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[LordOcidax]

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

No. Wii was an irreplicable success aimed at a casual audience that used it briefly before moving on.

Wii U should have never happened.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Might have doubled sales, not more than that though.

I do recall the comments during the live reveal where people thought it was a tablet accessory for the original Wii. Even the console in the distance looked like the original Wii.

 

[drganon]

It might have caused less confusion among non gaming consumers, but it was still doomed.

 

[John Bilbo]

No that would be unforgiven too.

 

[LordOcidax]

It might have caused less confusion among non gaming consumers, but it was still doomed.

 

[Horseganador]

After this infamous presentation the WiiU was doomed no matter what it was called, the console had the same design as the Wii, the same colour, New Mario was like the one on the Wii, the Miis were like the ones on the Wii, it used Wiimotes, it played the same game as Wiisports, etc... it's normal that most of the public thought it was an expensive peripheral for the original Wii and not a new console, the launch software line didn't help either, Nintendoland was horrible and New Super Mario Bros U was too similar to the previous two.

 

[analog_future]

I believe it legitimately would've sold triple the units if they named it the Wii 2 and marketed it properly.


It was never going to match the Wii, but the system was not lacking at all in super high quality games from well established Nintendo IP.

 

[IDKFA]

Possibly. I do actually know people who thought it was an add on and not a new console. I think it was just a confusing concept. It could use Wii motes, but the main controller was the tablet that only one person could use.

it also had poor third party support which didn't help. Come to think of it, the first party support wasn't that great either.

Nintendo sequel systems normally don't perform as well as the original (See SNES, and 3DS as examples), but the Wii U performed worse than anyone expected for a variety of reasons, with branding only being one of them.

I think it would have sold more if they called it a Wii 2, but I also think they should have ditched the tablet and lowered the release price.

 

[LordOcidax]

I believe it legitimately would've sold triple the units if they named it the Wii 2 and marketed it properly.


It was never going to match the Wii, but the system was not lacking at all in super high quality games from well established Nintendo IP.

That’s what i think, at least 40 Million.

 

[fart town usa]

It failed because Nintendo released their PS3/360 era console when the PS3/360 gen was practically over.

As much as I love the WiiU, there was no reason to buy one.

 

[JORMBO]

The Wii sold a lot off Wii Sports. Moms and grandmas wanted to play it. The WiiU did not have a similiar pack in title. There was that one game at launch tried to be somewhat similiar (the name escapes me) but I remember it being mediocre when playing it with some friends. The tablet on the WiiU was kind of half baked and not a great idea at the time. I think the console was doomed regardless of the naming convention.

 

[Fbh]

It would have probably sold better but I don't think it would have been a big hit either way.
The tablet controller was inherently less exciting than the motion controls and most studios never figured out how to really implement it in a way that didn't feel gimmicky and forced.
There was nothing particularly appealing in it for the casual audience that made the Wii Successful.
And "core" gamers were more interested in a proper next gen at that point. Some new console that's just catching up with the Ps3/360 in terms of power and getting some late ports of games we already played wasn't exciting with the PS4/X1 around the corner.

 

[Donald mac Ronald]

Completely fitting name too.

Wii-U-turn

 

[hemo memo]

It would have sold better. Not a lot better, as the concept was bad, but Nintendo did pretty much everything wrong with that reveal. I remember we were very confused here; imagine the market.

 

[PauloRoberto]

As a WiiU owner, absolutely NO.

The problem with WiiU is that even Nintendo it self didn't (and still don't) know how to apply its unique features - because they weren't even good to begin with.

Proof? Almost every Nintendo WiiU exclusive is already ported to Switch with minimal to zero compromises.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

It would’ve done better but still been a failure. There were so many flaws:

- overpriced
- underpowered
- shitty 3rd party support and most fans of 3rd party franchises already had a 360 or PS3
- the whole Wii fad and brand name were already over, most of the casuals had a Wii collecting dust and weren’t interested in a new one
- confusing concept, many people thought it was a new peripheral for the Wii

Probably lots more as well

 

[Wolzard]

The concept was bad, as was the hardware. If only they had gone to the x86 architecture, it would have had more support from third parties and would probably have sold more than the Xbox one.

 

[jshackles]

I think it would have sold better, and the momentum from those sales would have pushed more publishers to support it. It got some good third party support at first with games like Mass Effect 3 and Assassin's Creed III, but that was pretty much it as the big publishers dropped it when it failed to deliver. Probably wouldn't have saved the system from becoming a disaster, but definitely would have pushed more units.

I had tons of normies back then from my work and church ask me things like "I just bought this Nintendo Land game for the Wii, why won't it play in my system?" or "I saw some sort of Wii system at the store, why are they trying to sell that for $400 when the one I already bought years ago was half that price?". It's pretty obvious that the "U" caused some pretty big confusion.

 

[Drew1440]

Wii U brand name could have worked, but they had to change the branding of the console, from the consoles design to the font/logo style to even the systems colour. Look at what Sony did from the PS1 to the PS2 where the console looked completely different, the PS2 logo was different with its midnight blue gradient (the original PlayStation logo was kept but wasn't heavily featured). Blue/black became the systems signature colour and its front/tray loading design made it look like a premium piece of AV equipment.
Microsoft did something similar when releasing the 360, the logo was updated to a circle but still kept the X design of the original, along with a different shade of green which was familiar that it belonged to the Xbox family but a different console. The consoles design itself was radically different going from a big black box to a sleek white design that stood vertically in adverts.
Nintendo just kept to the White/Grey scheme with the Wii U. To the average consumer, it looked more like an iteration rather than a new console. Oddly they redesigned the original Wii with a black/red toploader system, had that been the base design of the Wii U along with a matching gamepad design then I think Nintendo would have performed better.
The original Wii is still a nice-looking console, I can see why Nintendo wanted to keep its design.

 

[tkscz]

I clicked yes but I meant no.

Yes, the BIGGEST issue for sales with the WiiU was it's name. I saw over and over again people buying Wii U games assuming they'd run on the Wii. Not to mention most people stopped playing their Wii within two years.

There is a graph that gets used here a lot (I can't find it) showing that the Wii hit one HUGE spike in sales in 2009 and heavily decreased after that. The Wii was a fad and it didn't help that they slapped the name Wii on everything, further sullying the name.

People assumed, when they could tell that it wasn't the Wii, that the Wii U was just a tablet for the Wii. They showed games that look like they were running on Wii (New Super Mario Bros U as the only Mario launch title was an awful idea) and only made it worse by having Wii-motes in every ad.

Nintendo clearly wasn't paying attention to the falling sales, I remember most games released after 2010 on the Wii could never reach over 1 million units sold when before then most reach 5 million easily. It's like they only saw the sales of the original Wii sports and Mario Kart Wii and ignored everything else.

Changing the name to Wii 2 would have helped some but they way they marketed the thing would not have been enough. People still would have been confused and to anyone who didn't care for anything called Wii, would have still ignored it assuming it was more of the same.

- overpriced
- underpowered
- shitty 3rd party support and most fans of 3rd party franchises already had a 360 or PS3

Can't agree with these statements. You can saw the same thing about the Switch and it's still going way stronger than it should be.

 

[N0S]

I hate the Wii brand

 

[PeteBull]

It wouldnt repeat wii success but likely would sell 2-3x more, so dunno around 30milion of consoles, maybe 40 at best, so still not good numbers, just not a terrible flop wiiu was.

 

[cireza]

Casuals don't need to buy a new console every 5 years. That was the main issue.

 

[Bridges]

On paper I could understand why they thought replication DS's dual screens on a home console could be a good idea. There were a small handful of games that did something interesting with that, and I think there was a lot of potential that never got executed.

What ended up being the actual awesome feature of the Wii U was that for a lot of games you could plug the console into a wall and forget the TV, just play entirely from the gamepad with minimal latency. By the time DKC: Tropical Freeze came out that was the only GamePad feature they'd even support. Nintendo wisely jumped on that and made it the focal point of the Switch.

I'm still crossing my fingers that the "C" button on the Switch 2 is for some Wii U style dual screen replication for things like Game & Wario Pictionary, there's still potential to be mined there and making it optional will be far less confusing to consumers

 

[rodrigolfp]

3 didn't save the PS3 from being a catastrophe, so no.

 

[Magic Carpet]

It will still have the awful slow mo UI.
I think the console was only for people like me who skipped the Wii years.

 

[hououinkyouma00]

I believe it legitimately would've sold triple the units if they named it the Wii 2 and marketed it properly.


It was never going to match the Wii, but the system was not lacking at all in super high quality games from well established Nintendo IP.

This. I’m not saying it would have been the Wii or Switch but it definitely would have sold much more than the 13M or whatever it sold.

They also had a disastrous reveal on par with the Xbox One which definitely didn’t help.

Confusing naming, bad marketing, and the fact that it just got a bunch of ports from the previous gen that people already played didn’t help in the slightest.

WiiU is underrated IMO and I personally still use it to play Wind Waker occasionally. Hell half of the big 1st party games on Switch were WiiU titles originally but they get away with it because not enough people bought a WiiU to notice.

 

[hououinkyouma00]

3 didn't save the PS3 from being a catastrophe, so no.

PS3 was only a catastrophe in the beginning and outsold the Xbox 360 by the end.

 

[LordOcidax]

3 didn't save the PS3 from being a catastrophe, so no.

90 Million is a catastrophe?

 

[rodrigolfp]

90 Million is a catastrophe?

Burning all the profits prom the PS1 + PS2, YES.

 

[drganon]

PS3 was only a catastrophe in the beginning and outsold the Xbox 360 by the end.

There's no sense trying to reason with a weirdo like him.

 

[LordOcidax]

Burning all the profits prom the PS1 + PS2, YES.

That’s not how things works . I am sure that Sony wasn’t expecting to sell 160 million of PS3…

 

[rodrigolfp]

That’s not how things works . I am sure that Sony wasn’t expecting to sell 160 million of PS3…

That is exactly how things works on capitalism and I am pretty sure Sony was expecting to sell close or more than the PS2.

 

[LordOcidax]

That is exactly how things works on capitalism and I am pretty sure Sony was expecting to sell close or more than the PS2.

That’s doesn’t mean that the PS3 was a sales catastrophe… And No, i am pretty sure that Sony wasn’t expecting that.

 

[rodrigolfp]

That’s doesn’t mean that the PS3 was a sales catastrophe… And No, i am pretty sure that Sony wasn’t expecting that.

Catastrophe = not making profits. If you sell 1 billion of consoles but makes zero profits it's still a catastrophe. Do you think gaming is a charity?

 

[LordOcidax]

Catastrophe = not making profits. If you sell 1 billion of consoles but makes zero profits it's still a catastrophe. Do you think gaming is a charity?

Did you have any source of that info?

 

[rodrigolfp]

Did you have any source of that info?

???

What do you think capitalism is? A charity?

 

[hououinkyouma00]

There's no sense trying to reason with a weirdo like him.

Dudes an idiot but I can’t help but to call him out on his bullshit.

 

[simpatico]

No. Wii was an irreplicable success aimed at a casual audience that used it briefly before moving on.

Wii U should have never happened.

But Switch shows that a WiiU could have been successful imo. It didn't have any of the Wii appeal. It is basically an iterated WiiU. As someone with a young gaming son during the WiiU launch period, I can attest that it was a giant problem for relatives buying gifts. We had one in our house the entire gen. His grandmother never wrapped her head around those naming conventions or what it even was.

 

[LordOcidax]

???

What do you think capitalism is? A charity?

Take the L
Sony’s PlayStation 3 Turns Profitable

 

[rodrigolfp]

Dudes an idiot but I can’t help but to call him out on his bullshit.

You are very intelligent thinking losing money = success.

 

[rodrigolfp]

Take the L
Sony’s PlayStation 3 Turns Profitable

“For this year we expect to be able to generate at least double-digit profits,” Oneda said of the games business."

Maybe read what you post.

 

[rofif]

yes. probably

 

[ReBurn]

More like Wii was an anomaly in Nintendo's downward decline in home console sales each generation following the NES.

The name really wouldn't have made a difference in my opinion. Nintendo essentially made a single player console on the back of what was a great party machine that got people playing games together. Similar to Wii, I feel like the marketing and capability of Switch as a multiplayer device helped it reach the success it has now.

 

[Aldric]

No the Wii U had far more problems than just the name. The nongamer Wii audience was fickle and left the home console market years before the Wii U released to go play on smartphones, the gimmick wasn't easily understandable and remained underutilized for the entirety of the system's life, the desire to appeal to more dedicated players was a total failure because the system was less powerful than previous generation consoles and had unconventional controls, and the launch lineup was incredibly weak with long drought periods and an overemphasis on 2D platformers which was a baffling decision when trying to sell an expensive HD console.

It was a blunder in every way.

 

[Punished Miku]

No one can completely dismiss it as a possibility. A lot of the same 1st party games. Better virtual console. Full Wii BC. Semi portable. MiiVerse. It was a great system.

 

[Warspite]

My enduring memory from the launch of the Wii U was someone telling their mother that the Wii U was an add on for the Wii. There must have been some confusion and giving it a straight up 2 would have help with that at least but it was still not going to sell 100 million units.

 

[Azelover]

It would have done Gamecube numbers at best.

WiiU's problem was the software. The great stuff came too late. Nintendo Land was not the smash hit they were expecting.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

GP was the villain