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by microtonal 1323 days ago
It came out in a weird time for technology and Nintendo always uses slightly older hardware.

I had a Playstation 2 and 3 before, but since we became parents, we wanted something family-friendly. We seriously considered a Wii U, but were totally put of by the Wii U controller, which seemed clunky, annoying, and expensive to replace in case it breaks. It was the primary reason we went for the XBox One that generation.

We got a Switch pretty soon after it was released and love it (our daughter also has a Switch Lite).

2 comments

> We seriously considered a Wii U, but were totally put off by the Wii U controller, which seemed clunky, annoying, and expensive to replace in case it breaks.

You were right on all counts. It was a pretty terrible controller. Flimsy, heavy, way too big. And it was actually impossible to replace; they never offered replacement pads for sale, you had to buy a whole new console or find someone who fried their console and wanted to sell just a pad.

    clunky
I thought it was totally fine. I spent a lot of hours gaming on that thing. I did not find it too heavy and anecdotally my friends' kids didn't either.

However, I can certainly understand that it looked massive and heavy. That was my assumption as well. Bit of a marketing issue there.

    annoying
It was more useless than annoying. Some games used it in slightly awkward ways, sort of like the early DS days when devs were experimenting (and being forced/encouraged by Nintendo to experiment with) new forms of control.

    expensive to replace in case it breaks
It was very durable in my experience. The screen is plastic, and ultimately I'd say it's just about exactly as durable as a DS or 3DS... after all, Nintendo knows how to build such things.

But, once again, your assumption totally made sense. Another marketing issue.

    It was the primary reason we [passed on it]
Me too. Then, a few years back, a friend gifted me one and I had a blast with it. Most of the best games wound up on the Switch though, so ultimately you did not miss out.