[maxsilver]

The Wii U and 3DS were some of the best consoles Nintendo ever made.

I get that they weren't large hits in the general market, I get that they were not financial successes.

But for dedicated folks, these consoles represented some of the very best design and product packages that Nintendo had ever offered. (A good chunk of which was lost in the transition to the Switch, like proper Virtual Console support, or Nintendo Mii's getting heavy usage, or StreetPass).

Yes, they also offered backwards compatibility, but that's not "why" they had success -- they were successful as products entirely in their own right.

[GhettoComputers]

They weren’t “good failures” like Dreamcast. I can’t think of any game that was great on either off the top of my head, but the Dreamcast I can name several exclusives that were. A lot of the good games were just remakes, like Devil Survivor Overclocked.

[maxsilver]

> They weren’t “good failures” like Dreamcast. I can’t think of any game that was great on either off the top of my head, but the Dreamcast I can name several exclusives that were.

Really? The Wii U lineup is like a perfect Dreamcast-like example of a "good failure". It was so good, that half of the best selling Switch games from it's first two years, were just past Wii U exclusive games (or 3DS games), ported up to the switch.

Zelda: BotW, Mario Kart 8, Lego City Undercover, Pokken Tournament, Bayonetta 2, Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, Hyrule Warriors, Super Mario Brothers U, Tokyo Mirage Sessions, Wonderful 101, Pikmin 3, Super Mario 3D World, Fatal Frame: Maiden of the Black Water, Super Mario Maker, and Xenoblade Chronicles (1).

All of those are either Wii U / 3DS exclusives ported forward, or planned to be exclusives and got last-minute ports near the end of development cycle (like Zelda BotW).

[salamandersauce]

The 3DS isn't really a "failure". It still sold 70+ million units. Only in comparison to the 150 million of the DS is it a failure. Both Wii U and 3DS have some fantastic exclusives (although most of the good ones on Wii U ended up Switch or 3DS or both).

Super Mario 3D Land and 3D World are IMO the two best 3D Mario games made, 3DS has a trio of fantastic Fire Emblem games (granted one is a remake but for English audiences not really), excellent JRPGs in stuff like Bravely Default, SMTIV, Pokémon X&Y, Mario Kart 7 and Smash were as good as always and LoZ: A Link Between Worlds is really good. Yes, there was plenty of ports and remakes but they were ports and remakes of great games made portable like Ocarina of Time 3D, DQ7 and DQ8, etc.

Wii U had great exclusives like Mario Maker, Bayonetta 2, the aforementioned Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8, Breath of the Wild, Hyrule Warriors, Splatoon, Pikmin 3, Xenoblade Chronicles X, etc.

My bet is you have more fondness for the Dreamcast because you spent more time with it. Wii U was a fantastic system and still is.

[GhettoComputers]

I have a bias to Dreamcast, I was able to pick up any random game and it was gonna be good. The Dreamcast has a total of 624 games compared to the Wii U with 783, and if we remove remakes the good ones are mostly Nintendo, Dreamcast has 3rd parties that made good ones too. BoTW was a backport, but odd that list, I can confirm splatoon was pretty good.

[salamandersauce]

BoTW is not a backport. It was announced originally for Wii U and came out the same day. There's not really very many remakes or remasters on Wii U, there's some enhanced ports of PS3/360 games but if you remove enhanced ports a lot of DC games disappear too...

The 783 game list also doesn't include any of the virtual console games and there's some really good stuff there that getting a hold of on the original system is pricey like Metroid Fusion and Ogre Battle 64.

Wii U games have the benefit of still being good today. Most DC games you need to add the caveat "for the time". There's also plenty of trash on DC too. I'm sure if you actually picked any random game it would more likely be trash than good. Wii U also has that problem but all consoles do.