BogusMeatFactory wrote:
Bad advertising and poor communication is definitely a culprit for the poor sales. When the system was announced, people did not know if the game pad was an add-on or if this was a brand new system. The name itself was just as confusing and added to that. The commercials and advertisements seemed canned, phony and full of, "Families play together," that seemed disingenuous. They didn't put as much time into that recently tapped market like they did with the Wii and it caused a lot of confusion and loss of those people. They did not get as much carry-over from the Wii, because of it.
I would not say that there is such a small Nintendo fan base. The New Super Mario Bros. franchise sold almost 30 million globally on both DS and Wii, yet only 4 million on the Wii U. Why is that?
New Super Mario Bros. U sold more in the U.S. than in Japan and is a continuing sign of the struggling game economy in that nation. There is a much larger focus on mobile gaming in Japan and all the Japanese companies are feeling that hit.
Not only that, but go back and look at those Wii U commercials - they don't focus on the games, or the system itself, or the features/apps of the operating system. No, they focus on the damned CONTROLLER!
It is no wonder that people thought that the Wii U was some kind of add on for the Wii, especially considering the ridiculous name that they chose...
If you ask me, Nintendo is at its best when it puts the focus (marketing and otherwise) on the games instead of gambling on yet another gimmicky controller.
I like my Wii U but it's not because of the tablet controller - it's not in spite of the controller either, to be fair. It just doesn't add that much to the experience 95% of the time. Same with the DS family. The touchscreen is a cool idea but how many games actually do anything worthwhile with it? It's great to have that second screen but as a control device it has always been very hit or miss. The original Wii, again, was a nice console but personally, the best games had to overcome the waggle, they weren't made great BY the waggle.
I would honestly pay double next time if Nintendo would come out with a console that was NOT based on some funky architecture that no one knows how to program for, and featured a relatively generic Xbox/PS clone controller. Then the focus could be on the games as it should have always been. Also, there might be more 3rd party support and I would be able to play Mario AND Madden on the same system like I could in the 1990s!
Have: Sega Genesis, SNES, Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atari 800XL, PC, N3DS XL, Wii U, GBA, Xbox One, Switch
Want: Games!!!
