Why was the Wii U a failure

>>386798493
DS:
>portable, cheap, pokemon
Wii U
>Not portable, expensive, no pokemon

Wii U had no games. It launched with nothing but third party ports of games that were already a few years old. It was too expensive for that. And most people had never heard of it or thought it was an add-on for the Wii because the advertising was non-existent and vague.

The Nintendo Wii was built the way that consoles were traditionally built.
Nintendo went to IBM and AMD, commissioned them to produce custom discrete components.
A few years later it was ready to come to market giving developers plenty of time to optimize for the hardware.

Meanwhile, Microsoft and Sony went about building consoles the way phones are built today. They went to a few vendors, asked for their best SOC chips, tested them out and then quickly delivered new systems that were more powerful than Nintendo's system and even though developers didn't have the same kind of time to optimize for the specific hardware it was powerful enough (and similar enough) that they didn't really need to.

Notice that with the Switch Nintendo went to Nvidia and got a cheap off the shelf SOC chip and that their new 'custom' API is essentially just Vulkan 1.0 with some Nvidia extensions.

Looking at two screens right on top of each other is not the same as splitting your attention between one screen in your lap and one on the TV

>>386798493
the name had to cost it millions of units.

Unappealing design and gimmick, shitty marketing, took too long to get good games, no mainline zelda game

>>386798493
>Why did the wii u fail
Less portable than the 3ds, obviously
Stupid gimmick
Touch screen doesn't work as well for a home console because the controller is sitting in your lap and you're looking up
Lackluster library
Abysmal launch lineup
Never even got a new Zelda game
Had SD slots, system wouldn't allow you to use them to expand storage for anything other than save files

The problem is the thing had no redeeming characteristics. There were a few good games, but not nearly enough to justify sinking 300 dollars into for just the hardware.

>>386798493
Marketing confusion
Nogaems on release
Looks like a fisher price toy
By the time it got decent most people already had a different console and didn't bother


As a decently consistent nintendo buyer, I wasn't a big fan of the wii. It was successful due to normies and motion controls, but while it had a few gems, it was lacking in games imo. Additionally the flavor of branding for the wii was dull and bland. (too much minimalistic and grayscale). By the time Wii U was announced I was more into PC gaming and the Wii U just looked like more of the same but with even more gimmicky controls (the motion already left a bad taste in my mouth). Since I loved my DS way more, I simply picked the obvious option of the 3DS for my nintendo games, and it turned out amazing. I missed a decent amount of good games Wii U produced but I'm confident the best series will continue on the switch, which I picked up.

>>386798493
>You had the Wii U which effectively had the same setup where the "top screen" was the TV and the "bottom screen" was the touchpad itself.
That was the whole issue. It works for the DS because both screens are sitting in your hand. They're right in front of you. Having to look up and down at the TV screen breaks concentration and immersion.

It was Nintendo way of trying reinvent the wheel on consoles. Face it, pressing a button to pull up a map on a screen you're already looking at is less jarring than being forced to look up and down constantly.

>>386801018
>Face it, pressing a button to pull up a map on a screen you're already looking at is less jarring than being forced to look up and down constantly.
depends largely on how the game implements the 2nd screen.