What's the truth behind poor Wii U sales?

It's chipset architecture also made it notorious difficult to develop for.

Developers didn't want to commit the time and resources to make games for it.

No games meant nobody was buying it. Because nobody was buying it, nobody wanted to make games for it.

Once you fall into that spiral there's no way out.

HOT BUTTERED POPCORN, THAT'S A DEAL!

I'm just saying if they never took Meme Run off of the eShop the console would've never failed.

Unironically its the "vibes" as the kids say.
There was nothing intrinsically wrong with the console, and it was cheap. The biggest flaw was unlike the switch you cant take the pad away from it, but it never advertised that you could. The games on it were the best of their series - mario kart, zelda, smash. etc
Games like zelda had incredibly good UI with the fact the inventory and map are in your hands. MH3U was easily the best mon hun and best on Wii U over 3DS
So it wasnt the games
It wasnt the cost
It wasnt "the name" which is a cope excuse, maybe that filtered the normalfags and wii moms but gamers knew that this was a new system.
And despite what people say, it wasnt the power. The system was pretty beefy for the games it could play at the time, but like always the PS4 launched soon after and shifted the scales.

So what else is there? Vibes. The console launched with very few games so people had to sit with nothing to play. There is a negative sentiment, further pushed by the fact the Wii was such a success. People started the shit flinging and that sort of thing unironically damages sales, causing a snowball.
Then that makes 3rd parties not bother porting games, that makes less people buy it, and that keeps feeding into itself.

Its like saying an MMO is dying, it is what kills it.
Switch 2 likely is going to lose sales due to all the bitching that $60 in 2025 money is $80 and somehow thats a problem now, after they just bought starfield, assassins creed, avowed and oblivion for over $100 for muh early access and special cool boy editions.

Anyway when did 4chuds come back online? I missed the reopening! how ironic it was taken down by a PDF, y'know, considering the mods behind the site. Hopefully it just filtered out some of the tourists, mobile users and shit-shitposters.

The ads. Oh God, the ads.
youtu.be/SChWdprUnzw?si=s5E9BGsL7UCbiXxw

People thought it was Wii Pro

name sounded like an add-on instead of a new console

Nobody realised it was a new console.

people keep saying this but its a total myth. Theres no proof or any relevant statistical data that people didnt bother with it because they thought it was a wii attachment, thats just something some youtubers who needed a video topic to shit out claimed.

If you thought about it for even one second, youd realise all the wii moms and normalfags that bought 3 wiis would have dived all in to a wii "+" since they did for the wii fit as well.
The wii u sold so poorly, that its impossible to claim that this is what happened as even a handful of retards buying it because of the "wii brand" would still eclipse its sales.
The fact is most people either didnt realise it existed, was put off by the price, or just didnt want it. Why buy a wii U for $350 when your Wii is fine? $250, maybe, but 350?

This also doesnt work as an excuse as even if it filtered out 100% of the wii moms and normalfags, people who actually play games would be aware this is the next nintendo console, and theres more "gamers" than there are wii u sales - so again even a small amount of thought would tell you this is pure cope bullshit

no games around launch

price

led to a drop in 3rd party devs

led to less buyers

led to negative sentiment

repeat.

thats all there is to it.

It's because the Wii U had no games and the controllers were of poor quality that kept breaking meanwhile the Switch fixed those issues by having classics like BotW and MK8 new IPs like Splatoon and had nuke proof controllers.

This picture sums it up. It's a single player follow-up to a console that was famously successful for its multiplayer.
What was the message here? If you buy a Wii U, 3 of your 4 kids are going to have to wait their turn? I need to buy extra gamepads, right? How much it that going to cost? What, you mean you can't buy extra gamepads?
Sorry kid 2, 3 and 4, your going to be playing in the bitch seat as wagglin' support

The Wii U had soul.
youtube.com/watch?v=iqq6DFxQ9sY

People thought it was just another Wii but with a tablet controller that made it expansive, retard. It's that simple.

+ Wii craziness was dead already, so no, those moms wouldn't care about another Wii.

Smash4 getting a 3ds version is what truly killed the WiiU.
If it was WiiU only that'd be an easy 1-2 mil unit sales alone.
Splatoon was a good bump for the system after all.

Honestly, yeah. Smash 4 could've been a real system seller if it was truly exclusive. Instead, tons of people just stuck with their 3DS since it was cheaper, already had a huge install base, and "good enough" Smash on handheld was a novelty at the time. Nintendo basically shot their own foot trying to double-dip.

Same with Mario Maker dropping super late into the console's life when the hype had already fizzled out. Timing and bad decisions killed the Wii U way more than the hardware itself ever did.

Switch sold because at it's heart is a handheld, and at the time Switch released there was no competition on the market when it came to handhelds, PS Vita was long dead and Sony had no plans on releasing a new portable system and at the time the idea of portable PC handhelds was just not a thing, and even today they're not a real competition either

Nintendo has always been at it's strongest when it came to handheld consoles, specially for the Japanese market, Wii was a fluke, it sold a lot initially due to it's casual nature to the young and elderly equally, but the sales started to drop a lot towards the end of it's cycle to the point that the only PlayStation console it managed to outsell was the PS3, so when the Wii U came out no one cared for a underpowered home console when PS4 and Xbox One were on the horizon

realistically you have to look at the first two years of the console's life because once you fuck that up there's no coming back. you get trapped in the no games > no sales > no games cycle.

in those first two years we had near non-existent third party support except the handful of 360 ports. just about every first party game had a comparable or even better version on 3ds. smash 4, 3d world, nsmbu, nintendo land, wind waker hd, etc weren't bad games but they were distinctly underwhelming compared to their predecessors on wii. mario kart 8 was probably the only wide appeal must have game in the first two years but even then it wasn't that different from mk7. game droughts were pretty common and pretty bad too.

people like to point to the naming scheme being the big marketing problem and while it doesn't help, i think the real problem was that nintendo was still trying to advertise to a casual market that didn't exist anymore. normies moved onto mobile gaming and hadn't been interested in the wii or even console gaming as a whole since 2010. even if they named it 'wii 2' nobody would've bought it, wii sales had been falling off a cliff for a while at this point.

the final killing blow was the ps4. why buy the wii u for $350 when you could have a generational leap in graphics quality and actual third party support for just $50 more?

It was a dumb console with no real hardcore games made to appeal to normies who couldn't give a shit anymore because the phone is better digital opium.

there were still physical stores around and nearly every damn time browsing for pricedumped weeb titles you'd hear the staff explaining the difference between wii and wii u to some hapless parent that ended up going "i see, i guess i'll just get them a phone or something instead"

stupid name stupid gimmick

Wii wish U a merry christmas
haha

Switch literally only had ports the first years and switch sold like crazy

Nintendo drove its reputation into the ground with the Wii by not offering rebindable controls as standard.
The videogame crash of 2012 also put a stop to high quality games being released at a decent rate, so every single console was coasting on their prior reputation and whatever publicity they could drum up in their initial release.

Not gonna sugarcoat it that retarded controller was a piece of shit. I've seen people sweat by it but I hated every second of holding it. It looked cheap, it wasn't comfortable, the idea of looking at a second screen never worked. I guess it did pave way to a much better system in Switch but that's about it.

the gamepad was bulky and the video quality on it was shit
it was a shit gimmick so i passed on it

This. The Wii was a novelty that was mostly propped up by grandmas who like the motion gimmick. The Wii biggest mistake was letting all the shovel ware shit up the catalog in every gamestore. If I'm a teenage boy, do you think I'm gonna grab the system with CoD and anime titties, or the yoga simulator with a dozen shitty fishing games?

The controller looked stupid and ugly like a toddler toy
No one wanted that shit on display in their living rooms

The Wii is why it failed. The Wii chased away core gamers with the waggle gimmick and dumbed down casualized games. It sold so well because everyone even your grandma had one. But when the Wii U dropped the casual audience didn't show up and the core gamers ignored it leaving only hardcore tendies to buy it. As far as games go it was actually alright, you had your Mario Kart, your Smash, your Marios, Mario Party, your Pikmins, Xenoblade, innovative games like Splatoon, some 3rd party exclusives like Bayo 2. Only IP missing was Zelda. The 3DS also tended to cannibalize potential Wii U sales since it was much cheaper and allowed you to get your dose of Nintendo. I think the stupid name and confusion initially hurt it but that's not enough to kill a console, the 3DS also had a bad launch, imo the Wii U failed because of bad timing and state of video games at the time rather than minute details like the shape of the controller or a couple of shitty ads.

lol the Switch library runs leaps around the Wii U one it's not even funny

A lot of people forget it wasn't just the name, but that the main game they marketed with it was another New Super Mario Bros that looked the same as the Wii one

All the big Switch exclusives were disappointing and half of the library is Wii U ports.

Game Wii U $19,99

):

Game + DLC Nintendo Switch $59,99

o:

NSMBU also came out right after NSMB2 on the 3DS which was also a shit rehash and other games to market the thing were... ZombiU.
jej
jmao even

shit marketing

retarded name

legitimately confused the casual consumers they were trying to win over a second time

shit tier third party support

main gimmick dropped even by first party games

I had one. I'm angry at how little options to configure controllers there are, even if a game like breath of the wild let you play it using only the pro controller, you can't use just the pro controller to do simple stuff like enter to the settings.

And let's not talk about games like star fox zero that are ok would be great if they didn't force you to play with the fucking gamepad. Other games forced you to start it using the gamepad even if they didn't use it in the game at all.

What I did? Since you can't turn off the game, every time I wanted to play one with just the pro controller, had to walk out of my room far enough to turn it off because the damn thing didn't have an option to turn off and if you pressed the button it also turned off the console.

But even all that, it had some great games and I kinda miss the pre-switch nintendo era, because the menu looks now so sterile with the minimalist bullshit.

Odyssey>3D World

TOTK>BOTW

Metroid Dread and soon Prime 4>No Metroid game lool

Wonder>NSMBU

Smash Ultimate>4

Forgotten Land>Rainbow something idk

I could go on but you get the point. Not to mention all of the Switch entries that don't have a Wii U game like 2D Zelda, M&L, AC, etc.

Shit launch lineup

Confusing gimmick

Bad name

Marketing makes it look like a Wii accesory

had to walk out of my room far enough to turn it off because the damn thing didn't have an option to turn off and if you pressed the button it also turned off the console.

Then you had the games that could be used without the gamepad but still required it to be on like wonderful 101.

The superior control for that one was the gamepad, though.

it's almost perfect for GC and Wii games

youtube.com/watch?v=4e3qaPg_keg&t=3s

CONTROLLER x 20

I wished they included a drawing app for free, might have used mine more if they included that.

Wrong but also not the point.
If you wanted to play without the gamepad you still needed the gamepad to be on which meant keeping it plugged in because of the shitty battery life.

The marketing being legitimately fucking terrible and the gamepad being a worthless piece of shit

you can play the game on it instead of the TV!

lag

if fucking anything is in the way it can lose the connection

its range actually deteriorates over time