| The Wii U was a failure in marketing and odd design choices. The former has been discussed quite well by others, so I want to focus on the design choices that didn't help its long-term success. The console initially promoted the gimmick of being a controller for cable TV, as seen by the blue TV button the bottom of the gamepad. This was at a time when cable TV was starting to die out for the younger crowd. The original Xbox One made a similar misguided focus on controlling TV, while the overall market was making a major shift to streaming in that period. Next, the gamepad used a resistive touchscreen instead of a capacitive one. Phones with capacitive touchscreens had been the norm for years at this point, making the Wii U touchscreen feel very low quality. The gamepad came with too small of a battery, which limited the gamepad's use as a portable console, which was already tied down to being nearby the console itself to stream games smoothly. The battery could be easily upgraded to a larger size, but it had to be purchased and installed later on. The base console only had 8 GB of storage. The deluxe model only came with 32 GB of storage and cost an extra $150 (for $350 total). The console largely focused on using discs for games, but the next gen of Xbox and PlayStation consoles showed that internal storage was important. The Wii U had an SD card slot, but SD cards could oddly not be used to expand game storage; USB storage could be used however. The Wii U had some very strong game releases that eventually saw successful ports to the Switch, and it also had the best Virtual Console release of games in any console ever, that the Switch still has not matched. The value of a Wii U by the end of its life was insane. It's the only console where so many incredible games (almost all of Nintendo's catalogue through the Wii - but not the GameCube) could be played on the system. I think the console just focused on all of the wrong things in the minutia. Tie that with terrible marketing, and the console was doomed to failure. The Wii U's genius was later revised upon and proved to be a success with the Switch. Despite it's failures, the Wii U was a great console that is one of my favorites of all time (along with the PlayStation Vita). |