Topic: What Did Nintendo do Right/Wrong with the Wii U?

Having no damage control in the face of a couple of disappointing e3 shows hasn't helped but I am pretty certain that most of the negativity from publishers and gaming media comes from the fact they have two very powerful companies with rival products who will always be able to pay the major news, retail and games companies that little bit more to keep them sweet. They needed the same marketing power as the Wii but they clearly haven't put the same level of effort. I think deep down, Iwata was expecting another gamecube/N64 so they scaled down the product to be less of a risk for them.

So many repetitive WiiU threads.

the only thing wrong is its name, which confuses customers, ive experienced this working at best buy, and thus makes it difficult to market

That pretty much sums it up in about less than a paragraph.

The no campaign thing also seems to be the case in most of Europe in general. It's definitely noticeable in the UK as well.

Cons:
-Next to no marketing
-The most desired games being the ones that got delayed
-Terrible VC support compared to WII
-Battery life of gamepad is terrible
-No TVii support in UK
-Terrible 3rd party support
-VC pricing UK
-No VC sales UK
Pros:
-Some excellent first year releases (Pikmin 3, NSMBU, Rayman Legends, TTT2, Nintendoland etc.)
-Earthbound
-Off-screen play
-E-shop
-Browser

They did a lot more wrong than good obviously. When I did have a Wii U (bought it day 1 and sold it back in May), I absolute LOVED the gamepad. My favorite thing was to curl up in bed and play Call of Duty Zombies on the pad. I think there are some obvious problems with both the hardware and the interface, but at the end of the day it does come down to Marketing and Games like the above poster said. The Wii U fails on both fronts.

Before anyone says "Wii U has great, highly rated games", I just want to point out that there are many famous rock, pop, and rap stars who also put out very highly rated albums later in their career, but they don't sell as well because they don't really have that fresh, new sound. That is what Nintendo is missing. It needs more Fresh and New, and less safe bets, which I will point out is ALL we have seen 1st party wise on Wii U.

One thing I think they did right was have most of the games have multiple controller setups. You know what I mean? Like on the Wii, a lot of games you HAD to use the wii-mote and nunchuk. At least with the Wii U you can use the gamepad or you can use the pro controller or another setup. I like that.

Wrong... well, everyone has already said everything that needs to be said.

This is based on rumors i heared:
-Building the WiiU without any input from thirdparty devs.

Beside that:
-Bad Marketing and PR fails along the way.
-While i like the GamePad an improved WiiMote would have been better and would have made the console much cheaper i think.
-The big game drought of early 2013
-No real account system

And now for a good thing:
-The Miiverse is pretty good

I just think alot of the negative things people have to say about Wii U "handling" couldn't have been helped. Lack of software was more about timing of Wii U release, from my perspective. Same thing with the OS and such.

It was important for Nintendo to have a new system available, even if they couldn't support it as much if they would have had more time. Wii was "dying", so they had to release SOMETHING.

I'm pretty sure everyone here agrees that things should be better, but I don't think that was all that possible when they were basically being forced to release anything so quickly, and a year before the Xbox One and PS4, to boot.

It's still far too early to pass judgement, and it has been for the entire year.

Nintendo really messed up the Marketing - it seemed to me like they were running on brand name alone and as good as nintendo games are, it just would not work and didn't work. I never seen anything to do with the Wii U release and zero hype build up which is something that companies can ill afford in todays highly saturated gaming market.
There are still people who dont know what a Wii U is or why they should replace their original wii with it.

Second nintendo didn't work with third party developers enough to build a strong support network for the Wii U. So many interviews with game developers who dropped Wii U support point to a lack of communication from start to finish leaving the Wii U with little third party support. Third party support is essential to any game system.

What Nintendo did right:

• Created a Powerful HD console.
• Provided a different way to interact with games (Tablet)
• Produce top quality games.
• Improved nintendo community with Miiverse

Blaming it on the marketing is a bit get-out-of-jail-free card. It's what people seem to like to blame when they have nothing complain about with the system itself. If there's nothing to complain about then surely it'd be selling well despite any "poor advertising". Right now I see more advertising for the PS3 and 3DS than anything else here in Australia and I do believe there are new consoles that are selling pretty well despite that.....

Where I think they really missed the boat was not securing some of the big third party titles for this year. They managed to be the system to play Rayman Legends on but they were originally going to have it as an exclusive. They got Watch Dogs but it was a last minute hush-hush announcement and the game got delayed 'till next year. They missed out on GTA, Tomb Raider and Bioshock entirely during a period where they were the most powerful console available. Then to top if off for the longest time their best titles were Nintendo Land and New Super Mario Bros U.

That's what hurt their sales, not marketing.

Considering that I've pretty much never seen an ad for a Wii U game on a mainstream TV channel in the UK, and that Nintendo UK seemingly does absolutely nothing to foster the fan community/setup events and such, I can definitely believe marketing is a big problem here.

Put simply, if you're in the UK, you could go your whole life without seeing anything related to Nintendo, simply by not looking for it. We pretty much need a Reggie equivalent and a bunch of people willing to market Nintendo in a big way like the US and Japan gets. We need more events, more ads, more real world promotions and gimmicks (like an equivalent to the Best Buy Wii U demos or StreetPass Weekend or whatever else), heck, even a Nintendo World Store equivalent would be useful. But no.

@CM30
If the Nintendo marketing in the UK is so bad then why is the 3DS doing so well? And why is the Wii U doing badly in all territories even those where marketing isn't non-existent? I think there's more reason to believe that marketing wouldn't have made much of a difference when there was so little of a product to sell for the longest time.

A perfect summation. Nintendo thought they had a diamond with that gamepad, but it turned out to be glass. It's just so sad to see the greatest innovative company in entertainment turn into a failure, and it will be for the rest of the generation.

What did Nintendo do wrong? On my part having owned (2) Wii Us it's the NNID tie up on a single console. I purchased my second Wii U so I don't have to take my first Wii U if I need to play it in my bedroom. I have no choice but to create another NNID to use for my second Wii U. Hence I can't use my 1st NNID & as well as my game saves stored in USB thumb drive (the second Wii U don't see it when plugged) I ended up playing from the beginning on all my games to level up.

Even if Nintendo will decide later to unify accounts on people using more than one Wii U it's still gonna be a headache if the NNID is still tied up on both consoles. You won't be able to play on your friend's Wii U using your NNID as your NNID is tied up to your consoles only. The end user cannot untie NNID on his end, only Nintendo.

What sort of reviews do you follow. Last I checked reviewers are the bastions of new and fresh ideas/sounds/gameplay/visuals and reward risks that pay off. They're the first and often only people to have a go at something when it is no longer interesting. It's the consumer who doesn't care for it. You'll see something like Deerhunter's Halcyon Digest get rave reviews but sell only fractions of what the same old sound from the much, much less critically acclaimed Lady Gaga or Britney Spears.

Same with games. The first party stuff that NIntendo has created so far for the Wii U, while it may not have all been "risky", was at least interesting enough to get good reviews. Pikmin 3 in particular was a revival and beautiful HD version of a game that hasn't existed in ten years. Compare that to the blockbuster titles like CoD which have had horrible reviews and you can't seriously say that Nintendo lack the "fresh new" feel of other content that's out there. If anything their "mistake" here was not trying to get easy sales and instead trying to please fans.

And if that's a "mistake" that is punishable by depressing sales numbers then I don't want to see where the industry will be in ten years.

Or perhaps the reviewers are wrong and the games out there just aren't very good?

http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2013/12/03/game-industrys-t...

What is this ‘great’ Wii U software that is a ‘worldwide treasure’? NSMB U is a disappointment to 2d Mario Mania fans. The game introduced nothing new and seemed lame by being made by the C team. Super Mario World is how you make a launch 2d Mario.

Was Nintendo Land ‘high quality software’? Get out of here. That was nothing but Wii U hardware concept demos wrapped in Nintendo IPs. My ass has higher quality.

Was Wind Waker HD ‘high quality software’? Wind Waker was a disaster on the Gamecube and extremely hated by Zelda fans. Why would a HD version of the most despised Zelda game (before the DS Zeldas) be considered ‘high quality software’?

Is Pikmin 3 ‘high quality software’? Pikmin 1 and 2 didn’t excite people. Neither did 3.

Is Mario in 3d World ‘high quality software’? Then why don’t people buy it? Why don’t Wii U owners want to buy it? All I see the Wii U owners buy is NSMB U and Wii U Party.

I'm not saying I agree with him, but he does at least raise the point that perhaps a system that doesn't sell and games that don't sell are such because they're not very good in the first place.

Maybe those 'cult classics' that didn't sell failed because they were simply bad games that no one wanted. Perhaps the minority of reviewers or geeks is simply wrong about quality.

I may not agree with him, but I admit it's at least worth considering. Especially the bit that game reviewers and critics want Nintendo to fail, and give the better scores to the games that would be seen as 'cult classics' rather than outright 'successes', in a desperate attempt to sabotage the company.

@CM30
That would be an interesting theory if it wasn't for the fact that those games were received well by critics. Of the games you listed only one has a Metacritic score below 80 (Nintendo Land @ 77) and three of them are in the high 80s, low 90s (Pikmin 3 @ 87, Wind Waker HD @ 90 and 3D World @ 94). Scores that are pretty damn good compared to the games that are selling very well with the major exception being GTA.

Worth remembering that CoD:Ghosts is the game being hammered by the critics right now. The average score for that game across all of it's platforms is around 72. Nintendo's content is what's getting all of the praise. Sales aren't reflecting that fact. Thus consumers are the ones who are rewarding companies who make bad content by paying their bills despite the critic's best attempts to inform them as well as they can.

@skywake
Oh please, We are from the UK and know what is on UK TV and whats in the papers / magazines. I have only seen mario 3D world advertised a handful of times and before the 3D world I never seen a single Wii U advert / poster anywhere. We know whats on our UK TV and it isn't Nintendo. Marketing did fail in the UK, I walk into game and see parents unable to tell the difference between the Wii and Wii U - this is CLEARLY bad advertising.

Edit: The 3DS is advertised on the TV with link between worlds and Pokemon X & Y. Before that they also did comparison commercials between 3DS and 3DS XL all over the main BBC & ITV channels.