Topic: WII U's concept potential hasnt been met (yet), and that makes me sad.

Hey there guys,

Ive been a member for some time but I never contributed to the forum. So here goes

I realize that WII U as a concept didnt have the same massive appeal like the wii initially had that caused it to boom towards such high interest selling 100 million. But imho the wii u gamepad had the chance of being so much better than the wii remote in practice(even if it already is). I feel like Nintendo has been too slow in getting out its full potential sadly. And because of this I wish they would stick with the wii u till they did instead of it getting replaced. There's many things that a 2nd screen on your controller could potentially do to make experiences better. Not only in games, but in the whole experience. WII U is the only console that has a decent way for typing for example.

The WII U could have easily been THE console most aprropariate for a MMORPG. Thankfully xenoblade X scratches that itch a bit, but not enough. The wii u gamepad touchscreen could have been used for many other PC centric games like point and click adventures or RTS games. The issue is that many developers including nintendo used the gamepad wrongly for these games imho. For example, why did none of these developers use the gamepad as a touchpad(like on a laptop)? No, instead the games are touch based, meaning where you touch is where the touch gets registered. This resulted in games like point n click adventures(think of the indie game tengami) requiring you to look at the small screen on the gamepad. Pikmin 3 could have used this sooo well. Even with that last pikmin 3 update that added touch controls, it was still where you touch is where the action is registered. With a laptop touchpad sorta like function u would be sliding a cursor instead which would work much better imo.

(Edit: for those who dont entirely get what I mean, think of how metroid prime hunters and kid icarus uprising used the touchscreen to move it sorta like a mouse cursor)

This is all talking about the games. What about the OS? The WII U OS has a lot to desire, but whats worse is how far it is from meeting its potential. The gamepad in this case could also add so many great usability to what the other consoles do without a touchscreen, but then utilize the touchscreen to make that all better.

Im one of the people that wishes NX not to replace the WII U and nintendo still gonna try to meet the potential of the wii u first.

What do you guys think? Are you done with the gamepad and ready for whats next? Or do you feel the same? I think Nintendo really needs to get the potential first before replacing the WII U, well if thats what they're planning to begin with. Some are speculating about a handheld or something else entirely.

The biggest problem was that they expected to cash-in on the Wii name without idea what to do with the U part (gamepad). That's why it's halfbaked or just not used at all with first-party games.

@DJaa: The GamePad has a single touch display. I don't think the actions you're describing are even possible on a single touch display.

That being said, the feature of a second screen alone can be used in more ways than we've seen. Games like Pokémon Snap are perfect for the Wii U, but very few games use the GamePad like that. I've always thought that Metroid would work great on the Wii U as well; third-person view on the TV and whenever need to blast a few missiles, lift up the GamePad and use the first person view on the GamePad to aim. A combination of Prime and Other M essentially. I'm sure there's still plenty of ideas left on how to use a second screen. Who knows what the future brings?

The gamepad would of been great on a more powerful pc like console where you can play games whilst accessing apps like netflixs.

@MadAussieBloke: Haha seriously. It sounds cool in concept, but waving the gamepad all over the room just isn't fun. And it's not as simple as the wii remote was.

At OP, I agree. Which is why I hope/wish the NX would continue using the gamepad, if not a better version of it. They can still do lots with the technology

Its probably been said before but a longer range of connectivity between gamepad & base console would have been good. I can get my home WiFi signal at the bottom of the garden, why not a Wii U signal. Be great to play "off screen" and "out of house".

I'm still disappointed they seemed to have dropped Project Guard. Robot was super awkward though.

It would have been cool if some of the platformers incorporated the gamepad like Rayman did. In the end, I think it became more of a hassle than it was worth- Nintendo was delayed on several games and it just never developed like it could have. That said, there are now several that do- it's a shame that Mario Maker wasn't a release game or at least a game that came out in Dec. 2013. Ditto that for Star Fox. I like the two screen functionality. But even without it, I love offline play.

FWIW, the Wii U Gamepad can't fully function as a mobile/iPad, since it's a resistive touchscreen that only support a single input. (No two-finger swipe possible, difficulty to detect click and drag in the same area, etc.)

I think one of the reasons why Nintendo has been so resistant to provide dual-screen games is that they want people to be able to play it on a single screen. And yet, Splatoon was a huge success...

I think Nintendo really screwed up by naming it the Wii U which makes it sound like a peripheral to the Wii and the vast majority of consumers who bought a Wii have no idea that the Wii U is a new generation. Wii was a horrible name to begin with anyway and I am so glad that they are finally dropping it. They also messed up really badly by failing to give proper support to major studios that create games for better selling consoles. You can't have your console completely dropped by EA and act like all is well. They made some games that utilize the gamepad extremely well and Super Mario Maker is a wonderful example of how unique the Wii U is that only came out a few months ago. However, they have been wildly inconsistent about it and made some HUGE missteps. Errors like the lack of utilization in a game as major as DKCR TF made it clear that they weren't actually as serious about the gamepad as they told their investors and fans they were and I think a lot of the fanbase felt misled (which we were). I still can't believe MK8 doesn't allow one player to have the whole TV screen while the other uses the gamepad like Sonic All Stars. Talk about not truly embracing the gamepad!! Some launch games like NintendoLand and ZombiU used the gamepad to its potential but they don't have wide enough appeal and ZombiU wasn't as good as they wanted to believe it was anyway. I think Ubisoft tried to blame Nintendo and Nintendo fans but really it was the game's fault. So rather than Ubisoft recognizing the many flaws with the game, they gave up on truly supporting the game pad. Then Nintendo basically gave up on the gamepad as well with only a few exceptions. At this point the Wii U has sold far too few copies to keep innovating on it and that's why you will not get what you want in this situation. It's too late for that. There will never be enough people who own a Wii U for them to keep spending a lot of money on developing games for it and unique controls like that probably cost a lot more to refine. The ship has sailed on the gamepad and its Nintendo's own fault.

By the way, I do believe Xbox and PS can use a keyboard so the gamepad is actually the worst way to type on a game console.

@MadAussieBloke: kinda like almost every single live unveiling of a new innovative product, from Skyward Sword's to the recent PSVR one. Yet again your contribution is pointless

On topic as well these new threads are becoming tiresome. I'm sure there's a general one for Wii U this would be suited to, what's with all the recent spam of pointless threads? :/
Still can't get over that petition for Shovel Knight in Smash one

@jariw: But on the other hand, imagine the uproar if you couldn't play Smash with a GC controller!

I see your point, but I feel like DS gaming, like the Wii U offers, just isn't as fun as it is on a handheld. It becomes tiresome having to look down and up many times for some games. Splatoon does it well, mainly because you usually only look down to tap to where you want to super jump. And its overall success comes from its simple, yet fun gameplay concepts that are easy to pickup, rather than the use of the gamepad, I'd say. Though it helps, I'm sure.

Well, i just love the GamePad. Maybe the WII U as a concept didnt have the same massive appeal because the industry changed along with the gamers? For me it seems the modern console gamer is more like a PC gamer, they now seem to focus on powerful hardware and high end games. And you can see that in the PS4 and Xbox One, it's like the console is a mini-pc, it's like a gaming computer but not as powerful. It seems like the console gamer doesn't really care about a great concept and isn't too excited with new ways of playing.

As a PC gamer first, the Wii U was the only video game console i really liked. With the PS4 or the Xbox One i always felt i was kinda playing on a weaker version of my gaming PC. I never wanted a video game console that's trying to the a PC, i wanted a video game console that was just trying to be the best video game console it could be. I believe the Wii U is just that.

I think the GamePad and the concept is great, and i only hope more and more gamers realize how amazingly fun it is to play on a Wii U. Maybe more and more indie games realize that, because there are a lot of games that would be way better on Wii U using the GamePad.

This is why it's such a shame Metroid Prime 4 is skipping Wii U (among other reasons), it would've been perfect for the Gamepad. Can you imagine scanning enemies with it or using the Gyroscope to aim?

I say most of it has to do with the people playing the games. Launch games like ZombiU, Tekken Tag 2, Sonic Racing, and going further into 2013 games like Injustice(even w/o the DLC) or Splintercell, are still new games that Xbox One or PS4 didn't get, but people didn't buy and play them anyway.

I just booted up most of the games I just mentioned, and absolutely no one was online, besides one person in Splintercell. The problem goes deeper than Wii U reaching any supposed potential, when people haven't even realized what it already has, to begin with.

There'd probably be a few dozen people doing let's plays on Xbox(which BTW, are actually called I'll play), if the game came out on Xbox, but people have also abandoned Wii U, big time.

The gamepad has reached its full potential which is allowing you to play console games away from a TV/ without a TV.

That is a better feature than any gameplay usage they'll come up with. Although I'm interested to see if Star Fox works out well.

Off TV Play isn't very useful if you can only play it inside your house. Not exactly a headlining feature.

It is if you have a family..... Or a GF/Wife.....

I will be really disappointed if the NX doesn't have a gamepad screen on par with the Wii U's just because of remote play. Remote play is great and the size of the screen and resolution is perfect. I'd hate to see that downgraded or removed entirely.