sports then put it in the cupboard… that’s the only thing that’s stopped them being dead as a console developer already.
It’ll be interesting to see what gimmick they launch the NX with if they aren’t going to make it at least standard PS4 power. They’ve rolled out just about every gimmick imaginable over the past decade and people seem to be over it.
If there’s a hardware revelation that the next big thing, it’s almost certainly VR…. And that requires the kind of processing grunt that Nintendo walked away from a decade ago…. It’s going to take a pretty fancy Balance Board to match the instant cool factor of VR.
So what this dwindling quality of their first party games? What is so bad about Splatoon, Mario Maker and Smash Brothers, some of their latest AAA releases? Not much, because when you compare Nintendo’s releases with the releases of the big studios for the other two consoles, I’m pretty sure that you are aware which ones are the ones absolutely riddled with game-breaking bugs, collapsing online support, missing features and hidden DLC.
Also, the only thing that your graphic proves is that Nintendo needs another phenomenon like the Wii and that they were capable to bring it forth when they most needed it. Maybe it’s not so much that we have rose-coloured glasses but that you are extremely pessimistic if not downright hateful?
Mario Maker is a 2D level maker. It’s also the best 1st party game Nintendo have released since Splatoon. It’s not a great game, it’s a good concept that should be a free addition to a proper Mario game the way that Halo, Trials, Little Big Planet and a dozen other games all have editors tacked on.
It’s a half baked version of a AAA Nintendo title.
Also half baked since 2015:
Starfox – creatively vapid remake with a near universally panned control gimmick. Also Star Fox Guard, the stand alone title that should be a free extra but is being treated separately to pad the release schedule.
Wooly World – boring and derivative
The 1/3rd of an Animal Crossing game they released as a full priced game
Mario Tennis – roundly criticised for its shallow content. Would have made a nice $30 download.
A Zelda game making it’s 3rd appearance as a full-retail title in three generations…. That’s a record right?
A Kirby game where you do the things from the DS Kirby game
Mario Party 10 – same old thing….. but worse
And you want to worry about OTHER consoles having games that are missing features!?! All those games have had short or very short development cycles and all suffered creatively for it.
I think that’s every game since 2015 that’s not Splatoon or Xenoblade. Ignoring the fact that Splatoon initially reviewed rather averagely on the basis of a lack of content…. You’ve got 8 average at best 1st party games and 2 very good ones. Once upon a time maybe one or two would be average, most good, some brilliant and none bad.
That’s dwindling quality.
You assessment of Mario Maker is wildly subjective and betraying of your negative bias. Just in this comments thread you’ll find posts praising Mario Maker and the huge community of people around the game will happily disagree with you. You may disregard Mario Maker, but the thousands of people that love it are certainly thankful that it exists. Similarly, you say that Starfox is creatively vapid, but then disregard the controls as gimmicky. The failure of that game was precisely a creative innovation that sadly ended not playing great in execution. The rest of the stuff is fair, I guess? Not every single game can be AAA.
Anyway, yeah 2016 hasn’t be and likely won’t be great for games. That’s annoying but the thing about Nintendo games is that they have lasting value. Remember how the media both social and commercial exploded around the time of Titanfall? Where is Titanfall now, how many people play it? The vertiginous release cycle of AAA games on the other consoles condemn even the best or most innovative games to be brushed aside for the next big thing… and people would want Nintendo games to be part of such ecosystem! But in a Nintendo platform, we get a less hectic release cycle but each game (ok, most of them) have perpetual replay value and today, years after the release of Mario Kart 8 people happily play and compete, New, good games would be appreciated, but ultimately not that necessary.
You forgot Captain Toad, that was right at the start of 2015. And I’d have to disagree with your assessment of Star Fox, Kirby and Yoshi there too, they’re all really good games. The latter of which seem to have committed no crime other than being the same as their predecessors… which were both critically praised games? That confuses me, how can two things be the same and one of them good while the other is bad? And then you have Star Fox, where its greatest criticism seems to be that it’s NOT the same. Seems like it’s impossible for them to win.
NO! YOU WILL HAVE TO PRY THE GAMRPAD FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS TO GET ME TO LET GO OF IT!
But to be less silly about it, my WiiU is used daily. If it’s not used for splatoon or other games, we’re using it to watch Netflix or Youtube. It is the single most used console.
The only downside is that it has no hidden object games, which is a pity as I think it would be perfect for them
Forgot to add, I borrowed my cousins PS4. I think I found 2 games I wanted to play. I think there’s 2 games I want to play on the Xbox One. There’s just not much interest there for me.
The WiiU has so many more games that will keep me playing. They say the WiiU has no games, but it has the most exclusives of any console.
Maybe the most exclusives, but IMO the least diverse. Nintendo really needs to embrace diversity if they want the broad appeal (and hence success) of the PS4 or XB1.
I’m talking massive push for 3rd party support, doing something different (really different, not superficially so) with their established IPs and innovative (read: less gimmicky) features. Contrary to what they might think, there’s only a finite number of core Nintendo enthusiasts that really care about Mario, Zelda etc. They need to be actively pursuing people outside this group. Until they learn this they’ll perpetually be the victims of their limited audience.
My Wii U has probably had the most use out of any of my consoles, maybe with the exception of my NES and SNES. It was an awesome console. So many good underrated games. I have between 15 and 20 and in my opinion all of them were great games.
TW101, Pikmin 3, Bayonetta 2, Lego City Undercover, DKC Tropical Freeze, Super Mario 3d World, New Luigi U, WW HD, Twilight Princess HD, Captain Toad, Yoshi’s Wooly World, MK8, Smash Bros, Splatoon, Rayman Legends (Wii U version is the only way to properly play this game), Xenoblade X… Still waiting on my copy of Starfox so can’t comment on the quality of that game yet..
And people say the Wii U has no games?
Man i hate it when people say it has no games… i have like 40+ and thst DOESN’T include virtual console or indie games. I have five games for the PS4 and I use it more often as a blu ray.player than gaming console.
Totally agree Mark! The Wii U is a great little system, it had a string of solid 1st party titles to back up it’s appeal too. It powered Nintendo’s aesthetic well too, games that were colorful, simple and most importantly fun.
In an era where Sony and Microsoft are busy pushing ‘good enough’ resolutions and frame-rates to get AAA titles running consistently. Nintendo stuck to it’s guns and went a different route, selling a different sort of entertainment, with it’s own style of gaming which is to be respected, could’ve even worked out well too. Many people online respected and liked Nintendo’s adherence to 1080p/60fps in many of it’s titles.
However, Nintendo’s marketing of the Wii U sucked. The name alone caused confusion and ridicule, people didn’t know whether it was an upgrade of the Wii or something else entirely. The Gamepad felt like innovation for innovation’s sake, which only added to the gameplay of a handful of titles. As consoles came more ‘all-in-one’ entertainment hubs Nintendo made an early attempt at the same, including some 3rd-party apps like Youtube, but like the platform itself was poorly sold and abandoned too soon.
The takeaway from the Wii U is then that Nintendo can be successful at what it does best, genuinely fun, pick-up-and-play 1st party games. It just desperately needs to move away from the school of terrible product naming at the University of Apple and make the NX a distinct successor that can (and should) attempt something new, but doesn’t try to foist it into everyone as a poorly executed feature in all it’s titles.
The WiiU could potentially become the GameCube2.0, unappreciated when it was Nintendo’s primary console on the market, and picked up traction down the track. I actually think the Wii was Nintendo’s worst console (Virtualboy doesn’t count) even though it was designed to appeal to the wider audience. It had great games but I just never liked the Wiimote / Nun-chuck as the primary controller, the classic controller was great but the fact it had to be tethered to a Wiimote was shit.
I thought the WiiU tablet was better but I probably would have preferred it as a complimentary device to a standard controller, like the GBA could be used alongside the Gamecube.
Agree with this. The Wii Mote motion stuff really turned me off playing any of the games. To me it was a gimmick.
The few games that allowed the use of the classic controller were not enough of a reason to play.
My parents (and everyone else’s parents) own one and played Wii Sports because it was accessible and a new concept.
It just wasn’t fun for me. It was a laborious task.
The Wii U was everything we’ve _said_ we’ve wanted but really we didn’t mean, while lapping up the stuff we’ve railed against in forums such as this:
Free online multiplayer
Local co-op titles in abundance
Resistance to Micro-transactions, Season Passes, and other after-purchase requests for your dollars.
Backwards compatibility built in from the start
Optimised, less buggy experiences
So yes, while the Wii U has had a litany of issues both avoidable and otherwise, as always the audience doesn’t know what it wants. It’s up to the competitors to work that out.
Anybody who talks about video games and laments the ‘console warz’ crap can’t exactly escape it. It’s intrinsic, and it’s always going to be around in one way, shape or form.
I get the feeling wiiu will be more popular after its dead.
People will look back on it’s quirky games.
Also think it’s value will ruse alot for collectors due to it’s low sales.
It’s the Van Gogh of consoles.
I just liked getting Mario and Zelda in HD at last.
That was the painful part of the Wii (besides motion controls), still having to play those games in SD while the PS3 and 360 were showing off HD graphics.
I just hope the NX has backwards compatibility and that I don’t have to rebuy all my VC games again.
I’m kind of hoping they don’t have BC to be honest. It’s a cool feature to have but now is the perfect time for a break. Switch over to a newer architecture like the current other consoles. Easier porting for 3rd parties and the low WiiU sales mean the smallest number of consumers will be affected.
I still have plans on buying one for mario kart, smash and other great titles, maybe one day i’ll convince myself to just do it 🙁
The Wii U’s biggest innovation was having the second screen for asymmetric play or a touch interface and while it’s fantastic in theory, the sad truth was that no one did anything great with it so it failed to meet its potential and dissuaded developers from trying. It’s the same story as the Vita, a great thing doomed to irrelevance (in the greater market) because people get blinded by making money over providing fun and unique experiences tailored to the platform.
I think the WiiU got an unfair rap for a lot of things, but in others Nintendo really just fell short. I own one and have had some great experiences on it, but compared to all my other consoles – the memorable/fun experiences aren’t even close in quantity. I do love the concept of the WiiU – playing without the TV, some really clever usage of the Gamepad in certain titles, but the execution fell short in a lot of other areas.
I’ll probably be crucified for saying this – and I say it without any malice intended – but this seems to happen a lot with Nintendo. They make something that falls short of expectations/doesn’t do as well as expected/is deemed uninspired, etc, yet after it’s superseded, everyone stands back in hindsight and goes ‘Oh wow, *thing X* really was pretty great, just misunderstood, etc’. It’s a weird grace people don’t seem to apply to anything else but Nintendo. It’s like the little train that could. Like we’re so attached to our memories and experiences that Nintendo formed for a lot of us, we just can’t let go.
I’m not saying the WiiU was a failure, and it’s value is subjective and differs from person to person. But for all intents and purposes – the WiiU was pretty damn close to a flop.
Again, I’ve had some real enjoyment out of my WiiU. It’s hooked up in my loungeroom and played it as recently as a week ago for Pokken and Cpt. Toad – but I don’t have any iilusions about it’s lengthy list of shortcomings.
Agreed dude, I can’t remember the exact timelines but for me its:
– NES – Awesome
– SNES – Awesome awesome awesome
– Gameboy – Awesome
– Nintendo64 – Awesome awesome, towards end of lifecycle…. ok… ps1 can do a few things I cant
– GBA and all the renditions – Cool but not heaps my thing anymore
– Gamecube – Nintendos weird baby brother to ps2, kind of solid, cross titles are kind of worse but it’s ‘ok’ for the majority. Mid to end of lifecycle…. super weird and dead
– DS – OMG amazing, such cool… this thing is kinda bulky. New edition, defs upgrading, loved it
– 3DS – Yep, that is so much better than DS, upgrading
– 3DSXL – Yep, im done, this is it…. dont play after upgrade cause over the same thing for so long
– Wii – OMG I WANT ONE SO BAD THAT TENNIS GAME LOOKS EPIC – awesome for a year or two and once the dust settles, it sucked
– Wii-U – I hope they bring out more….. I’m sad
I really feel like they needed to get off of the Wii platform because it was so old, SO old. To me it always felt like the Wii-U was a halfbaked ship jump to just something that was better. I don’t buy that they ever thought it was going to be a gamechanger.
This is a really pivotal point in time for them, we’ll see what choice they decide to go with.
It really turned around right about the point some major 3rd party developers all but abandoned the Nintendo ship partway thru the N64’s lifespan and embraced the Playstation/other various CD-based consoles. The N64 was the first time Nintendo did something truly different to everyone else – they stuck with cartridges when the world was embracing optical media, introduced the analog stick, crazy (but awesome) N64 controller and also that unusual SGI-derived architecture the N64 utilised.
The N64 was boss, don’t get me wrong – but the world realised at that point Nintendo was doing it wrong. After that, Nintendo embraced it’s ‘uniqueness’ wholesale and they have done ever since. They’ve brought the world some really fun and quirky innovations as a result – but they haven’t been a ‘serious’ console contender for me since the SNES.
Incidentally, I was a hardcore Nintendo boy from my earliest memories, from my first NES and GB right up until I abandoned the Ninty boat at the N64 for the PSX. Well, I didn’t abandon completely of course, I’ve always had a GBA/DS/DSL/DSi/3DS, etc, just never owned another Ninty console until the WiiU.
Yeah towards the end of the N64 I was like, this consoles done… I need something new. I was playing my mates PS1’s (modded) and I’d bought a dreamcast (didnt even need to mod it, burned games had the patch in them already, lol). I picked up a Gamecube because some friend of a friend was an idiot went out and bought it with a couple of controllers and a couple games… didn’t like it so sold it to me for like $200 or 250, bargain.
It had some half decent games and ‘some’ 3rd party, but realistically it was the B-tier console. I actually like the controller and footprint of it, but ever since they’ve been lacking.
This is going to sound really weird but I pirated so so so so SO much as a teenager that I have a weird allegiance with hardware. I’ll buy the Nintendo NX just because, and at least if I hate it I can be qualified to do so. I have really high hopes for them but doubt they’ll deliver.
I’m definitely keen to see what the NX has to offer. The WiiU initially tried to assert itself at least a little bit with some ‘serious’ games, like Arkham, ME3, ZombiU, etc. When the WiiU dropped I was actually really hopeful, because despite those being releases of what were already older games on the other consoles, it was encouraging they’d tried to have some games that weren’t just the usual 1st party releases.
Sadly that hope died fairly shortly after, once the 3rd party titles started dwindling, but the fact Ninty at least tried gives me some hope they might attempt to really bring the NX up to speed. Either that or it’ll be something completely new and alien again.
N64 did in a way get a prototype phase before release as well, it’s essentially a cd rom and hdd less, Nintendo hyper 64 arcade machine. Performance and capabilities were semi established before it’s release to the public.
That whole first half made me think of the Virtual Boy, and how everyone remembers it as “that thing nobody could play because it just gave you instant headaches” and such. Even though it was anything but.
I love the Wii U. Right from the start, me and my friends all thought it honestly felt like the second coming of the GameCube. And I guess in a way it kind of was, just to a more extreme extent.
No Rail Shooters (Overkill etc) What is the point of hanging on to the Wii Zappers?
Lack of 3rd Party games
Amiibos could have been so much more, unlock a costume or weapon? meh. Coins? meh
A real Pokemon game where you could actually save data onto the Amiibo? Yes please
Playing other games as completely different characters? Yes please
Some great games on the Wii U. Had a fair bit of play with it, but not recently.
People will probably remember the console fondly due to a handful of games, but if I was an investor I’d be demanding they leave the home console hardware business. Nintendo just doesn’t have the partnerships/goodwill required to generate a overall library of games. I’d also argue that their internal development was comparatively weak on the wii u. I don’t think they managed a serious game of the year contender.
Pikmin 3, easily.
I dunno, I think the Wii U is lining up to be more like the GameCube or Dreamcast where on paper it’s an under rated wreck but everyone loves it to the point where it’s almost over rated. Once the dust has settled and the library is complete people are going to look back at it and see that some of their favourite games are on it. Take Mario Maker. It’s either not going to get a sequel or more likely it’ll get a sequel that won’t capture the same magic (no matter how good it is it’s no longer new). That’s going to be one of those ‘man, the console is soooo under rated, you could only get a game like this on the Wii U’ games.
Like the GameCube people are going to forget that frustrating ‘there’s a game released every 20 minutes for the PS2 while the GameCube had two per year’ thing and just focus on how great the gems are. All you GameCube players will remember having to constantly explain what the hell we were thinking, and how that stopped once the next generation came in. The Wii U is like that. I think it’ll continue the trend and once we’ve moved on all the games that were fun in the moment but not particularly note worthy long term (ie, Titanfall, the Division, etc) will fade from our memories. At that point the Wii U will appear to go punch for punch with the PS4 and XBOX One.
Like the Dreamcast it stands a good chance of being a hit with the people who never had one. People who for whatever reason looked at what they could be doing on a Wii U and never got to experience it for themselves.
Personally I find the biggest let-down of it all to be the OS. Rather than shying away from the tablet comparison I think they should embraced it and explored the idea of it being not just a tablet connected to your TV (an idea a lot of tablet users don’t realise they want) but a tablet connected to your TV that is more than just a mirror.
If it had of had even a Windows Phone level app library I think it could have won some people over and been an every day console for a lot of people. Give it a HDMI input like the XBOX One has (only low latency) and I’d use this thing every day. It’d basically be a smart TV conversion kit with fantastic games.
I can’t say that reflects my experience at all. I remember around the end of highschool I’d hit 30 games, an absurd number to any of us at the time, and I think more than anyone we knew. And that was still another two years or so before the Wii was due to come along, I was never left wanting for something to play. And since then I’ve more than tripled the size of the library too.
The WiiU is tied to a lot of memories I have with TAYbies. The first time I played the WiiU at EB expo years ago was the first time I’d met other TAY folk in real life.
Playing that ghost mansion game for the first time with @blaghman @trjn and @freyja (spelt wrong properly) who’d of guess it would lead to broken tea cups and drunken kareoke renditions of ‘Always’
Ah memories.
You still owe us tea cups.
Yeah
Hopefully this is far enough back to avoid spoilers for anyone else.
I thought I had it for a moment…I looked at the sentences and though maybe I needed to “fill in the blank”. For example: “Not even a 3rd as interesting as when you announced the toy company that got the mcfarlane licence” – “that toy company” in this case referring to Mattel. That theory came unstuck though once I tried the next line…because the story about the 5 year old didn’t actually mention the kid’s name.
Gah!
The only thing common I’m seeing with all of these posts is they are describing the post they are linking to and aren’t actually related to the story they are posted in at all.
There’s a pattern to how they write. even though there are multiple numbers in some of the comments, only one is represented with a numeral. there is one other thing that they do that with and once you spot it, everything will fall into place.
I did notice that only one has a numeral and the rest are words…one of the first things I noticed actually, however that’s not a pattern that’s present in every post because not every post has a combination of numerals and words. It seemed like that was a dead end.
What you are looking for is so simple and so common that your eyes will automatically go past it. however once you see it, it’s very, very obvious. i’m sorry but i’m really struggling to find a way to hint towards it without saying it explicitly and i won’t say it explicitly.
Don’t worry, not expecting you to say it explicitly.
The only other thing I’ve noticed is that most words that should be capitalised are not, eg mcfarlane instead of McFarlane. But again this is inconsistent, not every post has words that fit this criteria, and some posts have multiple words that fit it, so again this seems like a red herring.
This one’s got me dead set stumped.
Not every comment has numbers that are spelled out.
Yeah that’s the problem. Not every comment has numbers that are spelled out, and not every comment has uncapitalised words. From what I can see there are comments that have both of those things, and comments that have neither. I’m not seeing a pattern at all 🙁
Not every comment has spelled out words but they all have a single numeral. not every comment has uncapitalised words but…
I think I might be on the right track now. I don’t want you to give anything else away so I’ll leave it there and I’ll manage on my own from here…ty for the help.
OMG, I’m such a dipshit. How did I gloss over that? FML…
I’ve been waiting for this comment for a while.
I feel like @theenigmaroom and @junglist will enjoy this conversation chain.
Absolutely
Oh geez, my derpiness is on display for everyone to see now.
hahaha, I only started this today and I found this… and it still didnt help me :3 *sad sigh*
EDIT: oh no wait there we go, got it ^^
I still play Mario Maker almost every night before bed on the gamepad. Don’t see that changing anytime soon.
The wiiu always sat quietly in the corner at work, but it was always so exciting when someone showed interest in it, because the people who were looking at them were always so different to the typical “hey I want an xbox one/ps4”.
My favourite recent memory was selling a wiiu to a grandfather who came in to purchase one so that he and his grandson could play Mario kart against each other. The smile on his face as we talked about Nintendo and the wiiu was one of excitement and genuine content happiness. He didn’t want one of the top of the line “shooty” consoles. He just wanted to have fun.
When the Wii U came out, I was excited for the idea that I would have a little touch screen on my controller which streamed the game from the console itself. It was like Steam’s streaming feature but for Nintendo games. I could lie in bed and play, lie on the couch and play, sit outside and play, as long as I was around 26 feet away from my console.
Then I saw the price and thought, “Nah…”. Ended up buying a 3DS.
lmfao
what’s to miss exactly?
one game title a year? The same rehashed shit we’ve seen console generation after console generation? Fuck all third party support since the SNES?
the console was destined to failure and all the idiots who bought into it are just that; idiots.
I think Nintendo’s strengths lie in their wonderful first party games which are exclusives.
The last thing I want is for Nintendo to start pumping out yearly COD games and just releasing every cross platform AAA like GTA, Witcher etc. It will lose it’s identity.
However. They just need to release a solid console. With a normal controller. And concentrate on releasing great games!
The Wii U is possibly my favourite console ever, the games plus the gamepad means it has been in constant use (Xbox One has barely been used since Xenoblade Chronicles X came out & PS4 is used only for Jackbox 1 & 2 and Dynasty Warriors 8) since launch day.
Dual screen multiplayer makes the WIi U my favourite console for games that use it, and multiplat stuff like the LEGO games make best use of it.