Topic: Wii U is better than people think

@SKTTR

Even on that, I'm not really convinced because a FPS is about keyboard + mouse for me... but OK I get the point !

@tedko I agree with you. The hate towards Wii U is jarring, like trying to favour Switch even though Switch has as many (different) issues or more than Wii U.

@Cobalt What you say is true. I also consider that people became fed up with Wii and its graphics and controls and then the Wii-U came. People didn't want another underpowered system with gimmicks but the truth is that Wii U has a lot of original and good-quality games and that the GamePad was made optional whenever it was possible, many games supporting all kind of controllers and the GamePad becoming a nice extra and a defining feature of unique games like Maiden of Black Water and Nintendo Land. And it's more comfortable to hold and use than a Switch.

@BlueOcean

Just by reading your post, it's like reading myself writing a post
I have the same way of thinking as you do.

regardless of what others have said about the Wii U I am still very much fond of it considering that I still use it often enough.

This is kind of a strange thing to say. What is it with this sub-forum? It really is full of people trying to re-write history for some reason. I don't get it. What, do you think that you're some kind of hero for thinking that a generally unliked and at this point very obsolete thing is "misunderstood"?

Really, the only arguments I've seen people put up defending the Wii U at this stage act as if the Wii U exists in isolation. As if we live in a world where the Switch is not a thing. Then they do this mental gymnastics where they talk about the Switch as if the only things that matter are things it does the Wii U and 3DS couldn't.

Stuff like this.....

is purely a forum argument, it doesn't hold any real meaning for the end user in the real world. For me I didn't own a Gamecube so to me Twilight Princess was, in the only sense that mattered, a Wii game. It's a similar story for most people who picked up a Switch for Breath of the Wild. Even with me, I own a Wii U but got a Switch at launch. For me BotW was a game for the Switch because that's the console I brought it on.

I honestly struggle to think of one thing the Wii U did well that the Switch doesn't do better. And by that I mean excluding things that other devices do better. The Wii U had Netflix & YouTube for example but how many other devices do you have that can do the same? Doesn't count. Nobody was buying a Wii U so they could watch Netflix. Really the only two thing I can think about is probably support for large external HDDs on Wii U and the fact that the Switch doesn't have Super Mario Maker.

@kagamin87 Yep I still use it a lot too, backwards compatibility included of course.

I didn’t get a WiiU until after my Switch this year. I love it for what it is. Playing Prime Echoes right now.

LOL no. The Switch is everything I wanted the Wii U to be (especially in terms of the lineup, the Switch having a 3D Mario game and a Metroid Prime game and the Wii U not is a major point in the Switch's favor, and while BotW wasn't a Switch exclusive, its timing certainly worked more in favor of the Switch than the Wii U), I don't regret passing up the Wii U in the slightest. Anything Wii U related Nintendo wants me to buy into they can just put on the Switch.

@skywake The Wii U will be the last system that has limited backwards compatibility with almost the entire Nintendo system structure, as Nintendo has realized that software as a service is a thing they can exploit. On the Wii U I could purchase NES, SNES, GBA, N64, TG16, and DS titles along with Wii direct compatibility (Wii Mode) and Wii U games. It will also go down as the system that provided the roadmap for Nintendo to move forward to the Switch.

Sadly, most of the features that were truly unique to the console are doomed to one day disappear, or was never fully taken to the max. Eventually the eShop will close (taking all those Virtual Console titles with it), Miiverse has already disappeared leaving behind a ghost shell on the menu, TVii (flawed as it was) died, and eventually the online will go away too. Games like Nintendo Land, Super Mario Maker, Pikmin 3, and Affordable Space Adventures were too few and far between; and we never saw games like Pac-Man Vs, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, or other potential games (think Cities XL, SimCity, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Torchlight) that could have used the gamepad meaningfully show up.

The Wii U will be fondly remembered by me, mostly because it was the first console I had in a long time that dared to do something different. Not always perfect, but at least it tried new concepts. It has some of my favorite games of the series I love and brought back some classics to be purchased legally for the first time and forever.

@skywake Can’t the obsolete/“anything you can do I can do better” argument be made about any Nintendo console and its immediate successor? With the exception of games that weren’t ported over (and backwards compatibility along with Virtual Console where applicable), there is nothing any console can do that the next one can’t also do.

@Darknyht @Euler Very good points both of you. You are absolutely right.

@Bolt_Strike "the Switch having a 3D Mario game and a Metroid Prime game"

What Metroid Prime game does Switch have? Do you mean future game Metroid Prime 4?

Yes, some of my favourite franchises skipped Wii U, like Metroid Prime, even a proper 3D Mario game, but Breath of the Wild is a Wii U game that was ported to Switch during two years after development was finished.

Switch is missing most of Nintendo's beloved franchises, basically most of the key titles are Wii U ports.

Besides, the last years of Wii U were quiet and Nintendo merged its two divisions and no longer had two different libraries for two different platforms. One would expect Switch to have many more relevant titles by now that are not Wii U ports.

I get that you love your Switch and I'm happy for you but objectively it is nothing beyond what Wii U was, except semi-portability. Hopefully it will be supported for a longer time than Wii U was.

@Darknyht
Maybe I didn't articulate my point as well as I could. I agree that the Wii U did things nothing else did at its peak, as low as that peak was. But now that the Switch is out there's not much reason to go back. And in that context MiiVerse is a strange thing to bring up given it no longer exists. It was something the Wii U did better but it's a forum argument point not something that holds any weight in reality.

With VC? Yes, again that is something the Wii U did better than the Switch. I would argue that the Wii U wasn't the best implementation and equally we don't know exactly how the Switch is going to handle classic games. I would also argue that for the games that exist on the NES/SNES classic those are significantly better options. However between the Wii Shop closing down, the limited number of systems on 3DS and the Switch not offering anything the Wii U wins by default.

@Euler
I don't agree. The thing that sold me on the Wii wasn't that it was a GC++, it was Wii Sports and motion controls. With the Wii U the sales pitch was that you had Nintendo games at HD and could play modern games without using your TV not that it was another Wii. If anything the fact that some saw it as a Wii++ even though it wasn't is it's tragedy. With the Switch is the elevator pitch is basically "lets take everything the Wii U did well and implement it better". Whether that's specific games being ported and running better or the fact that off-TV play is now not tethered by WiFi and at 720p.

It worked equally in the reverse. When the Wii launched there was a very vocal part of the community sticking to the GC versions whether it was Smash Bros or Twilight Princess. With the Wii U we never got a "Galaxy like" Mario, a new Zelda until its death, anything for Metroid or Animal Crossing. If you wanted Motion Controls the WiiMote was the way to go and it was rarely pushed. So there was value to the Wii BC. With the Switch? Even if it somehow had Wii U BC there wouldn't be any reason to bother with it... other than price.

This is the sort of mental gymnastics I'm talking about. The inevitable releases on the Switch don't count because they're not in our hands currently. At the same time the Wii U ports and sequels don't count because somehow we're having a theoretical argument and not one about what games people have in their hands. This type of thinking holds no weight at all outside of forum arguments.

Lets not forget how much people like me defended the Wii U by pointing to Zelda BotW on the horizon. Also lets not forget that some of the biggest games on Wii U were things like Wind Waker HD, Bayonetta, New SMB. Or that people in this thread even today are rightly citing the VC and Wii BC as the key reasons why the Wii U still has some value. Somehow different rules apply to one console vs the other.

Better than the nonexistent Metroid Prime game that the Wii U has.

Again, the timing of BotW's release benefited the Switch more than the Wii U. The Wii U was on its last legs when BotW came out, so it couldn't exactly help drive Wii U purchases. Whereas on the Switch it was a launch title and was a major factor in its early success. Also, it's not a port, a port is a when a game is re-released on another platform at a later date. BotW launched on the Wii U and Switch simultaneously.

And the Switch has only been on the market for a year and has a good 3-4+ years to get them, comparing 1 1/2 year's worth of Switch games vs. 4 year's worth of Wii U games isn't a fair comparison. Instead, let's look at where the Wii U was a year and a half into its lineup.

Wii U Released games: NSMBU, Pikmin 3, Mario Kart 8, Super Mario 3D World, Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze
Wii U announced games: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Yoshi's Woolly World, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
Switch Released games: ARMS, Splatoon 2, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Super Mario Odyssey, Kirby Star Allies
Switch announced games: Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Yoshi, Metroid Prime 4, Pikmin 4

Really there's not that much missing for a console that's only a year and a half old. We still need Animal Crossing, 2D Mario, 2D Zelda, Donkey Kong, Mario Kart, Star Fox, Paper Mario, Mario & Luigi, Warioware, and F-Zero. That's entirely manageable in 3 years.

So even without the ports, the Switch is still doing slightly better than the Wii U was at this point, and that's without even getting into the quality of those releases vs. the quality of the Wii U releases. The ports are just icing on the cake, this lineup could sustain itself a lot better than the Wii U's lineup.

As if that really excuses the Wii U from missing so many key IPs.

The market doesn't care about fair comparisons but it doesn't care whether a game is a "port" either. All it cares about is what the platform can do and what games it has. If right now you had infront of you a Wii U and a Switch and you had to pick between the two? Unless you specifically wanted something to play Wii games on or a few very specific titles that haven't been ported you'd get a Switch. It's as simple as that.

The majority of the big games that came to Wii U are now ported to Switch and they all run as well or better on Switch. The main selling point of the Wii U, off-TV play, is fully realised on Switch at a higher resolution. Then in addition to that you already have a significantly deeper library of third party and indie releases. And to ram the point home you have big titles like Metroid, Pokemon and Bayonetta 3 on the horizon.

There isn't really much of an argument to be had here. The only way people are having any argument at all is by throwing out points which don't have any basis in reality. We're not looking at 2013 Wii U vs 2018 Switch. We're not looking at a Switch where all of the ports somehow don't count. We're talking about the Switch in 2018 vs the Wii U in 2018.

@skywake @Bolt_Strike and @BlueOcean — I'll kind of strike a middle ground between both of your viewpoints:

I have a Wii U and a Switch. Wii U personally might be my favorite Nintendo console, it brought me back into current-gen gaming and had lots of interesting games. But I see what both of you are saying @skywake @Bolt_Strike . Currently, and since March 3rd 2017 I recommended anyone to choose a Switch over the Wii U. Hardware-wise the Switch is much much better to me than the Wii U, since I never really liked dual-screen gaming and the handheld nature of the Switch has proven useful surprisingly more often than I thought (although I'm still way more of a home console gamer). And software wise I think they're more or less equal now, but at the end of the Switch's lifespan my gut feeling is that the Switch will not only surpass the Wii U library but be one of the best, if not the best, library of any Nintendo console or handheld.

But I do think there are some double standards going on here. Not counting indies, it feels like half of the Switch's acclaimed portion of its library are Wii U ports. Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart, Pokken, Bayonetta, Donkey Kong, Captain Toad ... there are a lot of games from the Wii U.

But I'm going to go one step further — I say that no other console or handheld in history has depended so much on its predecessor than the Switch has on the Wii U. Not just the multiple software titles; the hardware (which is an evolution of the off TV concept), sacrificing games on the Wii U in order to have a good launch year for Switch, even the core philosophy of the system is a continuation of the Nintendo focus on core gamers that they realized they should pursue halfway through the Wii U lifespan. And the Wii U has and continues to support the Switch every time the Switch encounters a drought of retail releases.

So currently there's no contest the Switch is better than the Wii U in most ways. Not ALL ways — Wii U has a much better VC, although I think the Wii's VC was the best, and the Wii U has free online while the Switch has paid online. But hardware wise for me personally the Switch concept is much better than the Wii U concept, although I do feel the Switch concept has regressed in other ways from the Wii U era, like nonexistent media features, hardware issues, lack of comfort on handheld vs the Wii U gamepad, etc.

Not really a double standard when I'm judging them both on the same terms.

@skywake You articulated well enough. The point I was trying to make is the best things that may have been unique to the console, especially since Nintendo is porting the majority of the library was the experience. A large part of what makes current consoles unique is the community, and that more than anything will be what people remember fondly. Yes, we will be able to go back and play through the physical releases of the Wii U at a later time, but as we are already seeing the community aspect is mostly gone. I went to play Pushmo World last night and then realized that all the Miiverse levels that people and the creators made afterwords are now electronic ether. Same for when my kids played Game & Wario sketch. However, most modern consoles will eventually have that problem as the online services become more central to what they are. Xbox One will especially have that issue because of their using cloud processing to assist games.

At the end of the day, the Wii U will matter a lot more to those that owned/played it than did not. Much like I have very fond memories of the Intellivision than the general population. Unlike the TG-16/Dreamcast that it is frequently likened to (and to which I have done myself), the odds of the Wii U developing a home-brew community around it is fairly slim. Nintendo liked to use proprietary formats, unlike the CD-Rom and Mil-CD formats the other two used, which makes home brewing difficult.

Honestly, the more I really think about it the more I am coming around to believe that the system will eventually be for those that fondly remember it and collectors due to the rarity of the system and games (which saw extremely limited physical releases at times). I cannot wait until we see Devil's Third selling for $200+, and I am amazed it already sells for $90 used.

I think not counting Prime 4 as Switch's Metroid is a reasonable take at this point in time to be honest, all we've gotten is that 1 E3 2017 tease and nothing else. When we start getting screenshots, meaningful trailers, etc. then it becomes less debatable.

A lot could happen at this point. The game could end up in development hell and cancelled, Nintendo Switch Online's performance could morph the game into something else (e.g. an online focused FPS), etc.

@Bolt_Strike I think you didn't understand my points. I used the verb to port because it is the correct verb to use when you finish developing a game and you make a version for another platform. When I said the last years of Wii U were quiet I didn't mean it as an excuse or anything positive, and so on.