Why The Wii U Was Nintendo’s Biggest Mistake

Few companies have revolutionized video games in more ways than Nintendo. The practice of literally stamping cartridges with the Nintendo Seal of Quality, introduced to circumvent Atari’s failures at quality control, marked the first step towards hardware makers profiting from software developed by third-party studios. And it need not be stated how effectively the Wii appealed to multiple generations, from children enjoying their first video game to nursing home residents in need of a convenient and fun tool for bolstering their motor skills. For decades, Nintendo constituted the entry point for many a gamer and easily vacillated between catering to casual and hardcore audiences. But after the Wii prioritized the casual with motion controls, which came at the cost of third-party support, Nintendo used its successor—the Wii U—to regain a foothold in the market dominated by PlayStation and Xbox.

The Wii U should’ve proven yet another sticking point for the manufacturer, given the inventive second screen application, interoperability between it and the 3DS, and backwards compatibility with the Wii. Unlike previous Nintendo devices, the Wii successor even supported HD graphics. A wide range of factors converged to prevent the home console from gaining much traction, however, chief among them being the sheer confusion that pervaded pre-launch marketing campaigns. Misguided by unclear messaging, trusted media sources most notably wrote previews describing the Wii U as a peripheral for the Wii; the product’s bizarre naming convention only exacerbated this particular issue.

Not even the acclaimed Mario Kart 8 could boost the system’s poor sales. As such, Wii U sold a dismal 13.5 million units in its lifetime, failure Nintendo hadn’t faced since the GameCube era. And it left many wondering if the House of Mario would ever fully recover.

This is the tragedy of Wii U.

0:00 Intro
2:17 Sponsorship
4:04 The Tragedy of Wii U

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[dictatorofthecheese]

Something to note is that the Nintendo head Satoru Iwata was told after the Wii U's disastrous launch and reception that he'd have to cut costs majorly. For most big corporations, this meant layoffs of the lowly workers. Iwata instead refused and did something that still makes me have so much respect for him. Instead of laying off tons of workers, he instead ordered a pay cut for all the higher ups at Nintendo, including himself. For his salary he cut it by 50%. This ended up saving those workers' jobs that would've ended up with them getting laid off. If only more corporations did that. RIP Satoru Iwata.

[aceofhearts]

I worked at Gamestop in 2013 just a few months before the PS4 and Xbox One came out and it was insane the amount of parents that would come in and ask me if the WiiU was a tablet add on to the Wii. You also had a ton of them ask me if Mario could be played on a ps3 or xbox 360. The concept of hardware exclusive couldnt enter their brain.

[megamanx]

That Reggie damage control reel is brutal.

[billtree]

I had a Wii U. It was a decent console. I couldn't tell you a single game I had for it. The worst thing about it was our apartment flooded and while the console survived unharmed, the people who came to clean up stole the consoles tablet. IDK about now, but back then the tablet and console were permanently linked and the tablet couldn't be replaced. So I was stuck with an unplayable console and the thief was stuck with an unplayable tablet.

[genxtasy]

The thing that annoyed me with the Wii U was the crap battery power on the pad.
I liked posting messages and stamps on 3D world during the load screens. Seeing others was cool

[MissingNo_]

I hate that Mr. Iwata never got to see how successful the switch would become.

[GameDesignThinking]

Satoru Iwata was such a legendary game developer. I totally recommend the book "Ask Iwata" if you want to know more about the philosophy and ethics behind his work. Amazing through and through.

[rsolsjo]

Interesting how both Nintendo and Microsoft made huge mistakes in 2012/13, but ultimately learned from them. Both were kind of trying to be more "living room presence" than just "gaming device", and both failed to hit their target. If there's one thing to know about gamers, it's that they are staunchly traditional, and change has to come gradually, not suddenly. Things also have to be exceedingly clear (Wii U and Xbox One were terrible names) and "games first"-focused. I think right now we are in the exact same situation when it comes to game streaming in the cloud - push it too hard and they'll rebel, but gradually and slowly introduce it as an alternative (key word there, alternative) and it can take root.

[Alec_Reaper]

I remember when they revealed the Wii U and even though I'm a gamer, I still thought, is this just a controller for the Wii? They focused so much on the controller and it was just confusing. Eventually I was like oh it's their next gen console.

If a gamer gets confused at first glance, the average consumer will be confused further

[ReleaseTheCanines]

The Wii-U always makes me genuinely sad. It was my son's dream present when he was 5, I'd raised him up on the Wii and the two adorable Kirby games on that system that we played together endlessly, and all he wanted was for Father Christmas to bring him a Wii-U more than anything, and Santa made his dreams come true on Christmas 2015. But the Kirby game for it was a weird line-drawing game made of clay that he didn't like and we mostly ended up still playing our old Wii games on it instead. I bought Watch Dogs, Zombi U and Mass Effect 3 for myself as I desperately wanted some grown-up games for when he was asleep or at his mum's, and I loved them (Zombi U especially, or 28 Days Later: The Game as it felt), but even at 5 he was readily feeling the drought of no games, and so was I. Where was a true flagship 3D Mario game? Where was the proper Kirby game? We kept going into a local game shop and he'd play all these briliant quirky indie titles on the in-store PS4 and wanted to play them on Wii-U, but none of them were multiplatform and available on Wii-U. I wanted more games like the above for my own time, and yet no others were really available either. Barely more than a year later he wanted a PS4 for Christmas, so my then-girlfriend and I went halves and bought him one and he was overjoyed. It's still being loved to this very day by both of us (and he's 13 and I dare say taller than me now). When I think of the Wii-U, I think of that little 5 year old boy's smiling face on Christmas day, and I smile, but also always see his overt disappointment just a few short months in. We still play on it from time to time, as he still loves playing our old Wii games on it in semi-HD for a 'retro night' (for him at least, to me it still feels like yesterday) and we transferred all our data from our genuinely dying Wii onto it, so it's not devoid of value (though we can't play the Gamecube games anymore now, after the Wii's second disc drive finally died), but even then, to see a young boy at the time be *that* aware of the lack of software support was really quite heartbreaking. My lad's still a Nintedo boy, he LOVES his Switch and adores the last two Zelda games (in fact he saved up and bought the new Zelda branded Oled console) and still plays Kirby, loving it just as much as when I introduced it to him when he was 3, but it did sadden me that his sweet little Nintendo world was shattered for so long during the Wii-U era and we had to venture back into Playstation and a lot of gritty games that probably matured him far too quickly all because Nintendo made such a blunder with the Wii-U.

[dvhczto]

I remember walking into Best Buy the same week the Wii U came out and they literally had a whole pallet of em sitting on the floor. In hindsight it makes sense why no one was buying the new console...

[kirbymarchbarcena]

I think Nintendo learned a lot from the Wii U which made the Switch a success. Giving the right information to their customers can really lead them to success.

[nathanweaver]

Reggie was brutal in some of those interviews. Super confrontational.

[Pewpewpew]

This system never grabbed me, but I admire the fan base it has.
Keep up the great work, this is the best gaming history channel in all of YouTube.

[TheStuartCarson]

Maybe I missed it, but I wish this video mentioned the voluntary pay cut Iwata took instead of laying off employees after the Wii U’s failure.

He truly was a great man.

[SkyTied]

Gonna be honest, I actually really loved the Wii U.
I owned a Wii and a close friend of mine owned a Wii U and the Mii Creator music alone is godly.

[marioq]

I'll never forget the post E3 itnerview 2011 with Reggie on G4 with Adam Sessler. The first question just minutes after unveiling the Wii U was "Did Nintendo just announce a new console?" Reggie was clearly annoyed by the question and I knew the Wii U was in trouble.

[chameleonhrt]

Another big problem, in my opinion, was that it was based around the "second screen experience", a desperate gimmick introduced by TV and satellite/cable to keep people from switching to streaming. That was shoved down people's throats so much by that point that people just wanted the ability to play on the gamepad if they couldn't on their TV.

[CloudD]

Man, I LOVED the Wii U. I was so hyped for it that I literally bought the 32GB deluxe with EVERY physical launch game, the Pro Controller, and all the official accessories on launch day. Sadly, I had to sell everything six months later to pay bills as I was hit with unforeseen financial issues that April. Sold it all in May 2013 (so basically 10 years ago this month).

I am a hardcore lifelong Sega fanboy, but have always felt that after Sega left the hardware market, Nintendo took over their spot as the innovater of the industry.

To me, the DS, 3DS, Wii, Wii U, and even the Switch just SCREAM Sega (no pun intended). The difference being Sega would have made them roughly on par with their contemporaries in regards to specs and system power. Maybe not as powerful due to the R&D needed for their primary selling points (Dual Screen, 3D, Remote, amd Tablet), but still MUCH more powerful than what Nintendo gave us.

I miss it a ton, but won't buy another one because sadly they have become expensive enough that I could buy a Switch and play all the first party titles on there (every one I am interested in got ported to Switch), and I have since bought all the multiplats for my PS3 and 360.

I have always felt the Wii U might have done much better with just a couple simple hardware tweaks. Keep all the numbers and clock speeds the same, but bump it up to a quad core chip (as opposed to tricore), and give it an extra GB of RAM (so 2 GB for games).

I feel as though that alone would have made a BIG difference. Even before launch, developers were bitching about the CPU (Same PowerPC 750X (G3) as the GameCube, just clocked at 1.25ghz), but they raved about the GPU.

I always thought that the reason why Nintendo went cheap with the CPU because they were pushing the GPGPU capabilities of the... Well... GPU, and that would help make up for the performance.

I miss mine so much. I only had it for 6 months, but made a lot of good memories in that short timespan. Oh man, I had SO MUCH FUN drawing weird, random Hot Routes in Madden and just having the WR or TE just run in circles for a laugh. 😂😂😂

Edit: Actually, looking at prices just now, it has dropped quite a bit, and I might take a chance on buying another one. Hopefully there is a way to keep it from dying due to the storage issue.

I would rather have a Wii U over a Switch anyway.

[creativerayn]

The one thing surrounding the wii u I can never let go of was that e3 Zelda tech demo they sold me on and had me believing that was to be the next Zelda… all traces of it has been scrubbed from the internet (glad to see it make a showing at 1:08) but I’ll never forget it and wish it was brought up more. It looked amazing and I have longed for a Zelda game to look anything like it.