Post
by outdated_gamer » Tue May 20, 2014 9:41 am
I don't think it was the lack of advertising that resulted in poor Wii U sales, neither it's name. The reason was, imo, a lack of hype for the system, the negativity comming from the mainstream publications (did anyone seriously anticipate this system?), the lack of a "killer-app" game at launch time (the Wii launched with Zelda and Wii Sports - Wii U with New SMB.U and Nintendo Land), the relatively high price (although it was priced comparable to Wii at launch, it still seemed too much), the in-ability of the screened gamepad to captivate a larger audience (there was no instant "wow" factor as with the Wii and it's controller), the declining 3rd party support early on, the issues with huge patches and loading, ect.
Also, it was the first time a Nintendo system was seen as "too weak" by the general audience, which was backed by various tear-downs revealing last-gen level hardware, empty promises (the POWER7 CPU fiasco - it turned out it used a slightly improved Wii CPU core), complaints from several 3rd party devs about the CPU, ect. Nintendo probably thought the gamepad alone would motivate developers to make games for it, but in actuality there was both, a lack of muscle as well as audience that 3rd parties had to face on the Wii U.
It could also be added that Nintendo had this rethoric how people will follow what they do, and not vice-versa. But this simply didn't happen and it wouldn't be far-fetched to say that they (Nintendo) are too self-minded. In this day and age, when we have "crowd-funded" projects going on and people expressing their wishes over the internet, this is not a good business practice.
Just think about how many people wish(ed) for a "full-blown" Pokemon game on a home Nintendo system - why is Nintendo refusing to acknowledge what their fan base actually wants? It seems all they care about it pumping out more Mario and Zelda. Nothing bad about those franchises, but how about giving some other, "forgotten" franchises a shot? Maybe that's what people actually want now, as opposed to simply more Mario (and a handful of unique, niche games the system has going for it).