Topic: What if the Wii U never had it's first spring drought?

From what I recall, a spring drought was inevitable. Rayman and Pikmin was all that was mainly going to be there in February, which ended being delayed, but otherwise, 3rd parties were either busy with Xbox 360 or still picking up some losses they had from overspending and poor management.

Wii U was going to suffer from those sort of situations, regardless, if you ask me.

People who care more about PS or Xbox still wouldn't have bought a Wii U, even if it would have had more games and stuff, just as people with Wii U still won't be caring that much about Xbox or PS, because it's already hard enough as it is to support 1 console as it is. If more people could buy 2 consoles, I'd say Wii U would be doing better right now. Beside that, some people might care more about their phone, even if their one from last year is still mostly as fine, or spend their money on something else. All that comes into play, even if Wii U has more and better games than it would have, anyway.

I'm not too sure if the Wii U not having a spring drought would have caused me to get my Wii U earlier than I did. I got my Wii U at the time I did, (October) because of the Wind Waker HD bundle. To me, that was the game that sold the system to me.

What I remember at the time was people saying they wouldn't buy the Wii U to play games they already have on their PS3s and 360s. Spring drought or not, I don't think the Wii U's fortunes would be that different now.

Then 2013 rolled around and everyone bought PS4s and Xbox Ones to play Assassin's Creed IV and Call of Duty: Ghosts. Solid.

I think the "Spring Drought," as you call it, is just one of the many contributing factors as to why the Wii U wasn't a success. If it didn't happen, it's not like sales would be much better. If you think otherwise, you're too much of a Nintendo fanboy.

Well, it still all comes back what games people wanted to play. There were good games to play on Wii U when it first came out, period. CoD Black Ops II was still the same game, Tekken Tag 2 was definitive on Wii U, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate happened, and Splintercell was definitive on Wii U, IMO, as well.

If you were already planning on buying those games on Xbox or PS, you could have just as easily played those games on Wii U while still having access to the Nintendo exclusive games that you won't get on PS3/4 and Xbox 360/One. That is the definition of having moderate 3rd party support. All the 3rd party games weren't there, but there were still some of the AAA ones that were still mattering on 7th generation. There shouldn't have to be an explanation to why Wii U was missing out on games like Dead Island or anything else happening on 7th generation systems, because there really is a limit on what they can port, whether the Wii U can supposedly run it or not. Even Xbox One and PS4 aren't getting all the same games as Xbox 360 and PS3, so it should have immediately been clear that that was only part of the reasons why Wii U was missing out on those games. People didn't even think Wii U could run GTA V, so ya...

Whether it was audience, which I realize does matter for things like GTA V, or "trying" to port every game from 7th generation as possible, there was still basically just as much there for Wii U as there was Xbox One and PS4 when those systems just came out.

I actually had more games on my Wii U's ext. HDD than Xbox One and PS4 had on their entire online store, for a while; that I actually cared to play, and I didn't even own every game. That's why I say it goes back to what people want to play, porting aside, because otherwise we might as well say ZombiU being ported to Xbox One and PS4 is pointless, because it's already on Wii U.

EDIT: Also, Wii U had and still has most of the same indie support as Xbox One and PS4, so there has always been something to play for people who cared to.

@TromboneGamer: I wouldn't say your points are invalid. I WOULD say that I don't see the PS4 versions being any better than the Xbox One versions. I just want it to be known that Sony won a PR battle. Not one for the better overall product. They made many of the same problems in their console that Microsoft did, they were just smart enough not to announce it after Microsoft got destroyed for it.

@UGXwolf: Of course they won the PR battle, but the point is mainstream and casual gamers wanted power and better graphics which both Sony and Microsoft didn't waver to promote with their systems. As for my points not being valid do you really believe the Wii U would have maintained any kind of real relevance with the average consumer? Does the gamepad add an element of gameplay that gets you excited? For me, no, it doesn't. And that isn't to say that it's not a nice and excellently engineered device, but it lacked pazzaz and multi-touch support which most tablets have. Even then it doesn't change games too much, but it does make things like inventory management easier which I've noted MANY times whenever I feel obligated to talk about it. The system needed to be at least half as successful as the Wii to justify ports of most third party titles up to this point. It's sad to say even though the Nintendo games we've gotten and have yet to get are extremely solid and fun experiences that the Wii U just had the unfortunate situation of having lack of raw power and featuring technology that simply wasn't revolutionary.

@TromboneGamer: as mentioned above there were many reasons why the Wii U failed. As a casual gamer, I thought it had plenty of graphical power. A friend of mine likes Xbox much better, but even he admits that there's not a huge gap between the two in terms of actual graphic polish, in spite of what the specs say/suggest.

I think most of it came down to the lack of PR and marketing. Even if you just use the gamepad for offline play, that solves a huge problem with a lot of families. Throw in the fact that the Wii U is semi-portable. Nintendo never really explained how cool these features were alone- and then didn't spread the word. The average person on the street would be quite familiar with a Wii- but probably has no clue what a Wii U is.

Anyway, early on especially, the average person wasn't going to fork over $350 for limited game selection- but I think it's priced reasonably now, given that you get either MK8, SM3dW or Splatoon, PLUS NintendoLand. If the NX is coming next year, they should reduce the price to $250 in the fall.

I bet they'll start putting in 3 games, pretty soon. I bought mine when there was only Nintendo Land for $350, and I played for hours on end right away with like 6 other games. That's what matters, right?

@rockodoodle: Wii U's marketing was atrocious indeed. The fact that Nintendo didn't know themselves what exactly the gamepad could be useful for in gameplay was a particularly bad sign. Nintendo did a good job of providing fun and somewhat meaningful gameplay in Nintendo Land, but beyond those concepts future games hardly ever did much with it. An easy explanation for this would be the systems power. Yes, you can make asymmetrical game experiences if you know what you're doing and make the necessary visual sacrifice, but the Wii U simply didn't have the power to run most games on both the console and the gamepad because the CPU can't handle the load. At this point I have to wonder whether that would excite people anyway. Initial sales were superb and it was hard to find a Wii U in the first month or 2 after launch and I think a lot of that was due to the hopes that the console would still have games coming down the line. It launched with NSMBU and Pikmin 3 was looming on the horizon, but the fact was that under the surface Nintendo was still building resources for HD development which lead to the aforementioned Spring drought. There are a lot of Nintendo fans so i'm sure the bulk of launch sales were made by the Nintendo faithful. Perhaps a marketing campaign that highlighted portability and off-screen play would've helped it along, but I can almost assure you the demand for those features isn't high enough to entice 10 million plus consumers to purchase the system especially when at this point very few third party titles would be able to support off-tv play without some serious reworking. The situation isn't simple per say, but to sum up the Wii U's woes, lightning didn't strike this time around.