"Want one? I've got 100 in the van, going cheap"

The Wii U's lack of commercial success is largely down to the rapidly-expanding tablet sector, says Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto.

Speaking to NPR, Miyamoto stated that during early development the Wii U GamePad was seen as a game-changing controller, but by the time it made it to market in 2012 tablets like the iPad had made its features look ordinary.

He admitted that the high price of the console was also a contributing factor, and the fact that people simply didn't "get" the console:

Unfortunately with our latest system, the Wii U, the price point was one that ended up getting a little higher than we wanted. I don't think it's just price, because if the system is appealing enough, people will buy it even if the price is a little bit high. I think with Wii U, our challenge was that perhaps people didn't understand the system.

I think unfortunately what ended up happening was that tablets themselves appeared in the marketplace and evolved very, very rapidly, and unfortunately the Wii [U] system launched at a time where the uniqueness of those features were perhaps not as strong as they were when we had first begun developing them.

So what I think is unique about Nintendo is we're constantly trying to do unique and different things. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they're not as big of a hit as we would like to hope.

Although he didn't say much about the Wii U's successor, the Nintendo NX, Miyamoto did state that he had high hopes for the platform - but maintained that affordability and innovative remain Nintendo's primary goals:

After Wii U, we're hoping that next time it will be a very big hit. But really what's most important to us is, how do we create a system that is both unique and affordable so that everyone can afford it and everyone can enjoy it.

Image credit: TechRadar

[source videogamer.com, via npr.org]