The Wii U had a good run but failed to take off as Nintendo had once hoped it would. It should come as no surprise to hear that Japanese sales tracker Famitsu has announced today that it is no longer tracking sales of the system which made its debut in 2012. Media Create stopped tracking the system last year for the same reason as Famitsu. Japanese Nintendo reports that final sales figures we have for Japan are 3,303,541.
Japan: Sales Tracker Famitsu Is No Longer Tracking Wii U Sales
Was anyone surprised that this thing failed?
Am not surprised.
It did fail. The software was good. But in terms of sales, which is what the articles talking about, it failed. If Nintendos job is to generate growth for its stockholders, it failed.
The Wii U did a lot of things wrong. It was branded poorly, never explaining to customers that it was a new sequel or why they needed one. The hardware struggled to feel “premium” in an age that expects a tablet to feel a certain way. It felt more like a toy. The screen was sub par. It struggled to find a killer “app” like Mario Maker to show what a tablet controller could do. Like the console itself, it’s 3D Mario failed to find it’s own identity (unlike Galaxy or Odyssey). Zelda delayed until it was a swan song overshadowed by a new console version. Nintendoland and ZombieU were the only games to really try asynchronous local multiplayer (which the tablet could really shine on). Lots of good games and good ideas, but terrible execution on the business and sales end.
Nop, saw it coming when i started to use the console. Full of gimmicks, and the sales of the console represents the failure.
There’s still people who defend the console, if you liked it, great, good for you, but it was a failure.
Exactly. WiiU is a fantastic console, much better than Swicth in basically literally every way – hardware and software wise.
the cringe…
And here i am still playing BotW through my first play…
I like a lengthy adventure.
That game’s story is actually quite short. If you discard the exploration and just focus on the 4 dungeons, it can actually be beaten pretty quickly. If you’re doing anything else, then you’re doing what the creators intended.
I like to go through Zelda games as immersed as possible, i’ve done 3 of the Temples and rather enjoyed them but felt them a bit short. Im currently trying to go through collecting the Memories. But yeah, i get lost in exploring and screwing around a lot…
Got the DLC, so im excited for that.
i will say i’m bummed out that a reiteration of the Agitha bug collecting didn’t make a return, but hey that’s just meh.
Don’t sweat about it, I still tryin to finish NES LoZ 2nd quest without any cheats or hints. Two years already-
Around 14-15m sales in this day and age is a failure. If I’m not mistaken, Nintendo even viewed the Gamecube as a failure, too, even though it was over 20m and is why they made the Wii and focused on casuals.
Nintendo has always been about the casuals. The NES was a household staple. My parents played it a ton. My mother-in-law to this day will get a strategy guide and spend literally 200 hours working through the newest Zelda or Metroid and be terrible at it, but loves it, because of how much she played them on the NES.
My point is, the Gamecube/PS2/Xbox era is the time when “hardcore” gamers started to define themselves. Controllers jumped from 2 primary inputs to 6 to like 12 with dual analog (my wife will still tell you she can’t use dual analog). Games started to need tutorials to teach you how to play and it took time to learn enough to actually have fun. With NES games, you could have a blast playing through the first few worlds of a platformer over and over and never worry much about the impossible levels you would never see. Now, it takes hours to get fully comfortable with a game for seasoned gamers, and way longer if you’re not. Gamecube found itself caught in the middle of that, too family for the hardcore, but not accessible enough for the casuals. The Wii was simply them trying to figure out how to bring back gaming for everyone, with what they hoped would be more intuitive controls.
The Ice Climbers being cut from from SSB4 was a wake-up call, but the craptastic 2015-2016 titles, plus the final SSB4 DLC sealed the system’s fate.