Topic: Ten Reasons Why You Should Own a Wii U

The 32GB console went from $350 with one game included to $300 with two games included. How is that not a price drop?

Well, you see if you flip the little lesser than sign (<) it's actually a price increase...

It is not a price drop because the minimum price it takes to buy the console at retail has always been $300. What they actually did was reconfigure the available bundles and discontinued offering a $350 bundle.

Only cutting the MSRP below $300 is an actual price cut. The first "price cut" was smoke and mirrors.

I just wish I had money to play more games on my Wii U. That Nindie bundle sale was a nice bolster to my library of games---even if they're all digital. Guacamelee is super fun!

"The control of the GamePad sucks" made me lol to the troll.

If he said "The controls of the GamePad sucks BECAUSE of reasons" I would listen, but obviously there is no reason, at least not on the troll bridge.

Well, of course, if we pretend that the 8GB and 32GB bundles are exactly the same. That's not how it works.

And that the value of the games is nil

Or that the people would buy a console without also getting a game

As a local multiplayer machine, the Wii U is unparalleled. Nintendoland, Mario Kart 8, Rayman Legends, and Super Smash Bros. Wii U are four of the best multiplayer games ever, and if you go deeper into the indie stuff you'll find even more. But what really makes it the best is access to the entire Wii library, including Wii's virtual console. From Mario Party to Rock Band, you have pretty much every kind of multiplayer game you could want to play. The only ones that I have fond memories of that are absent are Halo and Gears of War. That's pretty darn good, if you ask me. If you want a machine to play some games with your friends on the couch, go get a Wii U.

I'd feel much less comfortable recommending a Wii U when it comes to single player games. Yes, Bayonetta 2 is amazing, one of the best action games ever made, etc. Pikmin 3 is good. But as you look deeper at the 1st party games, I can't help but feel like they're a bit lacking. Mario 3D World feels like a step back in a lot of ways compared to previous 3D Mario games, particularly in regards to scale. It doesn't help that it doesn't get good until you beat it (in my opinion). Were it not for multiplayer, I honestly wouldn't have kept the game. Mario Kart 8 and Smash Bros, although great multiplayer games, feel bare-bones when it comes to single player (especially Mario Kart). Super Mario Bros U is the fourth in a series of 2D Mario platformers that look and perform identically to one another. They add so little to one another that most sequels put them to shame in addition. Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze is a 2D platformer. Yoshi's Wooly World is a 2D platformer. Wind Waker came out over a decade ago. Kirby and Captain Toad are budget games. Splatoon barely even has single player. I think it's telling that most of my favorite single player games are Ninja Gaiden 3, Darksiders 2, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist. Are these good games? Yes. But they aren't at the level of The Last of Us, Grand Theft Auto V, The Witcher 3, or Bloodborne.

Nintendo's previous systems had a balance of high caliber local multiplayer games and high caliber single player games. Within the Wii's first year, it had access to Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3, Mario Galaxy, and Super Paper Mario. The first three are three of the finest games ever made, with the fourth being quite great as well. The Wii U hasn't gotten really beefy, large scale single player games on it in the same numbers. Bayonetta 2 is honestly the only one I would put on the same level as those first 3 games, and Pikmin 3 is the only one I'd put on the level of Super Paper Mario. Everything else honestly feels like the kind of game you'd get for local multiplayer.

When it comes to online, I would not recommend the Wii U. Splatoon, Mario Kart 8, and Smash Bros function. That's it. In terms of features, they feel like games from 2005. Now, they're polished, and they work, but compared to what the other systems bring, they just don't have the feature set.

If Nintendo doesn't catch up to the competition when it comes to single player games with more scale, then I think I'll stick to their handhelds when it comes to future support.

tl;dr Wii U is the best local multiplayer machine ever. Wii U is disappointing for single player games and wouldn't be recommend if that what you want to spend your time doing. Online on the Wii U is lacking compared to the competition from 5 years ago.

Well, at least you got this part right.

Got to have some facts spread amid my opinions.

It's great that many people are 100% satisfied with their Wii U. I'm not one of those people, though. If I weren't in a college dorm room situation, I would be very dissatisfied with my Wii U.

I'm happy with the Wii U.

Then again, they could stop releasing games on all platforms tomorrow, and leave me with just my backlog, and I'd be happy for the rest of my life. And I fully plan to live until I'm 100. Or at least until Giant Mechs are invented. Either one's cool.

And here are 10 reasons I don't have a Wii U (in no particular order)

1. I've barely scratched the surface of 3DS and PS3 games, a Wii U would put me even more behind
2. Two types of games I most like to play on home consoles are grand adventure games (RPGs, 3D Platformers, Action Adventure), and sports games. The Wii U is light on both of those.
3. Many of the Wii U's biggest games are ones I'm personally not too familiar with, so most of my purchases would turn out to be risks
4. The biggest games on the system are EXPENSIVE. With a lack of 3rd party games, most of the system's best games are expensive 1st party titles.
5. I already have a Wii, so backwards compatibility doesn't do much for me.
6. Reduced motion control support in games.
7. The gamepad doesn't really seem to add much to single player games.
8. I don't have that many friends who would be interested in playing local multiplayer games on Wii U
9. 300 dollars is still expensive in an absolute sense.
10. There isn't really any harm in waiting.

To each their own, but I don't see how the fact that ''DK and Yoshi are 2D platformers'' is a legitimate complaint. Games like Mario Kart and Smash never were about single player, and the same can be said about Splatoon, so I don't really understand why they're worse on the Wii U. And I mean, Captain Toad and Kirby are budget titles.. What's the problem with that? I get that it's not your favourite system, but it looks as if you're trying really hard to dislike its library by saying this.

The Wii U just doesn't have a balanced library. It's got some very good 2D platformers and multiplayer games, but if you don't have gamer friends or family what's the point? It lacks deep singleplayer games.

I've said this before elsewhere, but 2D Platformers are generally a waste of powerful hardware. Having some of your system's biggest games be 2D Platformers is almost like having your system's biggest games be 2D Puzzlers like Bejeweled. They don't really offer a grand home console experience. That's part of why I almost exclusively prefer them to be on handhelds nowadays.

Yeah, NSMB seems a lot more fun in groups and I can't ever get together even one other person, let alone 2-3. Same goes for Smash. It's only the rare 2D game that captures my interest solo. And games like Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Dust: An Elysian Tail, and Crypt of the Necrodancer are all too infrequent.

@Octane It ultimately boils down to how the Wii U hasn't pumped out any games that I would put on my "personal favorite games ever" list (barring Bayonetta 2, possibly).

My favorite games are ones that have a large sense of scale and depth. This doesn't mean it has to be a some sort of open-world game. Three of my favorite games are Mario Galaxy, The World Ends With You, and recently The Last of Us. They all do very different things and are in very different genres. But each of them accomplish big things within their genres (or in TWEWY's case, delivers something wholly unique while also brimming with depth and style).

The Wii U hasn't really brought the kind of games that made me fall in love with video games in the first place. My 2D platformers comment was mostly to point out how not one, not two, but three of Nintendo's main titles for their HD, TV-bound system are in the same genre. A linear, skills-based platformer. I understand the appeal of such a thing, but that just isn't the kind of game that I would want to spend $50-$60 on. I much prefer the likes of Metroidvanias (Guacamelee, Ori and the Blind Forest, and of course your Metroids and Castlevanias) and hybrid ones (Mark of the Ninja, Rogue Legacy, Velocity 2X). It just appeals more to me. I regretted spending $60 on NSMBU, got DK for free through Club Nintendo, and won't be getting Yoshi because I just can't see myself liking it enough. The budget titles comment was about how they just weren't what I was looking for.

The Smash and Mario Kart comment was more just about how, although phenomenal multiplayer games, wouldn't be easy to recommend to someone with a desire to play meaty singleplayer games, which is what they were about in my comment. I love those games, and have honestly justified my Wii U purchase because of my dorm room situation.

None of these things would be complaints if the Wii U brought games that were more to my tastes. After all, the Wii had plenty of 2D Platformers and budget titles. But it also had the games that made me fall in love with video games, like Mario Galaxy, Twilight Princess, and Metroid Prime 3... within the first year. It's frustrating to see Nintendo deliver in such a big way early on with their previous system and do the opposite with a system substantially more powerful, especially since the immense success of the Wii and DS could have allowed them to really expand their resources.

Well sure guys. If you ignore Bayonetta 2, 3D World, Wind Waker HD because it's a remake and all of the 2D platformers. There aren't that many great single player experiences other than Captain Toad and the single player campaign in Splatoon. If you ignore Splatoon, Mario Kart and Smash Bros there isn't really much online either. So you're just left with Nintendo Land which is fun but it's more of a party game.

..... alternatively you could not ignore those games. It wouldn't fit into this "the Wii U has nothing" narrative but hey, it'd be more honest about what the situation actually is. I mean if I arbitrarily ignored the games I didn't want to count on PC? I'd end up with the same sort of whine. But I don't. Because doing so would be ridiculous.

I tend to ignore identical ports of games I've played 3 times over years ago.

And my comment about the library being unbalanced still stands, despite the handful of singleplayer games, many of which that are better in coop, you count the number of deep singleplayer games on one hand (and it's always the same handful of games that gets brought up because the platform has so little diversity.)

Not to mention that games like Kirby's Klay, Mario Party 10, WWHD, and now Splatoon are characterized by scarcity. The kind of scarcity telling of larger development timeline problems. It looks to me like Nintendo is just stretching many of it's teams quite thin to produce games in a manner akin to r-selected species. That is; quantity over quality.