>The Wii U had lifetime sales of about 13 million, in sharp contrast with the Wii, which had over 100 million over its life. This financially hurt Nintendo, with several financial quarters running at a loss through 2014. Nintendo had anticipated the Wii U would sell similarly to the Wii, but it ended up selling worse than the GameCube and became Nintendo's least successful home console to date.
Somehow I didn't properly put it into perspective how bad the Wii U did. It didn't deserve that.
Nintendo completely shat the bed marketing it, my older relatives who bought multiple wiis thought it was a tablet addon. It didn't help that they showed wiimotes along side it in a couple ads.
this is why reggie got fired. once they saw the switch doing well, they blamed him (probably rightfully so) for the wii u's failure in at least the US.
>but he resigned/retired
no. in japan they force salarymen to retire/resign, it's more polite than firing them.
At that point, the "Wii" brand was next to dead among casuals, and among core gamers, meant underpowered hardware that ran shovelware.
I still got a Wii U a few days after it launched though.
nintendo america has no input on design or games or anything.
It did almost as badly as the PS3.
>they blamed him (probably rightfully so) for the wii u's failure in at least the US.
That makes no sense. NoA has no influence on Japan's hardware development, only marketing
>PS3 lifetime sales: 87.4 million
Am I missing a joke?
Marketing was one of the Wii U's biggest fuckups. Not saying there weren't other issues, but there's no doubt NoA failed at marketing it.
Worst marketing ever is still the 3DS, I play video game and even I though it was just a DS with a 3D screen until a friend told me it was more advanced hardware.
There is no joke. Nintendo sold the Wii, Wii U, and Switch at a profit. Sony sold the PS3 at a loss
Not him, but the PS3 hurt Sony financially much more than the Wii U hurt Nintendo. SCE burned through all the cash they earned in the previous 10 years on the PS3.
marketing, tardo
Wow, you're retarded
and they made money through game sales
Its the video game circle of life:
Be very successful in one generation.
Get too cocky in the next generation.
You're retarded. Unlike the Wii U, the 3DS was sold as the DS' successor from reveal. Did you have an issue with the GBA too?
I don't think marketing had anything to do with it. Nintendo tried to ride on the success of the Wii but people didn't care about the Wii anymore when the Wii U came out
>New Switch successor comes out
>They name it the Switch U
Would U buy it?
Nintendo went through it twice
Sony's going through it a second time right now
Microsoft went through it once but not as bad as the other ones
would be cool to see Nintendo's next generation actually be strong
Actually, I didn't realise the Game Boy Color was a successor either. I thought it was just a Game Boy in color.
i would wait a few years before buying it so that i can get the better versions of the console as well as avoid having to wait anxiously for games. i only just bought a switch (OLED) last weeks and have 5 years worth of releases to play
You'll get through them in a month.
>I didn't realise the Game Boy Color was a successor either. I thought it was just a Game Boy in color.
well that basically is a successor since its a newer, better version
The GBC is a little weird because back in the day, it was definitely supposed to be the GB's successor, but these days, Nintendo treats it like they treat the DSi or 3DS spinoffs, like it was supposed to always be just a GB in color and not a GB successor
>t didn't deserve that.
It deserved worse. The Wii U was a disaster on every level. Terrible games, terrible console, terrible UI, terribly slow, terrible online, terrible fans, and now terribly expensive despite having NO games.
The UI would have been one of Nintendo's best if it weren't so fucking sluggish.
The Wii was a slightly better GameCube, the PS3 retail price was 600 dollars and used some super expensive cell chip meme procesor, not to mention Sony was losing money for each console sold, Sony always made money from the game sales but if developers don't make games for your system oubviously you are going to lose money. It wasn't until normal fags got boring of the Wii and jumped to their smartphones along with the 360 shitting the bed trying to appeal to the Wii audience which (again) was going towards the smartphone market.
You need to be 18 to post here, champ.
it also only came out 3 years before the GBA
all wrong
I don't care about Nintendo, sonI never read anything about the 3DS online. But the TV commercial talk exclusively about the 3D screen and how revolutionnary that was with 0 mention of it being a brand new console so I assumed it was just a new version of a regular DS. The name doesn't help because it's just a bad pun, if it was called the DS2 it wouldn't have been as confusing for outsider. And a lot people though the same thing.
Nah it's still pretty bad, but it helps that every time you click an icon it takes at least 30 seconds for the thing you're doing to load because it gives you plenty of time to think if you really want to be playing the fucking wii u.
The GBA only came out 3 years before the DS.
It deserved way, way worse.
fuck, no wonder Nintendo dominated handhelds so easily
The name "Wii U" was literally the entire problem.
The Wii u had great games though. That's why they were all ported to switch
The Wii U and the first few years of the 3DS were the "post nut clarity" age of Nintendo where they realized that nobody is God. Anyone can fall, it just depends on the bigger they are.
>terrible fans
It had fans?
This debate will never be settled
Nintendo lumps GB and GBC sales data together but the GBC had hundreds of exclusives, entire dedicated sections at game stores, different box art and cartridge designs, and beyond the color was actually slightly more powerful than the original Game Boy. So to me it's not really comparable to something like the New 3DS or DSi, but it's open to interpretation
GBA and NDS were released to proactively counter upcoming threats like the Wonderswan and PSP. Nintendo rested in its laurels with handhelds for a long time, like the original GB.
You know NoA isn't the only one doing marketing in the west right? Foreigners are pretty ignorant.
>The name "Wii U" was literally the entire problem
It certainly PART of it.
The rest of its woes could be attributed to its shit chipset architecture which no dev could be fucked with.
Thats the reason Switch is drowning in 3rd party support while Wii U had hardly any.
The tablet is one of those things you don't think you want until you actually try it. I was thinking shit like, "Its not a real handheld, why would I want this?" "touch controls on a console, that's shit, I've got buttons why would I want to move my hands off the sticks and buttons and press shit on a touch screen" "why would I want to look down at this little screen in my lap when I have a 65" TV". It wasn't until I actually got a used Wii U on the cheap with about a dozen games after its life was already over and like 10 minutes in I was like "Ooooh, I get it now". I played Breath of the Wild right after Xenoblade X and TPHD, BotW ripped out all the tablet controls because they were focusing on the Switch version or whatever and the absence was very notable in Xenoblade X and TPHD the tablet, the second screen to offload a map or inventory, was actually a hugely continent thing to have and you don't really appreciate it until its gone.
I mean marketing in just America. The Wii U did poorly everywhere, including its own damn country. That's not one person's fault
>Slightly
It was actually quite a lot more powerful. It had a shitton more RAM, twice the CPU speed, and a new DMA engine. GBC exclusive games can be quite a lot more impressive than DMG-compatible games.
The DSi enjoyed a similar upgrade over the original DS though that power was squandered.
If you want to talk about a stupid name, New 3DS takes the cake. It's by far the stupidest name of any console.
Try 99% of Yea Forums up until the nanosecond the Switch came out.
The Switch also has an awful CPU like the Wii U, the difference is that the Switch actually hit critical mass. Plus the portability gives Switch ports a USP, while there's no reason to buy Mass Effect 3 on Wii U.
>Somehow I didn't properly put it into perspective how bad the Wii U did. It didn't deserve that.
If you were here around 2012 you know how many people were defending every bad decision Nintendo was making during that time, I say they had it coming
Maybe next time actually listen to your userbase instead of designing hardware that's both annoying to develop for and only has very limited appeal. Been a Nintendo fan since the SNES days, but the Wii U lost me and now I'm not coming back
>selling 87.4 million consoles without making a single game for it
How did they do it??
>This financially hurt Nintendo, with several financial quarters running at a loss through 2014.
It wasn't that bad
For me it's the chip. They wanted a complete, native BC with Wii, so they went with a very expensive MCM design where multiple different chips (including Wii's chip from 2000) were integrated into one unit. It ended up being more expensive than PS4's SoC a year later.
AMD could have given them a 1TF+ chip in 2012 at a cheaper price.
Remember how every game was apparently going to save the Wii U?
>The Switch also has an awful CPU like the Wii U
You don't know what you're talking about. Its cpu is Arm 4 which makes it very easy for development tools to scale and optimise games for the platform.
Developers couldn't do that with Wii U. They would need to spend time recreating a lot of games from the ground up to run on the fucking thing and most developers couldn't be fucked.
FACT: I own two Wii U's and that alone makes me automatically superior to a dumb virgin like you
Nah it was bad.
It was marketed beyond poorly, people will make up any other reason but the thing being called the "Wii U" was a death sentence
The """casuals""" the Wii brought in had no reason to buy another system and """hardcore""" audiences already had a shortsighted perception of the Wii so who was this "Wii U" for?
The games that were generally good all made their way to Switch in some form too which just shows how unnecessary the game pad was despite being a neat idea
I enjoyed my Wii U when I had it but I think 2014 was the only year where they had consistently solid output
I think that was the year that Mario Kart and Smash 4 came out anyways along with other decent games sprinkled through the year
>they went with a very expensive MCM design where multiple different chips (including Wii's chip from 2000) were integrated into one unit. It ended up being more expensive than PS4's SoC a year later.
That's hilarious if true, got a source?
It's a quad core A57 chip. It's anaemic as fuck and limits ports even more than the weak GPU. It's more familiar to developers but that doesn't keep it from being extremely underpowered.
Advertised it as a blu-ray player.
Also. Advertised you could play ps2 games on it. Forgot when they stopped supporting that.
Yeah I'm not arguing the Switch is underpowered. Its 6 years old and the fucking size of a mobile phone. The point is that this tiny little handheld is still getting current gen ports. They might not lool as good as the $2000 PC version but its STILL getting games when developers would never even have considered the Wii U.
>terrible games
Then why do you keep begging for all them to be ported to the Switch?
>terrible console
If games make the console, then no, the Wii U is a good console.
>terrible UI
It's better than minimalist shit.
>terribly slow
At least it can actually run its own games.
>terrible online
At least it was free.
>terrible fans
At least Yea Forums didn't have daily "comfy Wii U" generals.
>and now terribly expensive
If you can afford a Switch for $300, then you can afford a Wii U for ~$150.
I'm telling you that it's as underpowered as the Wii U was. Being underpowered isn't why the Wii U didn't get ports. Devs suffer to make Switch ports because they actually get a return on that investment.
see:
They have a good chance. All they have to do is improve what they have with the Switch and not toss it out for some new gimmicky shit no one wants. It is Nintendo, so they could go either way.
>together but the GBC had hundreds
uhhh. No.
Xenoblade definitive edition came out two years ago, when are we getting X on switch again?
It had one hundreds.