Topic: The Wii u is absolutely garbage

Eh, this is about 6 years too late. Everyone who's ever owned a WiiU knows that it's missing a tonne of stuff the other consoles have.

The Wii U is one big missed opportunity after another. But that said, to this day I hold that the idea was solid, it was merely the execution that was poor.

Imagine if they had changed just a few things:
1. The Gamepad was truly mobile and could connect through your home router anywhere in your house, and was at least 720p with the better battery life.
2. Supported modern game programming languages instead of remaining exculsive to the older archetypes.
3. Was marketed as its own console, not just an HD upgrade for the Wii.
4. Retained built in support for Gamecube titles and controllers - something modders were easily able to do anyway.

Had the Wii U had those features, it still would have likely been outclassed by its rivals, but wouldn't be the train wreck it turned out to be.

However I am okay with the Wii U having failed because without it failing, we might never have gotten the Switch, which has become one of my all time, if not my all time favorite gaming device.

Even though I still think the Wii U is a much better piece of hardware than the Switch, Wii U was unfortunately lacking software quantity and variety.

Switch releases 25-35 games a week while Wii U had only 3-5 games.
For me personally 3-5 games a week were good enough. The Switch is an absolute overkill, I can never get used to it having 5 new games released every day of the week.

However, the continuation of Virtual Console ensured that the Wii U has the best and biggest official retro collection to this date (a thing still sorely missing on Switch) and the intergrated Wii (with 2000 compatible games) ensured that you always could fall back to the games you missed the first time around, if nothing interesting came out for a week or two. But for new Triple AAA multiplats and indies, I can see why many gamers looked elsewhere.

Maybe next gen we'll get the best of both worlds. A reliable, innovative Panzer of hardware like the Wii U with the ammo (game support and mobility) of the Switch.

I only bought a Wii U in February and I absolutely love it. I am playing through the Wind Waker at the moment which is, I'm ashamed to say, my first 3D Zelda, despite owning both Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword on the Wii, I never got round to playing them! I also have Ocarina of Time on the 3DS so I think I will turn to that one next.

I always hear the same complaint about the Wii U's lack of software. I can see that there are fewer games by far than the competition can offer, but there are still about 30 games that I really want to own/play, which is probably more than I've ever had for any other console before. I think it would take me a very long time to play through all those; as I mentioned I've still got Wii games I haven't got round to finishing or even in some cases playing at all! Maybe for hardcore gamers it wasn't enough, but I think with its solid library of first-party titles, eshop independents, virtual console, and backwards compatibility with wii, no one could ever be short of anything to play.

I've played Mario Kart 8, Captain Toad Treasure Tracker and the Wind Waker so far, and I think it's the best console I've ever owned.

If only Pokemon LeafGreen was on the VC. Then it would be the perfect machine.

That it is missing "stuff" was never the issue. The real issue with the Wii U was that it was both too early and too late. It was too late to be compelling as a console with Nintendo games in HD outside of the super dedicated Nintendo fans. As a Nintendo fan the promise of that was kinda enough. If it had happened in 2010 at a price similar to the PS3/360 as just a "Wii HD"? It wouldn't have been very "Nintendo", it would've been a super safe move... but it would've drawn more in.

But as late as it was for "HD Nintendo", it was too early as a relatively high spec semi-portable console. The Switch clearly shows that people are interested in the core idea of the Wii U. The thing that really blew me away when I got my hands on the Wii U was Assassin's Creed 3 in my hands. And that's still impressive on the Switch. In 2012 on the Wii U it was impressive as an early prototype not a final product. Impressive for those who are willing to look past the rough edges, not quite ready for everyone else.

Today I don't see the Wii U as a failure and I didn't when it was my main gaming platform. I see it as a successful beta-test of the Switch. I also see it as the downside to Nintendo's correct bet with the Wii that consumers weren't quite ready for HD in 2006.

@onemorearrow I have said that multiple times on here. The only way that the Wii U had too little software is if you have no life and spend all of your time playing video games. There were more than enough great games to keep me entertained and busy throughout its lifetime before the Switch. In fact, I still play games on it periodically that I have not gotten around to yet.

Don't look Wii U as a Failure.
At least it can play Wii games in 1080p output.

I agree. I picked mine up in the summer of 2015 and still have a few games I need to grab and/or finish. I've been giving mine a bit of a break while breaking in my SNES Classi Mini, but I plan to go back to it before long.

Still going with mine too and only completed a handful of games on it. The longer Nintendo takes to release original Switch titles, the longer I have to complete the backlog.

Was the Wii U a commercial failure and a flawed console? Absolutely. But nothing bad enough to me to call it garbage. The droughts were brutal, but there was still some quality software.

The Wii U is a good console that I can't really recommend to people due to most of its best games being ported off to other systems.

One thing I will still say about the Wii U is that it had one of the best controllers no one ever used. I actually really liked the Wii U Pro Controller and wish I had more reason to use it.

The Wii U Pro Controller is godly. I used it with my PC games nowadays, thanks to an adapter.

And while it may have many failings, the Wii U is definitively not garbage. It had good games that you still can’t play anywhere else.

Wii u is in my top 3 nintendo console period the system deserves far more love then its getting,
Miiverse for example, stil a sad story for me.

@onemorearrow I agree, the first-party games are solid and the two Zelda remasters make it a very valuable console because in my opinion Twilight Princess is the finest 3D Zelda and the remaster looks so much better because of the improved textures and HD. Then you have a lot of choices for controls, the pro controller is cheap and works well. Add to that Wii backwards compatibility with HDMI and the Virtual Console. The GamePad is a nice OFF-TV bonus and some games use it nicely like Super Mario Maker and Project Zero. On top of that a Wii U can unofficially but in a native way play GameCube games. Wii U was limited by Nintendo and had awful marketing, people thought that it was an accessory for Wii because Iwata presented the GamePad as the Wii U without showing any console but, overall, the Wii U is the best console that Nintendo has made. Yes, Switch has some of the Wii U games as ports but it doesn't have backwards compatibility or Virtual Console and Switch also has its own collection of issues.

I had a lot of time for the Wii U. I got it autumn 2014 and had had a great time with the Wii previously. However, I also got an Xbox 360 a couple of years earlier and for a system that was 9 (9!) years old by the time I got a Wii U, the 360 was much slicker in a lot of ways than the Wii U!

I remember getting the Wii U and struggling to connect it to the internet. I was so annoyed; how could a brand new system not connect to wireless? The Wii had no problem. I think that kind of influenced a lot of my attitude to the Wii U, which admittedly is a bit silly.

However, there really is a disparity between the way the system handles some games. Darksiders 2 was great, but crashes frequently, so much so that I gave up on it )and can play it on Xbox One now), Lego Avengers just seems to run slow. However, first party games are excellent (Yoshi’s Woolly world is what I’m playing at the moment).

In the end I have 80 odd physical games for the system, plus a healthy virtual console library and if one sticks to first party games (which are nearly all superb and run well) and select 3rd party games, it is a solid machine. However, as much as I love it’s underdog status, it isn’t in the same league as the Xbox (and I’m guessing PlayStation).

haters gonna hate

I swear all you Wii U haters don't realize what a truly horrible garbage console really is. Ever owned a sega saturn, an atari Jaguar, how bout a Dreamcast? That's right i said it. I know it has a fanbase but for the life of me i can't figure out why. What because of Sonic adventure? That horribly glitch filled mess of a game that people get all nostalgic about. Lame. Any true gamer, and by that i mean a gamer who plays for the love of the hobby knows that the Wii U was flawed yes but still very worthwhile.

I grew out of that my system's better than yours crap long ago. Homey don't play that console wars BS. Gaming is gaming no matter what platform or how hip happening or cutting edge.

I disagree. I had a lot of fun times with the Wii U, such as Xenoblade Chronicles X, Wind Waker HD, and Super Mario Maker. Although, if these games were on the Switch (one of them is already, I guess) I'd drop the Wii U in a heartbeat.