Topic: Here's what baffles me about the Wii U marketing efforts...

I think we all realize that Wii U sales aren't great and wish they were better. As not only a long-time Nintendo fan and supporter, but also as someone with a career in marketing, here's where Nintendo of America truly lets me down. Their launch strategy was awful, but the past is in the past and there was still plenty of time to make up for it (and perhaps still is, but more than likely not).

Clearly NOA got some budget this holiday season to spend on marketing the Wii U, and I've seen plenty of TV commercials on a variety of different channels. All-in-all I think I've seen about 4-5 different ad spots many times each. Unfortunately, every one of those ads has been geared at children aged 6-10. Every one of them. Not a single advertisement aimed at the 18-35 demo. In addition, this was their opportunity to help quell any confusion about what the Wii U is. The success of the Wii was driven by non-core gamers - people that don't avidly follow Nintendo and their console releases. The Xbox can get away with calling it's successor the Xbox One, Nintendo cannot get away with a similar move (Adding a U). But once again, this is in the past.

Nintendo has had numerous opportunities in all of these TV spots to tell America that it is in fact a NEW and DIFFERENT SYSTEM, but not once did they do this. What they instead decided to do was repeatedly call it an "Upgrade". Now I don't know about you, but when I think about an upgrade, I think of an enhancement or upgrade to an existing product. So not only did most of casual America either not know what the Wii U was, or simply thought it was a $300 tablet controller for their existing Wii, but now their marketing efforts basically reassured that misconception.

Nintendo had a shot to turn things around this holiday season, but once again they've fallen flat. It's time to hire some new heads in Redmond. Coincidentally (or not), there's 4 marketing managerial positions posted for Nintendo of America. Let's hope they're filled with the right people...

Actually all the Wii U's were sold out at my local Radioshack so I believe the console is making a comeback nationwide.

I'm not saying it's not improving - it clearly is. But this was there shot to get back in the game and selling 75k units / week (North America), even if they could keep it up year round, isn't going to turn this into a commercial success.

Yeah but my local stores are doing great so I'm sure the Wii U is going to be a hit nationwide now

There was a line of people buying Wii U's at my Walmart today, pretty sure that means its a commercial success

Time will tell , but I'm not holding my breath.

Well how long can you hold your breath?

@AlexSays Dude, seriously. There's sarcasm, then there's mocking. Just saying.

@AlexSays is using (probably fake) anecdotal evidence as a joke. He's mocking people on the forums @Howard24U, just ignore him.

No, I get it. I know he's being facetious. I was just trying to be polite. I mean come on, when's the last time that someone was in their local Radioshack??

The best thing Nintendo can do at this point is go back to a 5-year release schedule for their next two home consoles. This would give them the opportunity to release a well-spec'd system 4 years from now. As long as they made it close in performance to the X1 and PS4 with a similar x86 architecture they would be in a good position. They don't need to worry about outdoing these consoles, because ultimately, it would only be competing with these two Gen 8 consoles. They should call in the Nintendo Evo - Done.

It's commonly accepted that the X1 and PS4 will have ~ 8 years life in this generation - that means new consoles in 2021. If Nintendo sticks to a 5-year release, they would have another console ready to go in 2022 that is truly prepped to compete with the 9th generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft. No reason to beat a dead horse (the Wii U) for 6 or 7 years though. Just focus on good games for the next few year, and dedicate a lot of time to R&D of their next system.

The Wii U reminds me a lot of the windows phone 7 operating system. The people who owned it loved it, but the overall OS heavily limited the specs that the devices could have. (No HD screens, no multi-core processors...) Despite the fact that Microsoft assured everyone that their OS could run just as smooth with much lower specs, the devices simply didn't sell. American consumers are obsessed with specs. It doesn't matter if the user experience is just as good with lower specs, people want to invest in the best available technology.

What marketing? lol

The Wii U is never going to dominate, but a comeback can still be made. The biggest marketing mistake was failing to differentiate the Wii from the Wii U. Instantly lost millions of sales because of the name. People have short attention spans, and need things to be explained within a handful of seconds, and it can't be done with the wii vs wii u.

I'm with you Howard it is pathetic the markeing effort nintendo is putting forth when now is the time to shine. I too am in the marketing field and its amazing how many missed opportunities there has been.

Then you're not thinking like the casual market. "Upgrade" to them is getting a new device, like a smart phone or tablet.

How about this?

Instant millions lost? Um, source please?

I do agree that it should been called Wii 2 or Super Wii or something.

I still maintain though that the main problem is that 3DS is just a better option for Nintendo fans considering the price combined with how much Nintendo failed to keep up with momentum with the Wii outside of a casual audience that got distracted by a new shiny thing. And going towards the adult crowd would have done nothing, particularly in November when the massive marketing of 2 consoles at the same time after seemingly forever (for some people at least) for last gen. Well also the fact that Nintendo relied on games that wouldn't sell consoles to sell consoles because Nintendo had to rely on Mario to an embarrassing degree in the past couple of years.

WiiU will do just fine if two things happen in 2013

1) New, Huge, Epic Japanese "Monster Hunter" for WiiU in Japan

2) MarioKart + Smash Brothers BOTH are usual quality Nintendo games, dare I say one of the two is near-EPIC and GOTY quality

woops meant 2014

I'm not actually familiar with that ad... first time I've seen it. Context wise, it's far better than those I've seen on TV, but clearly this was just a made-for-internet spot, and unless you someone was specifically looking for it, they wouldn't see it. (Hence only 3870 views).

@kkslider5552000 To assume that no one in the key 18-35 age group would purchase a Wii U this year just because of the release of the Xbox One and PS4 is shortsighted. Almost everyone I know owned both a Wii and a PS3/360 last gen, and my friends are not gamers by any means. My friends generally purchased the Wii in its first year of release, and picked up the PS3 the following year. There's room under people's TV's for both an X1/PS4 and Wii U, but if you advertise your console like it was built for 6-year-olds, you're not going to get a lot of young adults going out of their way to buy it.

@Howard24U That's my main problem with there commercials , they are mostly online which really does no good. To quote my own article , "It really comes down to Nintendo making you look to find this information. People don’t want to look until they get interested and they won’t get interested until you show them what to get interested about..."