Paul Jackson of the Ovum consultancy has described the Wii U as a car crash for Nintendo. The current Nintendo home console failed to take off with consumers due to a number of factors and all eyes are on the upcoming Nintendo Switch platform. Here’s what Jackson had to say to the BBC:
“The Wii U was a car crash, basically.”
“They fudged the communication and confused everybody with the controller and what the screen was for.”
“As a result it sold about a tenth of what the original Wii sold.”
Harsh! I know Wii U was not a fiscal success for Nintendo, but I think that (like the Gamecube) it will be remembered as one of the all-time classics.
As long as it hurts to admit it… It’s true
I love my Wii U, it has an amazing library of games but honestly the marketing was terrible, even with the name they confused a lot of people.
This one has confused me for the longest time. How was the name confusing. To me it’s no more confusing going from Wii to Wii U than PlayStation 3 to PlayStation 4. Do you know how many parents/grandparents just call them PlayStations? If anyone went into a store and asked for the new Wii, I’m pretty sure in most cases(not all) they would have been steered in the right direction.
Sadly, right from the start even before the system was released you had fanboys dreaming up anything negative they could to sabotage any change it would have. These are the same morons that then say that Nintendo should release games on their system. You want to play Nintendo games, buy a fucking Nintendo system. They level of entitlement that people think that they have today is disgusting.
Now, in the end, Nintendo truly did screw everything up by not plunking as ass load of money into advertising the thing. However, Nintendo’s not the only one to do this…just look at the Vita.
Actually most parents/grandparents probably call them the Nintendo.
Here they say Playstation for home console and GameBoy for handheld. Nintendo isn’t in their vocabulary.
http://memeblender.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/The-consoles-I-owned-growing-up-according-to-Mom..jpg
||Because it’s true…||
Lmao, great pic
Dont forget moms always saying PokeMAN instead of “MON”.
The marketing failed not because people thought the Wii U was a Wii but because they thought it was a $300 Wii accessory. Many retailers, especially in the west, were not properly trained on how to advertise the Wii U; As a result, many Sunday paper ads, promotional fliers, and other advertising materials had the white WiiU gamepad leaning up or otherwise displayed alongside a classic Wii console, as opposed to the actual Wii U console (I witnessed one in person a few weeks after reading about this in fact). This caused confusion for a lot of parents, grandparents, and the lesser-informed (which is where a lot of original Wii owners reside), as it was being visually marketed as a $300 tablet controller for the Wii, and in-store associates couldn’t really give a solid reason why one should buy the Wii U when you own a Wii.
It eventually got sorted out, but those initial mistakes lead to a guaranteed reduction. Had it been named “Wii 2” it would of at least indicated a sequel by name; “Wii U’, if you’re unaware it’s a console, could be a new console, or it could be an accessory (Like the Wii Balance Board, Wii Motion Plus, etc.).
Beyond this however, I don’t think the Wii U was a failure; the casual gaming crowd and family gaming crowd are not the group to buy every new console. They’re the kind who will buy a single console, and may quite possibly never upgrade again. Factor in the fact that the Wii got a lot of elderly, families, and otherwise uninitiated into video-games, to buy the console, and you probably result in a fairly-large number of people to which the Wii will be their only console purchase.
This means that while the Wii U may of sold a tenth of the Wii, i’d wager if one were to remove a lot of these “one-time” console buyers, the numbers are considerably more comparable. Even more so if one were to focus on gamers in specific.
i love my wii u too but i kinda agree with the analyst, i don’t agree that it was a car crash but i agree that it failed, not completely, its up there with gcn, both have awesome 1st and 2nd party games with few awesome 3rd party games, both failed to impress the market but did impress the community and will be remembered as an all time classic (not saying they were great but they were great in their own unique way).
While the wii u was disappointing for me at least, I wouldn’t use that terminology for it…I just say it was somewhat disappointing that we didn’t get f zero, metroid, kirby, fire emblem, animal crossing, etc…and by listing those franchises I mean traditional installments only (so amiibo fest doesn’t count in my book).
wii u did get a kirby game, im not counting that bullplop party ac game and as for fire emblem, we did get one, tokyo mirage sessions #fe, it is more fe than smt but it does mesh smt with fe.
But kirby and the rainbow paintbrush wasn’t a traditional kirby game at all, same with fire emblem…and since that’s all I really care about you can see why I added them to my list.
Truth*
I liked the Wii U when it first came out. I don’t play it much now, but I’m not giving it any bad names.
It wasn’t a head on collision, it was more like the Nintendo car rammed into the side of the Wii U car, it rolled a bit and had to be written off.That is basically what it is, it wasn’t a problem with the Wii U itself, it was the problem of Nintendo putting too much focus on 3DS games, causing the Wii U to get extreme droughts, the name was confusing and Nintendo’s piss poor “attempt” at marketing it, helped noone.
I didn’t have any trouble understanding what the Wii U was, but then again I wouldn’t fall into the average consumer range. And as much as I hate to admit it Nintendo did flub up presenting the console big time based on how many times I’d go to a GameStop and hear people asking if it was just a controller for the Wii.
3 sentences. Great article. Thanks MNN.
What is the wii u? Is it a new controller add on with a screen for the original wii?
lol ikr? I didn’t even know what the Wii U was until late 2013 probably because of all the flak it was getting…
Almost all Nintendo consoles are remembered for their great games. But I agree, communication is key, if you fail to communicate how appealing your product is, then everyone’s first impressions are “what?” and not to buy it.
Look how important movie and game trailers are. A bad trailer can be disastrous.
This is old news.
Nevertheless, it may not have appealed to your modern consumer, but to someone who loves Nintendo, it wasn’t all that bad, considering the exclusives it had. Pretty much the same situation as the GameCube. Watch everyone get pissed when Nintendo drops all of their Wii U servers though…
Lol this is news? I’ve never heard of this person before and all he said was the same thing we concluded a year ago.
“MyNintendoNews”
“News”
“*NEWS*”
http://www.indiesunlimited.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/news-flash.png
It wasn’t a car crash, it was a train wreck.
It was both. The Wii U was just a car that got hit by a train. xD
||With the 2 best games this generation…||
Indeed. No matter what people say, and regardless the truth, the WiiU had a couple games that were simply epic and couldn’t be found anywhere else.
quadriaxis, what will we do with you?.
the tokio whore will be left at the mercy of the hungry wolves, alone, while lord sasori whisper to your hear: DON’T CALL ANYBODY!
and your head on a stick, oh, i can already feel it.
the nintendo switch will be destroyed when microsoft claims that concept for themselves, as they did with the allmighty kinect.
DON’T CALL ANYBODY
||What is this Kinect you speak of?…||
kinect was better and more revolutionary than wii.
even it is not mandatory to the xbox one.
deal with it
Well I guess Nintendo Wii U has failed 100℅ besides the sales will stop soon.
Failed relatively identically to the GameCube: Great exclusives, but not enough reason to buy…
The difference is that the GameCube was a financial success while the Wii U wasn’t. Nintendo profited the entire time GameCube was out. The Wii U produced net losses for Nintendo.
If I’m not mistaken, I think Gamecube also had a better attach rate of games, too.
The GameCube was a successful and it has alot of games we enjoy and like I said the Wii U failed.
I think the author of this article is wrong in so many ways. He obviously has never played the system and is only going by the sales numbers. It is and always will be a great system for the big N ——- super games and super game play. Long live Nintendo.
I know the Wii u wasn’t a big success but it wasn’t really that bad of a system either. In fact some of my favorite games of all time are on it. Sonic Lost World, Super Mario 3D World, Smash Bros, Splatoon, Star Fox Zero, Mario & Sonic Rio, All super fun games. I can understand why the system didn’t catch on though :/ it’s a shame really. Hopefully the games themselves will live on in some way when the Shuffle comes out. We’ll just wait and see
My Wii U gets love in my household to this very day. Great games. Great interface. With a modestly good online.
For what reason Nintendo never marketed or advertised this system remains a mystery. Hell…..common sense will dictate whether video game consoles, malt liquor, that new car, to designer clothes. IF YOU DO NOT GET THE WORD OUT THEN YOUR PRODUCT WILL FAIL!!!
I remember Nintendrones defending this garbage back in 2012. Went quiet when no games came out. I predict the same tbh.
Wait, are people being serious, people compare the Wii U to the GAMECUBE?
Oh hahaha hahaha!
Yep. It’s happening. I facepalmed when I saw it. Maybe I should laugh, too.
Wanna hear a knee slapper of a laugher? Scroll up!
I had absolutely zero interest in a Wii U till I actually played Super Mario World 3D. It was like oh fuck this is cool and I can play this while someone else is watching TV.
If the WiiU had enough power to accommodate 3rd parties, and didn’t require the game pad (which I was a huge fan of) It would have been fine. Nintendo do was just being stubborn and coming down from their Wii-high.
Uhm. I’ve noticed this a few times. Did you know when you sometimes say Nintendo, the word do follows right after it? If you do know, I’m curious as to why you type do after Nintendo. :o
If it wasnt for the Wii U, there wouldnt be no Switch. Anyone can tell the evolution between Wii U and Switch consoles.
I’m going Off-topic here… I just remembered of this 4 or 5 year-old picture below… The Switch was under our noses!
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQu-L84ZEKfXOf1i_nLIFet7PABl9MTdWYv3XpJDed1_snxfvpBVQ
http://hexus.net/media/uploaded/2012/12/e02e95f8-fac8-4394-993f-c15e61052bf2.jpg
I’ve never seen a Wii U kiosk in any stores, except at Best Buy (years after it released). Wal-Mart got one once, but it was never working. Then it was eventually taken out. I never understood what happened? Nintendo needs to put Switch kiosks in stores, which I heard they were going to do.
For me, the Gamepad (and low memory) are the things that ruined the Wii U. We shouldn’t have had to buy an external hard drive for it. And whenever a game REQUIRED the Gamepad, I never wanted to play it. It’s just too big and bulky. The only thing I ever use the Gamepad for is the internet, and to show my family certain things on the internet while sitting in the living room. And I get REALLY disgusted at Gmail constantly crashing on it. LIke, why does it keep crashing?
I hope the internet connectivity/compatibility is more stable and reliable on the Switch.
The Target chain had them in all their stores and I’ve never been in a GameStop that didn’t have one.
Too bad it never took off. Had so much potential but could never reach it.
Me: “The analyst who wrote this is an idiot, basically.”
the failure of the wii U is multiple reasons. the main reason is the arrogance of Nintendo for not doing enough work on this console. Not enough marketing, not enough support, not enough software, too much support/focus on the 3DS and on the top of it they did not developed the idea they promised in the first instance.
The 3rd party saw it way before us consumer and they run away as fast as possible.
On the top of that the world is just accepting motion control, but was not ready for asynchronous display. And because they did not work on it, it was a commercial failure.
The Wii U as it stand is a very good console and I personally will have to rush to get the game I want for this machine before the world see them as collector and the price goes up.
What a great way to describe it.
Some of the people that don’t think the Wii U was a failure are so funny! The ones comparing it to Gamecube are just as funny if not more so. Poor delusional Nintendo fans. Sorry but Wii U was a car crash.
No. That’s not good enough. It was a car that got hit by a train that wrecked. The car was Wii U & the train was Nintendo pulling cars of 3rd parties, disgruntled fans, 3DS, and Wii U exclusives ported to 3DS right behind them. Nintendo. Fucked. Up. End of story. Wii U can only dream of ever being equal to the Gamecube because, in reality, it’s not even fucking close. Not only did GCN sell a couple million more consoles but it had the better attach rate, too. Not to mention it’s fondly remembered by all, not just a couple Nintendo fanboys that could be given literal shit from Nintendo & still claim it’s the greatest thing ever. But hey. It’s your opinion, guys, and you’re welcome to it regardless of how biased, or blind, you all may be. lol