one of the biggest reasons I didnt get a wii u until way too late is because whenever I'd ask for it from my parents they'd always say that we HAD a wii.
@@egonyt The confusion really killed the system. I wanted one too back then, but my parents were about as confused as your parents were. Pity isn’t it?
Also, in a nice gesture from Satoru Iwata, due to the bad sales of Wii U, there's an impending layoffs that will happen in the office. But, Iwata-san decided to take the blow to himself and instead, cut his salary to make sure no one will be living Nintendo jobless. RIP Mr. Iwata. Thank you for your sacrifice.
Just one note: While the WiiU was somewhat on par with the XBox 360, it's underpowered CPU made developers struggle to port their games to console, having to rework their engines to leverage the stronger GPU, and that's why so many games had _worse_ performance than their last gen counterparts, despite some graphical improvements.
The Cpu was soo bad that It was efectivally a Gcn Cpu in a Hd console which made the theoretically more powerfull Wii U underpowered compared to the 360/ Ps3 let alone the Xbox one and Ps4.
It wasn’t underpowered- the CPU was misunderstood. Espresso was a heavy integer CPU, with an INSANELY FAST L3 cache shared with the GPU. Instead of running heavy SIMD on the CPU, the point was to do that on Latte (AMD GPGPU) and pass the results back to RAM. The crazy thing is despite developers avoiding doing this like the plague, they ended up being forced to do so anyway when PS4/XBONE came around the following year with weak, tablet Jaguar CPUs. Just like Wii U, studios would have to put the bulk of SIMD in the GPU. Nintendo had it right. Nobody wanted them to lead 3rd party, because Nintendo doesn’t pay 3rd parties for ports.
@@theothenintendomaster3717 Reiterating wrong information you heard elsewhere right after I correct it doesn’t make it right- it just makes you loud and wrong. I reiterate- Wii U’s CPU was not “weak”- developers expected high SIMD on it, but the system isn’t designed that way because even stronger SIMD than both 360/PS3 exists on the GPU for that, and this is the SAME THING PS4/XBONE would require. It’s called heterogeneous compute, and Wii U started it when it started the 8th generation in 2012. Not sure what that last bit was, but it was far from reality as evidenced by adults spending gobs of money on retro gaming for those very “kiddy consoles”.
Personally, the one reason I never got a Wii U was because there just weren't any games I felt like I really wanted for it. It does have good games, but no console sellers and it took a while for many heavy-hitters to come out.
@@zaneheaston8254 It did have a great eshop. Not only did they have SNES, N64, indie games, but also Gameboy advance games. It was only the Wii U that was lacking in quantity.
I remember I bought Wii U at launch for my nephew and the first message I got from him that he wasn't able to play any games for 4 hours because he had to wait for it to be updated
This was the generation where both Microsoft and Nintendo understood that the most important thing in a console are the games. Between the gamepad, TV features and etc. they had put too much junk between players and console without caring about the games themselves. The PS4 single-handedly won the generation by designing a black box that played games, period
As a Wii U owner of my own that had a Wii U since launch (along with a dark version) It was never perfect but it's still a good console and I had some good memories with it, I still play on it still to this day. Back then during that era not everyone was able to get one. So I brought my entire Wii U to a friend's place and we played together.
I wouldn't call it a good console. Charming yes, but it was shit and failed for that reason. Don't feel you can't like something just because it's bad.
@@Priception Also don't worry, It's never better than the switch and I'm not one of those nostalgia blind people that pretend everything was beautiful and pretty during the 3DS and the Wii U era.
I remember checking out the Wii U launch at the GameStop in my local mall. I couldn't help but overhear the sales clerk try to explain to some mom that the Wii U is a new console, not an accessory like a Wii Balance Board. The Gamepad is cool in concept, but it's a gimmick. The combo of the Switch being Docked or Undocked is actually a gamechanger, even with its lack of power. I myself was huge on Nintendo back then, but I didn't get the Wii U until Smash 4 launched. I just didn't care. When even a hardcore Nintendo fan is skipping out on the console, it's bad.
If I remember correctly, Nintendo lost its fanbase since the Gamecube era. The Wii only sold high because it introduced motion control, which at the time it was seen as the future of gaming. A lot of Wii owners, especially Nintendo fans, were not happy with the console.
It was the name that killed it. Unless you followed gaming you would hear Wii and Wii U and think that it was either same thing or a slight hardware upgrade to the same console.
Nintendo never number names their consoles. The most they've ever done was a follow up to the nes to super nes or Gameboy advance. So the switch 2 will probably just be a word n then switch.
@@portalalchemist320 So what? Just because they never did it before does not mean they can't do it now. Companies should be evolving, especially Nintendo.
It was very disappointing how in march 2015 we heard the mention of the next nintendo successor in an investors meeting and if you kept up with gaming news you heard about it. March 2015, thats like 2.5 years after the wii u launch that they mentioned a successor
Tehnically the existence of the Wii was mentioned as early as 2003, and that console was kinda shown at E3 2005 (but that was a prototype and still not even named) the console was only shown off and named the "Wii" in 2006.
Remember that meeting was Nintendo announcing it was going into mobile games and if they hadn't also announced new hardware at the same time everyone's takeaway would've been "Nintendo abandoning dedicated hardware" because between the Wii U going stillborn and people's intense fears that mobile would threaten the very existence of dedicated handhelds people's takeaway would be "Nintendo's giving up on the Wii U and 3DS" if they just announced the phone games by themselves.
EA Never even tried. They basically lied when they showed up at the Wii U event. Truly lied. They basically put out one game. A port of Mass Effect 3.. and why did it not sell? Two months, yeah, two months before it would come out EA decided to quick announce and drop the Mass Effect Trilogy on all other consoles, for the same price. They basically bait and switched the console and killed their own product on it, only to follow up by not supporting it anymore, and then later officially announcing they were dropping support. EA created their own scenario and simply showed up, initially, for some weird PR stunt. Take note, this is what truly drew an incredibly large amount of skepticism about EA when they showed up at the Switch reveal conference. Nobody believed him. And yeah, EA *tried* to screw the Switch out..but after years of major success of the platform, and enough investors shouting at EA about missing opportunities for money, EA caved.
EA's treatment of the Nintendo Switch speaks volumes of how EA views Nintendo and its players. Fifa 18 released on Switch as a port of Fifa 16 with current squads, refusing to use the Frostbite engine on Switch that Fifa 17 and onwards was made on. Plants Vs Zombies runs on Frostbite on the Switch just fine, so it wasn't like they couldn't do it, they couldn't be bothered to put the time money and the effort in to do so, they thought it would sell anyway regardless. Fifa 19-23 on the Switch were dubbed 'Legacy Edition' with nothing changed from Fifa 18 on the Switch, which was Fifa 16 in disguise. EA were right about the sales, every legacy edition of Fifa would make the top of the Switch games most sold in a month on release, returning to the top when discounts got put on it, likely due to the young demographic of Switch gamers having parents buy the game not realising the scam that EA were pulling. If Nintendo had any self respect here they were have stopped EA from doing this, but they were probably cashing in from it too. Then when Fifa rebranded to EAFC the Switch F.I.N.A.L.L.Y got the game with the Frostbite engine for EAFC24, myself and lots of others were pretty excited about this. Game released and EA had ported the game directly from the other consoles with zero optimisation efforts, meaning the game ran worse than a mouldy potato, I still play on Fifa 23 Legacy Edition on the Switch due to this, again EA didn't want to put the time money or effort in to something that would sell regardless. And it did, again the games are always on the top of the most sold list. You see other games optimised to run on the Switch, from companies who care about the console and its players: Fortnite, Rocket League, Hogwarts Legacy, Apex... EA could have done the same, if I were Nintendo I'd blacklist EA from working on their console cause it's all bad rep, but again, the money talks. That's how EA views Nintendo and its players, kids they can con.
Ea this, ea that. The wii u was so underpowered and sales lagging so much, that everyone checked out. But sure, ea bashing has been and apparently always will be easy. Have you ever played it-takes-two?
People could, in fact, also point to ubisoft and their zombie-something game and dropping all support after that. As far as i see it, the only people that supported it were sega, and a very small group of nintendofanboywhales
Everyone brings up the Virtual Boy as Nintendo's biggest failure, but from Nintendo's perspective itqas the GameCube. The WiiU was ahead of its time though, it beat the PS5 and XBS/X by 1.5 generations at being a console with no games.
>it beat the PS5 and XBS/X by 1.5 generations at being a console with no games. lol true that dude, im seeing people say "muh multiplayer" in this comment section when all you had for actual good multiplayer was obligatory mario kart and smash (something every other system had) nintendo land, and mario 3d world.
@@anonymist-n8z Most of the great PS3 library didn't come until the 2nd half of the generation. Until then, "PS3 has no game" was the meme of the era due to that console's own disastrous launch.
The one thing the Wii U will always have over the Switch is you can play DS games on it. They should find a way to make DS and 3DS work on NSO on their next console.
I fully expect DS to be added to NSO for the Switch 2 (Switch 2 is already heavily rumored to have a microphone). 3DS is more complicated, mainly because it has a camera and the Switch 2 won't so any game that uses the camera is probably out. 3DS games are also much larger (plenty are 2GB or even 4GB) and you probably couldn't have the system casually download the entire NSO library like you do with other systems.
@@pattersong6637 The camera really is not that relevant for most games. Even face raiders, the literal "camera:the game" game only uses it as a gimmick and allows you to create nonsencial "faces" from non-face images, so you could just use screenshots instead.
Brand recognition sells consoles, The Ps5 doesn't have a confusing name, (you know that the Ps5 is the 5th Playstation), The wii U did have a bad name, that just sounds like the name of a Wii accesory (especially the U Draw tablet).
@@theothenintendomaster3717 Xbox's branding is confusing. I don't even know the differences between everything after Xbox One. Whereas with Wii U, it made sense that it was new after the Wii has been out for 6 years.
@@Nickk7878-v8t The Xbox one, Xbox One x/s and Series X/s might be the most confusing names for game consoles ever, like did Microsoft forget to count, who counts bakwards, 360 to one(the Xbox one was named because it was "an all in one experience") but that still is a terrible name.
Cause people who had the wii didnt likely see the point of upgrading because "If My wii is just fine, why buy a wii U for more money". The 3ds on the other hand just acted as a new DS, which had a lot of collectability, especially with if you were playing multiplayer, or just liked collecting them. They were relatively cheap, you could get one for multiple family members, so it worked out better.
@@ZackLillipad Nope, the VB was a bigger failure. It was a commercial, critical and financial flop on every level. Nintendo would not revisit implementing 3D tech properly until the 3DS launched. The Wii U was a more viable minimal product than other systems (such as the dreamcast) and while not a financial success, it was a prototype and launchpoint for the switch. The Wii U had a ton of potential and value, but was just heavily underutilized.
@@joshuasommer6548VB was a side project, it was marketed as Handheld, it was never intended to replace Super Nintendo, while Wii U was intended to be the main console to replace Wii and its failure was severe enough for the CEO to cut his own salary so they don't have to lay off employee. Wii U failure by all account has bigger impact to nintendo than VB ever was.
The Rayman Legends delay pissed me off so much, they had the game READY for release, but pushed it back with 2 weeks prior to the launch of the game so they could release multiplatform later down the line, a courtesy Nintendo platforms had not exactly been seeing from multiplatform releases, having its releases always delayed while Sony and Microsoft got them earlier. But then Rayman Legends released alongside a high profile game and it sold the best on the Wii U, so what was even the point?
It's such a bitter shame how badly the Wii U failed in the global marketplace. It really was ahead of its time with the GamePad controller and how some games were able to utilize it. Marketing and name confusion aside, there were so many great games on the system to speak of. Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart 8, Super Mario 3D World, the HD remakes of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, Splatoon, Super Mario Maker, Yoshi's Woolly World, and Xenoblade Chronicles X, just to name a few. While it is nice that the Switch is successful and so many of the Wii U's best games were ported to its successor for a second shot at life, I will always have fond memories of the Wii U from the time I got one as an early Christmas present in 2014. Alas, with the removal of Miiverse in 2017 and the shutdown of the Wii U eShop and online services in 2023 and 2024, respectively, it feels like the system nowadays is but a shell of what it once was. It's saddening, but I still love my Wii U and will cherish the memories I had playing it back during its prime.
Great video. I was a Wii U owner since 2013 and it was a painful time. I like how u went into all the reasons the Wii U failed. As a lot of people just entirely blame marketing and act, it would have been a Wii level success it ot was marketed well. When there were many different factors.
It was never gonna be a 100 million seller but it could have been something other than "A system that seriously called Nintendo's existence into question." Besides the obvious things like a different name and such, I'm personally a strong believer that releasing it in 2011 rather than 2012 would've dramatically helped it out (getting two year rather than one year head start on PS4/XBone). Not enough to "save" it but enough to give it a more dignified life than getting pulled out behind the barn when it was still in its prime.
@@Priception You’re a very familiar troll that had a list of anti-Nintendo talking points on various social media platforms. Good to see this post isn’t that bad. Congrats.
If you look at the photo of the Wii U prototype that Nintendo officially put out, it's clear that the Wii U was always meant to be a Switch, but it was rushed out prematurely. The Wii U prototype had a detachable Wii Remote on each side, clearly a precursor to the JoyCon.
@@flyforce16 there's an image where Wii remotes were stuck to the side of a tablet screen as a Wii U prototype, which I'm sure you can find with Google. But that doesn't mean it was a prototype for JoyCons :/
It is deranged how many Wii U fanboys will attempt to claim that the hardware was "misunderstood" or under-utilized and how much better the Wii U was than the Switch.
@@nintendonerdjoseph Except Wii U WAS misunderstood- there are literal developer postmortems talking about not knowing how to use the CPU (Orochi Warriors 3), and no modern tools existed to port games- you had to figure it out yourself. Many games used only one thread, never touched L3, and hardly had games running over 33W. That’s not a “Wii U fanboy” take- that’s the observable truth given how much more capable Wii U was vs 7th generation. Need for Speed Most Wanted U is a night and day difference over 360/PS3, while Mass Effect 3 (from the same publisher) has texture pop-in, low resolution, and screen tearing on a system that clearly designed make screen tearing disappear. Now if you have info that counters that ALL DEVELOPERS had AMPLE information on how Espresso L3, SIMD chain, and MEM2 worked, I’d be willing to concede, but we know the few people that can answer that are probably still under NDA.🤫
Problem was, people were not interested in the Wii itself by 2011 as it was later seen as a fad. And because the Wii U associated itself with the Wii brand, it essentially ensured the Wii U would never see the light of day.
So I was working with Nintendo at the time during Wii U and 3DS. It's so weird to look at that launch video and still see myself in it that want to point out a couple of things in your fantastic recap. First of all, according to the employees I talked to, they were originally going to call this system either the Yu or U. It's like what Reggie said in the beginning. The first one was all about us. Now it's all about you. Hence the term project Cafe where you can order a bunch of different things. How you want it the way you want it. The apparent problem was that both employees and stockholders were like why are we dumping the name Wii When that name and brand is what's given us the biggest success to date. So what they apparently did was combined both the wee branding name with the new name for it to try to satisfy everyone and as a textbook example satisfied no one. Second of all, I remember actually being at the launch preview day and being informed that because they we're behind so much on software that everyone's going to get this like ginormous day one patch. It's going to take forever to download so I made sure to include that when I was giving my homes system. And lastly, while I can't confirm it, from what I understood, the original idea for the Nintendo switch had a lot of features that the Wii U and the 3DS had such as having a stylist having multimedia support, dual screens with the dock and having things like street pass but a more advanced version of it. These were all stripped out because as you said, one of the biggest problems is that people kept confusing the brands. So even when it was a positive things from their predecessor, they did a hard cut to everything before the Nintendo switch to absolutely sell to even the dumbest monkey on the planet that this was an entirely new thing that was incompatible with all their previous stuff.
I think the issue was branding it as a Wii successur when it’s much more of an evolution on the DS concept, what with the dual screens. If they had sold it as a hybrid console of the Wii and DS, meshing the best part of both into one console, I think it would’ve been an imediate hit.
This was an issue with 3DS also. I didn't know it was a new console for a while. I thought it was just a DS with a 3D screen. When I saw some Star Fox footage and saw GameCube level graphics that the DS couldn't achieve I figured it out then.
I just want to add one more thing about the marketing angle as someone who worked with Nintendo back then. I'll never forget when I was demoing Wii And 3DS games. And we had a screen that cycled through the different videos provided by Nintendo of the upcoming Wii U. And I'll never forget a particular moment when Assassin's Creed. 3. Came on during the Wii U section and it confused the entire audience. You could see the thought process that everyone had because Assassin's Creed was always advertised as next-gen. It would never be able to work on the normal Wii and a lot of people right after they saw that went. Oh, this is a whole new thing and that's when they got it. It's to drive more home to your point that even with the HD advancements the games that Nintendo were showing initially for Wii U looked indistinguishable art style wise to what came on the Wii and they put those games front and center so it didn't help. Dad, when people saw it they just thought it was an add-on. That was the first thing I noticed they corrected with the Nintendo switch because I remember people reacting to the initial reveal trailer and being shocked when they saw elder scrolls and NBA 2K and other types of games they were used to seeing on PlayStation 4 running on this thing and then that's when it hit everyone. This is a new thing that's actually competing and I feel like they learned that from the Wii U because even their first party games even when you compared them to their previous Wii versions like Super Mario 3D World to Super Mario Galaxy you notice a huge graphics jump and particularly an art style change to highlight that graphics jump. And the third parties obviously followed with that.
I personally think what killed the WiiU was the 3DS. The 3DS would’ve faced what I would believe to be worse marketing as the new gimmick could only be experienced in person, but by the time the WiiU came out, its price was cut to only $170, had a much bigger back catalogue of games and received much more support for years to come. Just like how Sony almost outsold the PS3 with their own PSP. Edit: I wanted to add this disclaimer. You did an excellent job breaking down all of this. One of the better video essays on one of Nintendo’s biggest blunders
Nah, Wii existed alongside DS without hurting each other's sales. The gamepad just had no appeal whatsoever. Both Wii U and 3DS gimmicks were unappealing (for general audiences I still think the 3D is great) but Super Mario 3D Land (and the pricecut) saved the 3DS, I was an early adopter and it was rough. 3D Land changed public perception of that thing. It was a true system seller and the games kept coming. That didn't happen with the Wii U at any point and third party support was non existent. It was dead on arrival.
Wii U was a great console. If they would have called it anything else besides Wii U, and emphasized it being a whole new console i feel it would have done a lot better.
The marketing gets overblown, yeah it was terrible but the Wii U's bad library I say is the biggest factor in sinking the system (like the PS3 had terrible early marketing too that contributed to it sinking early on, but was able to recover when it got the games to sell it). People not knowing what a Wii U was in its first year wouldn't have mattered if there was huge must have games on it, as people would have been forced to learn then what the Wii U was in order to play those games. This especially killed the console on launch; NSMBU (when the NSMB series was long stale and its terribly bland artstyle did absolutely nothing to compliment the jump to HD) and Nintendo Land were not system sellers whatsoever, the only other Nintendo consoles with similarly bad launch lineups were the Gamecube (which got major titles like Rogue Squadron 2 and Smash Melee very soon after launch, and ultimately wasn't that much more successful than the Wii U) and the 3DS (which nearly tanked as a result, with Nintendo having to do a huge price cut less than half a year after launch and the Ambassador program to save it). Those lack of games and most Wii U's first party titles being of niche interest additionally meant if you weren't into said niche game of the quarter, then that was just more months of waiting until something new comes out (like people will rave about Pikmin 3 as one of the "Good Wii U games™ ", yet if you didn't care about Pikmin such as myself when I bought the console on launch, then that was just several more months of nothing new to play). Then even the intended system sellers it did eventually get had big problems to them; Mario Kart 8 had its infamously bad roster at launch and no real battle mode (which would end up getting fixed in DLC and its enhanced port on Switch), and Smash 4 had a big dropoff in single-player content that hurt casual interest, while having its sales potential kneecapped by having a 3DS version launch before it (I seen so many casual players online go "well I don't need to get a Wii U to play Smash 4 when I can get it on 3DS!", terrible controls and much worse graphics be damned).
I am a huge nintendo fan, but I remember back when I saw the first announcement of the Wii U, my first reaction was "What were they thinking?" Compared that to the Nintendo Switch announcement, where I dropped my jaw and felt it was genius. I instantly wanted a switch!
I was only 9 years old when the Wii U came out, and I remember thinking that the GamePad itself was the actual console, and I thought the console part was just a disc reader 😂. I still loved that console back then and it was my main gaming system alongside my 3DS up until the Switch came out. Excellent video btw!
I remember being a freshman in high-school when i was hearing about the wii u and eventually getting one july 2013. It was brutal being a wii u optimistic fanboy back in those day before e3 2013. The cranky kong reveal at the 2013 game awards was Hilarious epic blunder. Commentary channels and forum posters had a field day with that fiasco.
i actually own/owned a wii u, strangest thing is i could barely walk any distance without the gamepad freaking out, but given the positioning of our kitchen and my room, it meant i could bring it in there and only there?? despite its flaws the games were hot thou and led to the switch
Poor dude. I loved the little critter. I just wanted it for the goofy Nintendo novelty it was. Thankfully I discovered more potential. The virtual console with exclusive crap like GBA and TurboGrafx. No plus tax buying crap from the eShop. Wii backwards compatibility.
I honestly had no idea Wii U was a thing until years after it's release. Someone I knew had one and the Wii. We only ever played the Wii. It took me a good couple of years to even go 'what is that?' It just basically wasn't marketed properly. As mentioned at the beginning of the video, most people thought this was a Wii add-on.
Zombi u on the Wii u.. cause I actually just discovered they ported it to other consoles.. damn it was so much fun playing the local pvp with one of you placing zombies and the other fighting, I wasted so many hours with friends
Nintendo had lost the core gamer audience basically the moment they launched the GameCube, which is why they pivoted so far in the first place with the Wii
It’s just so weird to me to see the first revealed version of the Wii U, like now something like that probably wouldn’t happen if it’s one of the 3 main consoles.
I remember only wanting a Wii U for Mario Maker. And yeah, it stung that the game pad couldn't be too far from the Wii U. Like, my mother had hers setup in the living room. Taking the controller into the kitchen disconnected it!
@@IsomerMashupsWii U has personality, actually had new games that all weren’t just ports (cough cough the Switch), and you didn’t have to pay an Online Subscription to not only play online, but also play older Nintendo games, like VIRTUAL CONSOLE.
I loved my Wii U but I had the rather unique case of never owning a Wii but owning a Wii U. The result was that I could experience basically all of the incredible Wii titles I'd missed dirt cheap as used titles while at the same time the Wii U slowly churned out its own library. Had some great times playing through $15 copies of No More Heroes 2 and Pandora's Tower. I realize that basically no one else was in this position due to the popularity of the Wii and the low popularity of the Wii U but it worked out for me.
Nerrel had a great video discussing the WiiU. But in short, Nintendo's gameplan was that the success of the Wii would mean those Wii Players would graduate into "hardcore gamers" right in time for the WiiU. But that didn't really happen. Wii Sales were crazy early but began to taper off. Most Wii users were super casual and more than satisfied with the Wii's offerings. Or transitioned to mobile games for their casual gaming fix. This was a massive chunk of the Wii playerbase that would now no longer be interested in the WiiU. Made worse by the fact that the branding. The name WiiU made it sound like an add on to the Wii. Not helped by the marketing focusing on the controller rather than the console. The hardcore players were put off by the WiiU's specs. It released and many years old ports of games like Arkham City and Dynasty Warriours ran worse than their 360 counterparts. Not a good look that the new 8th gen console couldn't outperform 8 year old hardware. And the WiiU wasn't even competing with 360/PS3. It was competing with the PS4/XB1. If you wanted to play the latest AAA games, Nintendo was not it this gen. The WiiU's touch screen didn't compensate as much for most games. People will cite stuff like the Touch Screen being used as a second screen for inventory management or as a map. But in the games that supported these features, you had to completely turn your attention away from the main screen in order to fiddle with your inventory or look at the map which felt like more of a distraction compared to using an in-game weapon wheel. Hell, ZombiU was literally built on the fact that the WiiU gamepad was distracting to use in the first place. Made worse by the fact that many multiplat games ran worse on the WiiU because the CPU was swamped trying to cover both the game and the Touch Screen. This left only the most diehard Nintendo fans to support the WiiU. The kind of people that "would buy a piece of cardboard if it let them play Mario on it". Which weren't enough. The only "killer feature" the WiiU had going for was off-TV play. The PS4's Remote Play and Steam Link weren't exactly top tier so the WiiU could do something here. But the WiiU's controller signal was streamed over Wifi so you were limited to playing in the same room. That's why the Switch was so successful. It learned from all the WiiU's mistakes. The main unit cuts back on stuff like the cameras since those were unnessary and raised the price. It actually plays games portably and in a smaller form factor than the WiiU Gamepad. It doesn't rely on any gimmicks that detrack or distract from the gameplay. The odd thing is that all this means the WiiU was always destined to do poorly. Nintendo probably could have stemmed the bleeding if they never made the Gamepad (which significantly would have brought down the price) and pitched it as a Wii 2. But it wouldn't have been able to compete with the PS4/XB1.
It's so weird that Nintendo never thought of putting 3DS games on Wii U since they had 2 screens. Capcom correctly did what I thought Nintendo should have done from the beginning releasing Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate simultaneously with the 3DS port. Seemed like a no Brainer to me.
Looking back, I don't think they were actually trying to save the Wii U, at least not after 2014, which was probably their last-ditch attempt at doing so. Holiday 2013 made it clear that they were never going to salvage this beautiful thing, so at that point, it was just a matter of biding their time and dishing out an appropriate trickle of new releases until the Switch could arrive. The fact that they never once cut the price seems to support this idea. I mean, I know they were taking a loss on each unit sold as it was, but still. Desperate times, and all that.
One thing I love about the Wii U which it did better than a lot of it's contemporaries is local multiplayer. I have so many memories of having people round and playing on it. A good example of this is that when my cousins came round to mine we'd spend ages having fun on the Wii U whereas round at their house where they only had an Xbox One there was fuck all to play and we'd spend most of the time taking turns on Destiny! Local multiplayer is sadly a dying art, I'm glad Nintendo still gets it at least. It's the best way to play games in my opinion.
the saddest part about the wii u is that it was lowkey a really good console, just with shit marketing (minus the gamepad having really shit range before it would lag out)
Might not be their best but I enjoyed having the WiiU which I got pretty much within its launch timeframe. Many great games were released for it including MK8, Super Mario 3D World, Splatoon, Mario Maker, Breath of The Wild, Yoshis Woolly World, DK Tropical Freeze, Toads Treasure Tracker, Xenoblade X, Pikmin 3 to name a few.
When they were promoting the Wii U I thought it was a handheld. My friend got the console n I was surprised it had a whole separate system and that it was just a controller with a screen
I got a Wii U purely for Smash Bros and I ended up playing mostly that and my Wii games on it because there was nothing else I was interested in. But I will give it that the Virtual Console introduced me to a lot of classics, and it was a much better way to experience legacy content than Switch Online.
Another thing worth mentioning: Nintendo replaced the DS with the 3DS in 2011, and while the 3DS was hardly a failure, it also wasn't nearly the success that the DS was. So Nintendo's handheld market was struggling at the same time they were introducing the Wii U. The *New* Nintendo DS probably didn't help. Nintendo was struggling on both fronts.
In 2018, I was at my older brother's place playing my Wii U an his friend, who wasn't a stranger to consoles, looked at it an went "What is that." I was absolutely broken lol.
I had to explain to SO many gamers that it was a new console from Nintendo. But first I had to figure out for myself if it was or not. The E3 presentation left me unsure.
Just to add my 2 cents: Even a lot of us who were tuned in to E3 and the like back then were confused by the 2011 reveal. I remember knowing a new Nintendo console was coming but since they never really showed it at that conference it did make me second guess myself. As for E3 2012, I remember that one being a huge disappointment for many of us. We were expecting a blowout akin to what they did for the 3DS in 2010 with all the new games and I don’t think a single new first party game was really announced beyond what, Nintendo Land? And the digital fireworks being the “one more thing” lol Not to mention the third party games were a bunch of late ports at full price. The Wii U presentation they did later that year was the best one and even that was a bit so so. The emergency Wii U January 2013 direct gave us some sliver of hope.
Also, something I think was also a factor of the Wii U’s failure was that many of the games available on it had 3DS equivalents that were good enough replacements during that gen for the more casual fan/ consumer. Smash Bros being the big one. I think the Wii U could have done better had Smash 4 been an exclusive.
Wii U was a DS for the living room, and should have been marketed as such. It should have also had upscaled DS style games on it from day one.. a collection of game and watch build in games would have been a nice and addictive novelty to get a feel for the system.
it was not… the PS4 and XONE launched the year after with 500GB of storage, and the PS3 before it had been regularly shipping in 160, 250, and 320GB configurations
It's a shame this console was marketed so poorly, because like a lot of people my age at the time, it was really hard to convince my parents that it was a new console. I went the entire generation on 3DS and Wii only because of the marketing of the console. Thankfully I have my own Wii U these days that I bought as an adult, but it was tough seeing all my friends with the console and I still had a Wii 💀💀
One thing I'd really love to see with the Switch 2 is some kind of return to their old quirky charm. Music in the home screens and shop, fun extras like the Wii Channels, just that of sense of silly fun I feel they've really lost during the Switch. Yeah it's massively successful but at the cost of becoming really vanilla and kinda bland imo.
Wind waker hd and breath of the wild for Wii u still has not lost their value since the day they came out. I'm not paying over 50$ for either game, still looking for copies under 50$.
Wind Waker HD, Twilight Princess HD, Mario Kart 8, Smash 4. Probably the only MUST HAVES, though there were a few good ones like Hyrule Warriors, Pokken Tournament, Super Mario Maker, 3D World, etc. The biggest slap in the face was Star Fox Zero. Nintendo could be great again, like they were in the N64 and GameCube days…if only they had a playable Star Fox, a 3D DK platformer, F-Zero GX2, Super Mario Sunshine 2, Diddy (whoops) Kong Racing 2, Mario Kart Double Dash 2, and more. But they don’t do it.
I truly hope Nintendo has figured out at this point that their gimmicks wear out their welcome within a week for anyone playing regularly and that the standards that exist industry wide elsewhere are there for a reason. They got it right with the switch and they can find some extra gimmick nonsense to add on top as a bonus feature that will be immediately ignored by the larger market but that doesn't impede on the ability to just play games like a normal person. I'm worried the success of the steam deck might get them making some nintendo ass decisions tho.
The impression I always got with the Wii U was that Nintendo was aiming to make a Switch... half a decade or so too early to make it feasible. Instead of a cost efficient hybrid console you can take anywhere like you got with the Switch, the best they could do was a console that was only portable within a single room of your home, with a GamePad that pushed the price up FAR more than the value it added to the console, and making it a pain for developers to make games for or consumers to justify buying. I still enjoy the Wii U, but the console was Nintendo's biggest home console flop for a good reason.
Back in December last year I was at my local dollar general and they were selling old games and I found a Wii U game for 4 bucks and it was just dance 2017
I didn´t even know the Wii U was a thing until a year after I bought the Switch. I assumed Nintendo just took much longer to make a new console. I had been playing on the Wii for pretty much 12 years. I never saw a single ad about the Wii U or about any game. And you might say "what about E3?" yeah, 11 or 12 years old me had no freaking clue what E3 was, so don´t even ask me about that and you might ask "don´t you had friends that could´ve told you?" and the answer is no. I was one of the best students in my class which of course means everyone hated and called me a nerd and then you might ask "what about the internet?" yeah, I didn´t had a youtube account until I was like 15 so I never kept up with any popular youtuber that covered Nintendo stuff so I was living under a rock. When the Switch came out I only found out because I saw an ad on the TV during Christmas.
I love my WiiU and play it regularly. It's trivial to install CFW and gives you a WiiU, Wii and Gamecube natively with one HDMI port. I don't understand why people pay insane money for GCs with ODEs and HDMI mods.
there's something i never understood with youtubers with their thumbnails why do they always put Miyamoto in each of their thumbnails? he's a game developer not a console developer developers should not be blamed
Actually, the Virtual Boy did worse than the Wii U with 770,000 Virtual Boys sold Vs over 13 million Wii U’s sold. Which actually means the Wii U IS NOT Nintendo’s worst selling console. 😳
one of the biggest reasons I didnt get a wii u until way too late is because whenever I'd ask for it from my parents they'd always say that we HAD a wii.
real.
@@egonyt The confusion really killed the system. I wanted one too back then, but my parents were about as confused as your parents were. Pity isn’t it?
@@crazedlunatic43 Glad I was born in 2011 and was also an only child meaning I didn't have a Wii, the Wii U was my first console (my birthday in 2016)
Seems like Nintendo Wii original is way more underrated than WiiU.
Naming it "Wii 2" would have saved the system.
Also, in a nice gesture from Satoru Iwata, due to the bad sales of Wii U, there's an impending layoffs that will happen in the office. But, Iwata-san decided to take the blow to himself and instead, cut his salary to make sure no one will be living Nintendo jobless.
RIP Mr. Iwata. Thank you for your sacrifice.
Wii U walked so the switch could run.
I'd run towards you but pain awaits
Wii u is the nintendos greatest mistake
@@simnm8057I love my Wii U even though it’s packed up…
@@IsaiahFisher19 I just unpacked mine and set it up recently! I’m having a blast. Now’s a good time to collect. Games are still relatively cheap !!
@@madphilx6397 yeah just all the good games got ported to the switch feel like it lost its value
Just one note: While the WiiU was somewhat on par with the XBox 360, it's underpowered CPU made developers struggle to port their games to console, having to rework their engines to leverage the stronger GPU, and that's why so many games had _worse_ performance than their last gen counterparts, despite some graphical improvements.
The Cpu was soo bad that It was efectivally a Gcn Cpu in a Hd console which made the theoretically more powerfull Wii U underpowered compared to the 360/ Ps3 let alone the Xbox one and Ps4.
It wasn’t underpowered- the CPU was misunderstood.
Espresso was a heavy integer CPU, with an INSANELY FAST L3 cache shared with the GPU.
Instead of running heavy SIMD on the CPU, the point was to do that on Latte (AMD GPGPU) and pass the results back to RAM.
The crazy thing is despite developers avoiding doing this like the plague, they ended up being forced to do so anyway when PS4/XBONE came around the following year with weak, tablet Jaguar CPUs.
Just like Wii U, studios would have to put the bulk of SIMD in the GPU.
Nintendo had it right. Nobody wanted them to lead 3rd party, because Nintendo doesn’t pay 3rd parties for ports.
@@ShadowFoxInfinite Kinda like the Cell Processor of the ps3 come to think of it.
@@theothenintendomaster3717 Reiterating wrong information you heard elsewhere right after I correct it doesn’t make it right- it just makes you loud and wrong.
I reiterate- Wii U’s CPU was not “weak”- developers expected high SIMD on it, but the system isn’t designed that way because even stronger SIMD than both 360/PS3 exists on the GPU for that, and this is the SAME THING PS4/XBONE would require.
It’s called heterogeneous compute, and Wii U started it when it started the 8th generation in 2012.
Not sure what that last bit was, but it was far from reality as evidenced by adults spending gobs of money on retro gaming for those very “kiddy consoles”.
@@ShadowFoxInfinite I am sorry that I told wrong information.
Personally, the one reason I never got a Wii U was because there just weren't any games I felt like I really wanted for it. It does have good games, but no console sellers and it took a while for many heavy-hitters to come out.
They came close to convincing me to pick one up with Pikmin 3, but after that all future Wii U games, looked like HD 3DS games
@@zaneheaston8254 It did have a great eshop. Not only did they have SNES, N64, indie games, but also Gameboy advance games. It was only the Wii U that was lacking in quantity.
No console sellers? Mario Kart 8? Smash Bros 4? Are you stupid
You could also say the switch is just full of Wii u games then
@@koolooc726 The Wii U is full of Switch games*
I remember I bought Wii U at launch for my nephew and the first message I got from him that he wasn't able to play any games for 4 hours because he had to wait for it to be updated
This was the generation where both Microsoft and Nintendo understood that the most important thing in a console are the games. Between the gamepad, TV features and etc. they had put too much junk between players and console without caring about the games themselves. The PS4 single-handedly won the generation by designing a black box that played games, period
MS still sucks tho haha
As a Wii U owner of my own that had a Wii U since launch (along with a dark version) It was never perfect but it's still a good console and I had some good memories with it, I still play on it still to this day.
Back then during that era not everyone was able to get one. So I brought my entire Wii U to a friend's place and we played together.
I wouldn't call it a good console. Charming yes, but it was shit and failed for that reason.
Don't feel you can't like something just because it's bad.
@@Priception Exactly and you do have a good point.
It's marketing was extremely horrible and half of the games we got on it were bad.
@@Priception Also don't worry, It's never better than the switch and I'm not one of those nostalgia blind people that pretend everything was beautiful and pretty during the 3DS and the Wii U era.
@@M64bros quit forcing people to hate the 3ds/ Wii U era, if they like it they like it, it’s not nostalgia blind
@@3dsfan2002 No worries I'm still playing on my 3DS and Wii U still to this day, Don't worry, I'm on both sides! 👍🏻
I remember checking out the Wii U launch at the GameStop in my local mall. I couldn't help but overhear the sales clerk try to explain to some mom that the Wii U is a new console, not an accessory like a Wii Balance Board. The Gamepad is cool in concept, but it's a gimmick. The combo of the Switch being Docked or Undocked is actually a gamechanger, even with its lack of power. I myself was huge on Nintendo back then, but I didn't get the Wii U until Smash 4 launched. I just didn't care. When even a hardcore Nintendo fan is skipping out on the console, it's bad.
If I remember correctly, Nintendo lost its fanbase since the Gamecube era. The Wii only sold high because it introduced motion control, which at the time it was seen as the future of gaming. A lot of Wii owners, especially Nintendo fans, were not happy with the console.
It was the name that killed it. Unless you followed gaming you would hear Wii and Wii U and think that it was either same thing or a slight hardware upgrade to the same console.
If rumors are true, the next gen console is gonna be named switch 2
Nintendo finally learned the lesson lmao
Nintendo never number names their consoles. The most they've ever done was a follow up to the nes to super nes or Gameboy advance. So the switch 2 will probably just be a word n then switch.
Nah, it’ll either be Switch U, or Switch Too
@@portalalchemist3203ds since it was the 3rd ds that also used 3d
@@portalalchemist320 So what? Just because they never did it before does not mean they can't do it now. Companies should be evolving, especially Nintendo.
@clipmaster6941 Okay random RUclips comment dude. The company with amount of success should definitely listen to you lol.
It was very disappointing how in march 2015 we heard the mention of the next nintendo successor in an investors meeting and if you kept up with gaming news you heard about it. March 2015, thats like 2.5 years after the wii u launch that they mentioned a successor
Tehnically the existence of the Wii was mentioned as early as 2003, and that console was kinda shown at E3 2005 (but that was a prototype and still not even named) the console was only shown off and named the "Wii" in 2006.
Remember that meeting was Nintendo announcing it was going into mobile games and if they hadn't also announced new hardware at the same time everyone's takeaway would've been "Nintendo abandoning dedicated hardware" because between the Wii U going stillborn and people's intense fears that mobile would threaten the very existence of dedicated handhelds people's takeaway would be "Nintendo's giving up on the Wii U and 3DS" if they just announced the phone games by themselves.
EA Never even tried. They basically lied when they showed up at the Wii U event. Truly lied. They basically put out one game. A port of Mass Effect 3.. and why did it not sell? Two months, yeah, two months before it would come out EA decided to quick announce and drop the Mass Effect Trilogy on all other consoles, for the same price. They basically bait and switched the console and killed their own product on it, only to follow up by not supporting it anymore, and then later officially announcing they were dropping support. EA created their own scenario and simply showed up, initially, for some weird PR stunt.
Take note, this is what truly drew an incredibly large amount of skepticism about EA when they showed up at the Switch reveal conference. Nobody believed him. And yeah, EA *tried* to screw the Switch out..but after years of major success of the platform, and enough investors shouting at EA about missing opportunities for money, EA caved.
I know it doesn’t make sense business wise but I wish Nintendo would’ve been petty enough to not allow EA to publish games on the Switch
@@RGG800this, the console definitely doesn’t need them.
EA's treatment of the Nintendo Switch speaks volumes of how EA views Nintendo and its players. Fifa 18 released on Switch as a port of Fifa 16 with current squads, refusing to use the Frostbite engine on Switch that Fifa 17 and onwards was made on. Plants Vs Zombies runs on Frostbite on the Switch just fine, so it wasn't like they couldn't do it, they couldn't be bothered to put the time money and the effort in to do so, they thought it would sell anyway regardless. Fifa 19-23 on the Switch were dubbed 'Legacy Edition' with nothing changed from Fifa 18 on the Switch, which was Fifa 16 in disguise.
EA were right about the sales, every legacy edition of Fifa would make the top of the Switch games most sold in a month on release, returning to the top when discounts got put on it, likely due to the young demographic of Switch gamers having parents buy the game not realising the scam that EA were pulling. If Nintendo had any self respect here they were have stopped EA from doing this, but they were probably cashing in from it too.
Then when Fifa rebranded to EAFC the Switch F.I.N.A.L.L.Y got the game with the Frostbite engine for EAFC24, myself and lots of others were pretty excited about this. Game released and EA had ported the game directly from the other consoles with zero optimisation efforts, meaning the game ran worse than a mouldy potato, I still play on Fifa 23 Legacy Edition on the Switch due to this, again EA didn't want to put the time money or effort in to something that would sell regardless. And it did, again the games are always on the top of the most sold list.
You see other games optimised to run on the Switch, from companies who care about the console and its players: Fortnite, Rocket League, Hogwarts Legacy, Apex... EA could have done the same, if I were Nintendo I'd blacklist EA from working on their console cause it's all bad rep, but again, the money talks. That's how EA views Nintendo and its players, kids they can con.
Ea this, ea that. The wii u was so underpowered and sales lagging so much, that everyone checked out. But sure, ea bashing has been and apparently always will be easy.
Have you ever played it-takes-two?
People could, in fact, also point to ubisoft and their zombie-something game and dropping all support after that. As far as i see it, the only people that supported it were sega, and a very small group of nintendofanboywhales
Everyone brings up the Virtual Boy as Nintendo's biggest failure, but from Nintendo's perspective itqas the GameCube.
The WiiU was ahead of its time though, it beat the PS5 and XBS/X by 1.5 generations at being a console with no games.
Lol, your points are true. But alas, the PS3 had already gotten the No Games title first.
Once again, the Wii U was a day late & a dollar short.
>it beat the PS5 and XBS/X by 1.5 generations at being a console with no games.
lol true that dude, im seeing people say "muh multiplayer" in this comment section when all you had for actual good multiplayer was obligatory mario kart and smash (something every other system had) nintendo land, and mario 3d world.
@@scaryhobbit211 ps3 has many many games depending on what you wanted to find. wii u truly has absolutely nothing to do on it especially nowadays
Was Xenoblade games only on Wii U or Wii too?@@anonymist-n8z
@@anonymist-n8z Most of the great PS3 library didn't come until the 2nd half of the generation.
Until then, "PS3 has no game" was the meme of the era due to that console's own disastrous launch.
This thing was a hard sell for me back then. I was invested more into the PS Vita and 3DS during those times
When PS4 and Xbox One released, I was like, "I can't wait to see what Nintendo offers," not realizing it was already released a year prior.
The one thing the Wii U will always have over the Switch is you can play DS games on it.
They should find a way to make DS and 3DS work on NSO on their next console.
just get a ds weirdo.
If they add a microphone, then DS games already work.
I fully expect DS to be added to NSO for the Switch 2 (Switch 2 is already heavily rumored to have a microphone). 3DS is more complicated, mainly because it has a camera and the Switch 2 won't so any game that uses the camera is probably out. 3DS games are also much larger (plenty are 2GB or even 4GB) and you probably couldn't have the system casually download the entire NSO library like you do with other systems.
@@pattersong6637 The camera really is not that relevant for most games. Even face raiders, the literal "camera:the game" game only uses it as a gimmick and allows you to create nonsencial "faces" from non-face images, so you could just use screenshots instead.
There is a lack of new game output for the modern Xbox and PS5, but they are succeeding over what the Wii U did. Why is that the case?
Brand recognition sells consoles, The Ps5 doesn't have a confusing name, (you know that the Ps5 is the 5th Playstation), The wii U did have a bad name, that just sounds like the name of a Wii accesory (especially the U Draw tablet).
@@theothenintendomaster3717 Xbox's branding is confusing. I don't even know the differences between everything after Xbox One. Whereas with Wii U, it made sense that it was new after the Wii has been out for 6 years.
@@Nickk7878-v8t The Xbox one, Xbox One x/s and Series X/s might be the most confusing names for game consoles ever, like did Microsoft forget to count, who counts bakwards, 360 to one(the Xbox one was named because it was "an all in one experience") but that still is a terrible name.
Cause people who had the wii didnt likely see the point of upgrading because "If My wii is just fine, why buy a wii U for more money". The 3ds on the other hand just acted as a new DS, which had a lot of collectability, especially with if you were playing multiplayer, or just liked collecting them. They were relatively cheap, you could get one for multiple family members, so it worked out better.
@@TimmyDaTurtle Can't the same argument be made for an Xbox Series whatever and a PS4?
Opening 3 seconds "The Nintendo Wii U is Nintendo's biggest failure ever" Me, immediately: *cough Virtua Boy Cough*
Is it a bigger failure than the Virtual Boy because of the expectations that it would catch on like the Wii being very wrong?
yeah, i don’t think nintendo had high hopes for the VB. the N64 was well into development by the time it came out
Yes I would say so. Especially since VB was not Nintendo’s main console at the time, it was pretty experimental
@@ZackLillipad Nope, the VB was a bigger failure. It was a commercial, critical and financial flop on every level. Nintendo would not revisit implementing 3D tech properly until the 3DS launched.
The Wii U was a more viable minimal product than other systems (such as the dreamcast) and while not a financial success, it was a prototype and launchpoint for the switch. The Wii U had a ton of potential and value, but was just heavily underutilized.
@@joshuasommer6548 yes, virtual boy is just a failure, and wii u is like gamecube in 2010s
@@joshuasommer6548VB was a side project, it was marketed as Handheld, it was never intended to replace Super Nintendo, while Wii U was intended to be the main console to replace Wii and its failure was severe enough for the CEO to cut his own salary so they don't have to lay off employee. Wii U failure by all account has bigger impact to nintendo than VB ever was.
“The Nintendo Wii U is Nintendo’s biggest failure”
The virtual boy: peaking around the corner
The wii u was sold for $300 when the PS3 and Xbox360 was $200. The wii u had no GTA5. That was the end of it.
And the PS4 was $399 a year later. It never stood a chance
“Wii U had no GTA 5” wtf is this argument💀💀
Wii didn’t have GTA IV. What’s your point there?
Well it wasn't just ho GTA it was no third party support at all! $300 is fine but make it count.
The Rayman Legends delay pissed me off so much, they had the game READY for release, but pushed it back with 2 weeks prior to the launch of the game so they could release multiplatform later down the line, a courtesy Nintendo platforms had not exactly been seeing from multiplatform releases, having its releases always delayed while Sony and Microsoft got them earlier.
But then Rayman Legends released alongside a high profile game and it sold the best on the Wii U, so what was even the point?
At least RE4 was a gcn exclusive for 10 months.
It's such a bitter shame how badly the Wii U failed in the global marketplace. It really was ahead of its time with the GamePad controller and how some games were able to utilize it. Marketing and name confusion aside, there were so many great games on the system to speak of. Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart 8, Super Mario 3D World, the HD remakes of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, Splatoon, Super Mario Maker, Yoshi's Woolly World, and Xenoblade Chronicles X, just to name a few.
While it is nice that the Switch is successful and so many of the Wii U's best games were ported to its successor for a second shot at life, I will always have fond memories of the Wii U from the time I got one as an early Christmas present in 2014. Alas, with the removal of Miiverse in 2017 and the shutdown of the Wii U eShop and online services in 2023 and 2024, respectively, it feels like the system nowadays is but a shell of what it once was. It's saddening, but I still love my Wii U and will cherish the memories I had playing it back during its prime.
Great video. I was a Wii U owner since 2013 and it was a painful time.
I like how u went into all the reasons the Wii U failed. As a lot of people just entirely blame marketing and act, it would have been a Wii level success it ot was marketed well. When there were many different factors.
WiiU games at least is very memorable, like Mario Kart 7 and 8.
It was never gonna be a 100 million seller but it could have been something other than "A system that seriously called Nintendo's existence into question." Besides the obvious things like a different name and such, I'm personally a strong believer that releasing it in 2011 rather than 2012 would've dramatically helped it out (getting two year rather than one year head start on PS4/XBone). Not enough to "save" it but enough to give it a more dignified life than getting pulled out behind the barn when it was still in its prime.
@@Priception You’re a very familiar troll that had a list of anti-Nintendo talking points on various social media platforms.
Good to see this post isn’t that bad. Congrats.
@@ShadowFoxInfinite who are you again?
@@Priception Nevermind I got exactly what I needed here.
If you look at the photo of the Wii U prototype that Nintendo officially put out, it's clear that the Wii U was always meant to be a Switch, but it was rushed out prematurely.
The Wii U prototype had a detachable Wii Remote on each side, clearly a precursor to the JoyCon.
please don't talk like your speculation is a fact
prove it
BS show your proof
@@flyforce16 there's an image where Wii remotes were stuck to the side of a tablet screen as a Wii U prototype, which I'm sure you can find with Google.
But that doesn't mean it was a prototype for JoyCons :/
@@ask343 I don't know how much closer you can get to JoyCon than detachable controllers on the side of a screen.
So I own a "wii" and nintendo showing me a controller called the "u", huh?! Aight and it's $300? Nah imma keep using my wii 😅
I remember walking into Best Buy the same week the Wii U came out and they literally had a whole pallet of em sitting on the floor...
It is deranged how many Wii U fanboys will attempt to claim that the hardware was "misunderstood" or under-utilized and how much better the Wii U was than the Switch.
@@nintendonerdjoseph Except Wii U WAS misunderstood- there are literal developer postmortems talking about not knowing how to use the CPU (Orochi Warriors 3), and no modern tools existed to port games- you had to figure it out yourself.
Many games used only one thread, never touched L3, and hardly had games running over 33W.
That’s not a “Wii U fanboy” take- that’s the observable truth given how much more capable Wii U was vs 7th generation. Need for Speed Most Wanted U is a night and day difference over 360/PS3, while Mass Effect 3 (from the same publisher) has texture pop-in, low resolution, and screen tearing on a system that clearly designed make screen tearing disappear.
Now if you have info that counters that ALL DEVELOPERS had AMPLE information on how Espresso L3, SIMD chain, and MEM2 worked, I’d be willing to concede, but we know the few people that can answer that are probably still under NDA.🤫
Even just naming it the Wii 2 instead, would have made a big difference. I hope they won’t make the same mistake with the next Switch.
It’s gonna be Super Nintendo Switch
Problem was, people were not interested in the Wii itself by 2011 as it was later seen as a fad. And because the Wii U associated itself with the Wii brand, it essentially ensured the Wii U would never see the light of day.
So I was working with Nintendo at the time during Wii U and 3DS. It's so weird to look at that launch video and still see myself in it that want to point out a couple of things in your fantastic recap. First of all, according to the employees I talked to, they were originally going to call this system either the Yu or U. It's like what Reggie said in the beginning. The first one was all about us. Now it's all about you. Hence the term project Cafe where you can order a bunch of different things. How you want it the way you want it. The apparent problem was that both employees and stockholders were like why are we dumping the name Wii When that name and brand is what's given us the biggest success to date. So what they apparently did was combined both the wee branding name with the new name for it to try to satisfy everyone and as a textbook example satisfied no one. Second of all, I remember actually being at the launch preview day and being informed that because they we're behind so much on software that everyone's going to get this like ginormous day one patch. It's going to take forever to download so I made sure to include that when I was giving my homes system. And lastly, while I can't confirm it, from what I understood, the original idea for the Nintendo switch had a lot of features that the Wii U and the 3DS had such as having a stylist having multimedia support, dual screens with the dock and having things like street pass but a more advanced version of it. These were all stripped out because as you said, one of the biggest problems is that people kept confusing the brands. So even when it was a positive things from their predecessor, they did a hard cut to everything before the Nintendo switch to absolutely sell to even the dumbest monkey on the planet that this was an entirely new thing that was incompatible with all their previous stuff.
I still think naming it Super Wii would have been a game changer.
I think the issue was branding it as a Wii successur when it’s much more of an evolution on the DS concept, what with the dual screens. If they had sold it as a hybrid console of the Wii and DS, meshing the best part of both into one console, I think it would’ve been an imediate hit.
This was an issue with 3DS also. I didn't know it was a new console for a while. I thought it was just a DS with a 3D screen. When I saw some Star Fox footage and saw GameCube level graphics that the DS couldn't achieve I figured it out then.
I just want to add one more thing about the marketing angle as someone who worked with Nintendo back then. I'll never forget when I was demoing Wii And 3DS games. And we had a screen that cycled through the different videos provided by Nintendo of the upcoming Wii U. And I'll never forget a particular moment when Assassin's Creed. 3. Came on during the Wii U section and it confused the entire audience. You could see the thought process that everyone had because Assassin's Creed was always advertised as next-gen. It would never be able to work on the normal Wii and a lot of people right after they saw that went. Oh, this is a whole new thing and that's when they got it. It's to drive more home to your point that even with the HD advancements the games that Nintendo were showing initially for Wii U looked indistinguishable art style wise to what came on the Wii and they put those games front and center so it didn't help. Dad, when people saw it they just thought it was an add-on. That was the first thing I noticed they corrected with the Nintendo switch because I remember people reacting to the initial reveal trailer and being shocked when they saw elder scrolls and NBA 2K and other types of games they were used to seeing on PlayStation 4 running on this thing and then that's when it hit everyone. This is a new thing that's actually competing and I feel like they learned that from the Wii U because even their first party games even when you compared them to their previous Wii versions like Super Mario 3D World to Super Mario Galaxy you notice a huge graphics jump and particularly an art style change to highlight that graphics jump. And the third parties obviously followed with that.
I personally think what killed the WiiU was the 3DS. The 3DS would’ve faced what I would believe to be worse marketing as the new gimmick could only be experienced in person, but by the time the WiiU came out, its price was cut to only $170, had a much bigger back catalogue of games and received much more support for years to come. Just like how Sony almost outsold the PS3 with their own PSP.
Edit: I wanted to add this disclaimer. You did an excellent job breaking down all of this. One of the better video essays on one of Nintendo’s biggest blunders
Handhelds are forgiving to the customers because of easy access, unlike the vita.
Nah, Wii existed alongside DS without hurting each other's sales. The gamepad just had no appeal whatsoever. Both Wii U and 3DS gimmicks were unappealing (for general audiences I still think the 3D is great) but Super Mario 3D Land (and the pricecut) saved the 3DS, I was an early adopter and it was rough. 3D Land changed public perception of that thing. It was a true system seller and the games kept coming. That didn't happen with the Wii U at any point and third party support was non existent. It was dead on arrival.
Wii U was a great console. If they would have called it anything else besides Wii U, and emphasized it being a whole new console i feel it would have done a lot better.
The marketing gets overblown, yeah it was terrible but the Wii U's bad library I say is the biggest factor in sinking the system (like the PS3 had terrible early marketing too that contributed to it sinking early on, but was able to recover when it got the games to sell it). People not knowing what a Wii U was in its first year wouldn't have mattered if there was huge must have games on it, as people would have been forced to learn then what the Wii U was in order to play those games. This especially killed the console on launch; NSMBU (when the NSMB series was long stale and its terribly bland artstyle did absolutely nothing to compliment the jump to HD) and Nintendo Land were not system sellers whatsoever, the only other Nintendo consoles with similarly bad launch lineups were the Gamecube (which got major titles like Rogue Squadron 2 and Smash Melee very soon after launch, and ultimately wasn't that much more successful than the Wii U) and the 3DS (which nearly tanked as a result, with Nintendo having to do a huge price cut less than half a year after launch and the Ambassador program to save it). Those lack of games and most Wii U's first party titles being of niche interest additionally meant if you weren't into said niche game of the quarter, then that was just more months of waiting until something new comes out (like people will rave about Pikmin 3 as one of the "Good Wii U games™ ", yet if you didn't care about Pikmin such as myself when I bought the console on launch, then that was just several more months of nothing new to play). Then even the intended system sellers it did eventually get had big problems to them; Mario Kart 8 had its infamously bad roster at launch and no real battle mode (which would end up getting fixed in DLC and its enhanced port on Switch), and Smash 4 had a big dropoff in single-player content that hurt casual interest, while having its sales potential kneecapped by having a 3DS version launch before it (I seen so many casual players online go "well I don't need to get a Wii U to play Smash 4 when I can get it on 3DS!", terrible controls and much worse graphics be damned).
I am a huge nintendo fan, but I remember back when I saw the first announcement of the Wii U, my first reaction was "What were they thinking?"
Compared that to the Nintendo Switch announcement, where I dropped my jaw and felt it was genius. I instantly wanted a switch!
Especially with Switch 2 on the horizon in 2027.
@@purwantiallan5089 2027? Lol, it will release this this year.
I was only 9 years old when the Wii U came out, and I remember thinking that the GamePad itself was the actual console, and I thought the console part was just a disc reader 😂. I still loved that console back then and it was my main gaming system alongside my 3DS up until the Switch came out. Excellent video btw!
I’ve seen you around before.
Even PlayStation Vita considered to be more profitable than WiiU.
I remember being a freshman in high-school when i was hearing about the wii u and eventually getting one july 2013. It was brutal being a wii u optimistic fanboy back in those day before e3 2013. The cranky kong reveal at the 2013 game awards was Hilarious epic blunder. Commentary channels and forum posters had a field day with that fiasco.
My cousin had a WiiU and I didn’t even know it was an actual console until now lol. Always thought it was meant to be portable
i actually own/owned a wii u, strangest thing is i could barely walk any distance without the gamepad freaking out, but given the positioning of our kitchen and my room, it meant i could bring it in there and only there?? despite its flaws the games were hot thou and led to the switch
Poor dude. I loved the little critter. I just wanted it for the goofy Nintendo novelty it was. Thankfully I discovered more potential. The virtual console with exclusive crap like GBA and TurboGrafx. No plus tax buying crap from the eShop. Wii backwards compatibility.
I remember arguing with my friend who wasn't a Hard-core gamer in 2013. She argued me up and down that the WII U was just a new controller for the Wii
I honestly had no idea Wii U was a thing until years after it's release. Someone I knew had one and the Wii. We only ever played the Wii. It took me a good couple of years to even go 'what is that?' It just basically wasn't marketed properly. As mentioned at the beginning of the video, most people thought this was a Wii add-on.
I still use my wii u 🤪 I was playing Nintendoland a week ago and donkey Kong returns on my wii u ❤
Awesome vid, you deserve way more subscribers. The quality from this vid is amazing! Good stuff keep it up !
This was the last time Nintendo had free online 💔🥺
Zombi u on the Wii u.. cause I actually just discovered they ported it to other consoles.. damn it was so much fun playing the local pvp with one of you placing zombies and the other fighting, I wasted so many hours with friends
Yeah Zombi U is also on 360/ps3 and Xbox One/ps4
One way to put things in perspective is that the Wii U took about three years to ship more units than the DREAMCAST.
Yea If Sega was not so bankrupt when the Dreamcast came out I think that console could have sold around 21/23 million.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild did release on WiiU
But like who cares about the Wii U version of that game, nobody.
Nintendo had lost the core gamer audience basically the moment they launched the GameCube, which is why they pivoted so far in the first place with the Wii
It’s just so weird to me to see the first revealed version of the Wii U, like now something like that probably wouldn’t happen if it’s one of the 3 main consoles.
I remember only wanting a Wii U for Mario Maker. And yeah, it stung that the game pad couldn't be too far from the Wii U. Like, my mother had hers setup in the living room. Taking the controller into the kitchen disconnected it!
Was gonna buy a Wii U until I heard about this NX thing. Turned out to be a life changing decision. Great vid man!
The Nintendo Switch is one of the greatest comebacks in gaming history and Wii U Was Just A Prototype
Wii u is better
@@xandercharmander Justify that.
@@IsomerMashupsWii U has personality, actually had new games that all weren’t just ports (cough cough the Switch), and you didn’t have to pay an Online Subscription to not only play online, but also play older Nintendo games, like VIRTUAL CONSOLE.
Considering how many people are turning against Nintendo it makes me wonder if it will significantly affect the Switch 2 sales.
I loved my Wii U but I had the rather unique case of never owning a Wii but owning a Wii U. The result was that I could experience basically all of the incredible Wii titles I'd missed dirt cheap as used titles while at the same time the Wii U slowly churned out its own library. Had some great times playing through $15 copies of No More Heroes 2 and Pandora's Tower.
I realize that basically no one else was in this position due to the popularity of the Wii and the low popularity of the Wii U but it worked out for me.
It's such a shame the Wii U didn't succeed, it was such a great concept!
One more video before studying for midterms 😂
Nerrel had a great video discussing the WiiU. But in short, Nintendo's gameplan was that the success of the Wii would mean those Wii Players would graduate into "hardcore gamers" right in time for the WiiU. But that didn't really happen. Wii Sales were crazy early but began to taper off. Most Wii users were super casual and more than satisfied with the Wii's offerings. Or transitioned to mobile games for their casual gaming fix. This was a massive chunk of the Wii playerbase that would now no longer be interested in the WiiU. Made worse by the fact that the branding. The name WiiU made it sound like an add on to the Wii. Not helped by the marketing focusing on the controller rather than the console.
The hardcore players were put off by the WiiU's specs. It released and many years old ports of games like Arkham City and Dynasty Warriours ran worse than their 360 counterparts. Not a good look that the new 8th gen console couldn't outperform 8 year old hardware. And the WiiU wasn't even competing with 360/PS3. It was competing with the PS4/XB1. If you wanted to play the latest AAA games, Nintendo was not it this gen.
The WiiU's touch screen didn't compensate as much for most games. People will cite stuff like the Touch Screen being used as a second screen for inventory management or as a map. But in the games that supported these features, you had to completely turn your attention away from the main screen in order to fiddle with your inventory or look at the map which felt like more of a distraction compared to using an in-game weapon wheel. Hell, ZombiU was literally built on the fact that the WiiU gamepad was distracting to use in the first place. Made worse by the fact that many multiplat games ran worse on the WiiU because the CPU was swamped trying to cover both the game and the Touch Screen.
This left only the most diehard Nintendo fans to support the WiiU. The kind of people that "would buy a piece of cardboard if it let them play Mario on it". Which weren't enough.
The only "killer feature" the WiiU had going for was off-TV play. The PS4's Remote Play and Steam Link weren't exactly top tier so the WiiU could do something here. But the WiiU's controller signal was streamed over Wifi so you were limited to playing in the same room.
That's why the Switch was so successful. It learned from all the WiiU's mistakes. The main unit cuts back on stuff like the cameras since those were unnessary and raised the price. It actually plays games portably and in a smaller form factor than the WiiU Gamepad. It doesn't rely on any gimmicks that detrack or distract from the gameplay.
The odd thing is that all this means the WiiU was always destined to do poorly. Nintendo probably could have stemmed the bleeding if they never made the Gamepad (which significantly would have brought down the price) and pitched it as a Wii 2. But it wouldn't have been able to compete with the PS4/XB1.
It's so weird that Nintendo never thought of putting 3DS games on Wii U since they had 2 screens.
Capcom correctly did what I thought Nintendo should have done from the beginning releasing Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate simultaneously with the 3DS port. Seemed like a no Brainer to me.
I didn’t get a Wii U until the Zelda bundle came out.
0:00 no that would be the virtual boy
Looking back, I don't think they were actually trying to save the Wii U, at least not after 2014, which was probably their last-ditch attempt at doing so. Holiday 2013 made it clear that they were never going to salvage this beautiful thing, so at that point, it was just a matter of biding their time and dishing out an appropriate trickle of new releases until the Switch could arrive. The fact that they never once cut the price seems to support this idea. I mean, I know they were taking a loss on each unit sold as it was, but still. Desperate times, and all that.
One thing I love about the Wii U which it did better than a lot of it's contemporaries is local multiplayer. I have so many memories of having people round and playing on it. A good example of this is that when my cousins came round to mine we'd spend ages having fun on the Wii U whereas round at their house where they only had an Xbox One there was fuck all to play and we'd spend most of the time taking turns on Destiny! Local multiplayer is sadly a dying art, I'm glad Nintendo still gets it at least. It's the best way to play games in my opinion.
the saddest part about the wii u is that it was lowkey a really good console, just with shit marketing (minus the gamepad having really shit range before it would lag out)
Might not be their best but I enjoyed having the WiiU which I got pretty much within its launch timeframe. Many great games were released for it including MK8, Super Mario 3D World, Splatoon, Mario Maker, Breath of The Wild, Yoshis Woolly World, DK Tropical Freeze, Toads Treasure Tracker, Xenoblade X, Pikmin 3 to name a few.
When they were promoting the Wii U I thought it was a handheld. My friend got the console n I was surprised it had a whole separate system and that it was just a controller with a screen
I got a Wii U purely for Smash Bros and I ended up playing mostly that and my Wii games on it because there was nothing else I was interested in. But I will give it that the Virtual Console introduced me to a lot of classics, and it was a much better way to experience legacy content than Switch Online.
Another thing worth mentioning: Nintendo replaced the DS with the 3DS in 2011, and while the 3DS was hardly a failure, it also wasn't nearly the success that the DS was. So Nintendo's handheld market was struggling at the same time they were introducing the Wii U. The *New* Nintendo DS probably didn't help. Nintendo was struggling on both fronts.
Always look forward to watching your videos but as a Wii U owner and fan from day 1, damn this is gunna be a tough watch for me lol
Thanks for the support!! I was a Wii U owner at the time as well, so I can relate to how you feel
the intro ends at 20:02
Man. Not realizing that broadcast TV was dead killed both Microsoft and Nintendo in this era.
They should have gone with Wii 2. Adding HDMI and a better pro controller.
Everybody was tired of the Wii 1 back then by 2010
@@therealjaystone2344 like how I'm tired for the Switch 1 now and waiting for the Switch 2
Or should I say, Switch U...
@@ask343 i stopped buy new switch releases since 2022
@@3dsfan2002 wow, the last titles I bought were Super Mario Bros Wonder and TOTK in 2023
@ ok in reality I did buy engage, return to dream land remake and wonder
Nintendos biggest failure no, I’d say the virtual boy is the worst
If your expectations are low, you won't be disappointed. That's why the Wii U was a bigger failure.
In 2018, I was at my older brother's place playing my Wii U an his friend, who wasn't a stranger to consoles, looked at it an went "What is that." I was absolutely broken lol.
I had to explain to SO many gamers that it was a new console from Nintendo. But first I had to figure out for myself if it was or not. The E3 presentation left me unsure.
13:16 you can just press b on start up but idk if that was in day one or an update
Just to add my 2 cents:
Even a lot of us who were tuned in to E3 and the like back then were confused by the 2011 reveal. I remember knowing a new Nintendo console was coming but since they never really showed it at that conference it did make me second guess myself.
As for E3 2012, I remember that one being a huge disappointment for many of us. We were expecting a blowout akin to what they did for the 3DS in 2010 with all the new games and I don’t think a single new first party game was really announced beyond what, Nintendo Land? And the digital fireworks being the “one more thing” lol
Not to mention the third party games were a bunch of late ports at full price.
The Wii U presentation they did later that year was the best one and even that was a bit so so. The emergency Wii U January 2013 direct gave us some sliver of hope.
Also, something I think was also a factor of the Wii U’s failure was that many of the games available on it had 3DS equivalents that were good enough replacements during that gen for the more casual fan/ consumer.
Smash Bros being the big one. I think the Wii U could have done better had Smash 4 been an exclusive.
It really should've been called the Wii 2 or something completely different.
At least the Wii U paved the way for the Switch.
Wii U was a DS for the living room, and should have been marketed as such.
It should have also had upscaled DS style games on it from day one..
a collection of game and watch build in games would have been a nice and addictive novelty to get a feel for the system.
when 32 gb was fine for a console
And when we realize the platinum edition was the most defective hardware
It wasn't even really fine back then tbh. I could only fit a handful of games, then two when I patched xenoblade x.
32GB was made fun of at the time for being pitifully small
it was not… the PS4 and XONE launched the year after with 500GB of storage, and the PS3 before it had been regularly shipping in 160, 250, and 320GB configurations
It was never fine lol
Wii U is still the best version of Lego City Undercover.
It’s very unfortunate Nintendo Switch didn’t have the movie theater to replay cutscenes.
It's a shame this console was marketed so poorly, because like a lot of people my age at the time, it was really hard to convince my parents that it was a new console. I went the entire generation on 3DS and Wii only because of the marketing of the console. Thankfully I have my own Wii U these days that I bought as an adult, but it was tough seeing all my friends with the console and I still had a Wii 💀💀
Wii U is Nintendo's biggest failure?
Virtual Boy be like: Am I a joke to you?
One thing I'd really love to see with the Switch 2 is some kind of return to their old quirky charm. Music in the home screens and shop, fun extras like the Wii Channels, just that of sense of silly fun I feel they've really lost during the Switch. Yeah it's massively successful but at the cost of becoming really vanilla and kinda bland imo.
Wind waker hd and breath of the wild for Wii u still has not lost their value since the day they came out. I'm not paying over 50$ for either game, still looking for copies under 50$.
Wind Waker HD, Twilight Princess HD, Mario Kart 8, Smash 4. Probably the only MUST HAVES, though there were a few good ones like Hyrule Warriors, Pokken Tournament, Super Mario Maker, 3D World, etc.
The biggest slap in the face was Star Fox Zero. Nintendo could be great again, like they were in the N64 and GameCube days…if only they had a playable Star Fox, a 3D DK platformer, F-Zero GX2, Super Mario Sunshine 2, Diddy (whoops) Kong Racing 2, Mario Kart Double Dash 2, and more. But they don’t do it.
I truly hope Nintendo has figured out at this point that their gimmicks wear out their welcome within a week for anyone playing regularly and that the standards that exist industry wide elsewhere are there for a reason. They got it right with the switch and they can find some extra gimmick nonsense to add on top as a bonus feature that will be immediately ignored by the larger market but that doesn't impede on the ability to just play games like a normal person. I'm worried the success of the steam deck might get them making some nintendo ass decisions tho.
We are “Wii” You are “U.”
The impression I always got with the Wii U was that Nintendo was aiming to make a Switch... half a decade or so too early to make it feasible. Instead of a cost efficient hybrid console you can take anywhere like you got with the Switch, the best they could do was a console that was only portable within a single room of your home, with a GamePad that pushed the price up FAR more than the value it added to the console, and making it a pain for developers to make games for or consumers to justify buying. I still enjoy the Wii U, but the console was Nintendo's biggest home console flop for a good reason.
Back in December last year I was at my local dollar general and they were selling old games and I found a Wii U game for 4 bucks and it was just dance 2017
I love your videos vroddie, respect 🐐
Thanks for watching!!
I didn´t even know the Wii U was a thing until a year after I bought the Switch. I assumed Nintendo just took much longer to make a new console. I had been playing on the Wii for pretty much 12 years. I never saw a single ad about the Wii U or about any game. And you might say "what about E3?" yeah, 11 or 12 years old me had no freaking clue what E3 was, so don´t even ask me about that and you might ask "don´t you had friends that could´ve told you?" and the answer is no. I was one of the best students in my class which of course means everyone hated and called me a nerd and then you might ask "what about the internet?" yeah, I didn´t had a youtube account until I was like 15 so I never kept up with any popular youtuber that covered Nintendo stuff so I was living under a rock. When the Switch came out I only found out because I saw an ad on the TV during Christmas.
I love my WiiU and play it regularly. It's trivial to install CFW and gives you a WiiU, Wii and Gamecube natively with one HDMI port. I don't understand why people pay insane money for GCs with ODEs and HDMI mods.
That's such a shame because the Wii U was essentially a precursor to the Switch.
there's something i never understood with youtubers with their thumbnails why do they always put Miyamoto in each of their thumbnails? he's a game developer not a console developer developers should not be blamed
Perhaps because it gets clicks?
Mityamoto is the symbol of Nintendo’s image of gaming.
Its kinda wild that a company go from the dramatic low of the Wii U and to climatic high of the Switch. I guess thats Nintendo for you.
Actually, the Virtual Boy did worse than the Wii U with 770,000 Virtual Boys sold Vs over 13 million Wii U’s sold. Which actually means the Wii U IS NOT Nintendo’s worst selling console. 😳