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Fun Club Every once in a while I try to comprehend what Nintendo thought they were cooking with the Wii U reveal

Branduil

Branduil

Bob-omb


Just one of the all-time worst console reveals ever conceived, if not THE worst. Let's just go over all of the mistakes:
  • Initial shot has an out-of-focus Wii U console next to the TV. It is not immediately clear this is not a Wii. First mistake.
  • The player is playing a Wii game with a Wii controller, so this reinforces the initial confused assumption.
  • Time for Nintendo to show the first new amazing feature of the Wii U: you can use your TV to... watch TV.
  • "Switch from TV to the New Controller" combined with footage of playing what looks like Super Mario Wii on a giant white tablet. The assumption that this is merely an add-on to the Wii is now locked in place because of the worst messaging in gaming history.
  • We spend over two minutes watching Nintendo talk about "the New Controller" next to footage of Wii games, using Wii controllers and Wii accessories alongside the tablet. At absolutely no point during this footage does Nintendo establish this is a new console, rather at every point they reinforce the idea that this is merely another accessory to the Wii.
  • FINALLY, at the very end of the trailer, we see footage which is clearly beyond the power of the Wii. However, since this is also clearly pre-rendered, it does little to repair the damage already done.
  • The Wii logo transforms into the Wii U logo. It is still not clear this is a new console.
Just boggles the mind how they thought this trailer would be received and understood. It was so bad, and so confusing, that even hardcore fans who knew better initially thought it might just be an add-on. I've thought about it and no, I still cannot figure out why they thought this would work.
 
It really does just look like an accessory trailer.

I really hope they’re smart enough this time not to pull some similar bullshit with the next console.
 
I thought this was super cool when it was unveiled. Now, I think I can see the entire initial criticism/backlash the console got. It's a bunch of plenty of already bad concepts that nevertheless didn't pan out in the final product. The browser is superb, though, I'll die on that hill.

But mostly it just feels offensively weird how it says "12 years ago" below the title. I remember I went to a ciber café to watch the whole thing. Did the same for E3 2012 and I almost screamed euphorically with many people next to me when they showed Pikmin 3.
 
I remember watchign the presentation with a couple of friend and really everyone was like "so it's an accesory? maybe the control do other things too but you need the switch" and the more the presentation went on was like this:

MW36gpj.gif
 
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Síriocaz said:
I thought this was super cool when it was unveiled. Now, I think I can see the entire initial criticism/backlash the console got. It's a bunch of plenty of already bad concepts that nevertheless didn't pan out in the final product. The browser is superb, though, I'll die on that hill.

But mostly it just feels offensively weird how it says "12 years ago" below the title. I remember I went to a ciber café to watch the whole thing. Did the same for E3 2012 and I almost screamed euphorically with many people next to me when they showed Pikmin 3.
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If we want to talk about the Wii U itself, the problem was they hinged the entire appeal of the console on "wouldn't it be cool to play GAMES on a TABLET" in a world where the iPad already existed. Sometimes timing is everything; the DS was released 5 years before the iPhone, allowing Nintendo to monopolize the "blue ocean" market of people who liked the idea of touchscreen mobile games. With the Wii U, they had now lost that market to Apple, and there was no winning it back. It was a massive failure to understand what had happened to the casual market in the previous years.
 
Branduil said:
If we want to talk about the Wii U itself, the problem was they hinged the entire appeal of the console on "wouldn't it be cool to play GAMES on a TABLET" in a world where the iPad already existed. Sometimes timing is everything; the DS was released 5 years before the iPhone, allowing Nintendo to monopolize the "blue ocean" market of people who liked the idea of touchscreen mobile games. With the Wii U, they had now lost that market to Apple, and there was no winning it back. It was a massive failure to understand what had happened to the casual market in the previous years.
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I guess Nintendo considered that, since the iPad's interactivity with TVs was rather limited, they could potentially convince people that integrating your tablet with your display in the living room was a rad idea. The Wii U could've been conceived as a proto-AR gadget of sorts.
 
it was a battle for the living room when smart devices invoked a change of theater

it probably made a lot of sense in a pitch session in 2009 but they should've pumped the brakes on it way before it went to production
 
Yeah, the Wii U reveal was the equivalent of dropping your ice cream cone on a hot summer day, but like all 10 seconds of Link walking through the Temple of Time and fighting Armogohma was…

 
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why does it say "the New Controller" like 10 times in the video? that's the weirdest part right there that really hammers home the accessory feeling
 
As far as I'm concerned, it boils down to this. If the reveal went through focus groups before E3 2011, anyone who was involved with said focus group should have been fired. If there were no focus groups to analyze the reveal of the Wii-U, then whomever decided to forego that mechanic should have been fired.
 
The funniest thing about this catastrophic reveal trailer is that even with all the leaks of « Project Café », the trailer still managed to confuse everyone.
 
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I didn’t watch the conference live that year so when I opened IGN and saw “Wii U” I thought it was a typo

The justification for the name was very weird, “we can play together but there is also games that are tailor made for you”. The whole segment about how the “you, U” was very bizarre, it’s like they brought that up while on the influence of something and thought it made perfect sense. You could say that it was about “bringing hardcore gamers back” but you can convey that message with other ways than failed wordplays
 
At the time there was a bit of chatter about ‘dual screen’ or ‘supporting screen’ stuff due to the DS. You had some home console games with an online element have their publishers suddenly deciding that a smartphone app on your phone linked to the game somehow was important. Probably so they keep you ‘engaged’, so they could market crap to you through the publisher account. But both that and the WiiU missed the crucial element which is that dual screens on a portable like a DS, like a 3DS after it and a Game-And-Watch before it, has both your eyes and hands able to make constant adjustments to bring whichever one into focus, as it’s only the hinge separating them. Whereas having a tablet balanced on your knees while playing a game on the tv is a completely different thing, it’s often distracting rather than paired.

On top of that, the DS often built the second screen into the gameplay through the stylus. By the 3DS and WiiU, this had largely been reduced to just offering the same kind of stuff you’d find on menu screens, in the WiiU’s case to support off-screen play too.

Off-TV play, being able to take the tablet and play in bed or not use the tv and sit alongside your family, however, is the necessary forerunner to the Switch, which is fair enough, but it meant that both elements weren’t working in tandem, and then the tablet was further confused as a Wii accessory by the trailer above. At that point it’s a complete disaster of an unclear place in the market for a product they couldn’t advertise effectively as even Nintendo weren't sure what its strengths were, and still weren’t at the end of its lifespan.

Compare that to the DS or Wii or Switch (3DS’s titular tech didn’t add much but crucially it still had much of the DS’s appeal, although it had now lost the quirky games to mobile) where they had a really strong idea of why you’d want one.

The WiiU felt more of ‘here’s a couple of concepts about the future of our home consoles that we haven’t quite firmed up yet and they don’t really work together and our developers are struggling to come up with strong titles that really need them, but we badly need to get a product out and this is all we’ve got.’

In the end, I kinda view the WiiU as a horror story first-generation protagonist. Ended up dead due to being underprepared and wandering into a complex situation it didn’t understand, but fortunately it managed to pass its notebook along to its descendant who cracked the ritual.

I realise that metaphor is terrible :)
 
While the focus on the controller seems weird now (and was objectively a bad idea) you have to look at the context of how Nintendo viewed consoles circa 2011-12.

Microsoft and Sony were both selling HD boxes that basically played the same games in the same way, barring some exclusives. Everything we knew about the next gen consoles at that time was that they would also be HD boxes, which would continue to play the same games in largely the same way.

Nintendo had already found massive success basically foregoing the above, and making the Wii all about the controller. All the "Wii Would Like To Play" commercials opened with the focus on the Wii Remote, not the console. Every interview from higher ups boiled down to the point that blue ocean, novel inputs and ideas was how they saw themselves as different from the competition. You didn't buy a Wii to play the same games as Xbox or PlayStation, you bought one to play games on a different way with the Wii Remote. The actual Wii box was pretty unimportant.

Everything about the Wii U reveal is Nintendo trying to recapture this: it's all about how the controller allows you to do new things with gaming that you previously couldn't do. The actual box is the least important bit of the messaging, because that's the least unique thing about the hardware. They were trying to make the GamePad the new Wii Remote, and sell the console on it being a new experience rather than being a more powerful platform.

Obviously in hindsight this was never going to work, and they failed to repeat the Wii having two absolutely banging games at launch which helped drive momentum, but if you look you can see what their mindset was: keep plenty of water between them and the other consoles, keep the focus on the controller rather than the console, and keep there messaging on "different" rather then graphics or power.

In a just world, all controllers would come with touchscreens included by now
 
I want to see either a MST3K or a RiffTrax of the Wii U e3 Conference.

  • Oh, I sse. It's a remote you can plug on your tv to play the same Mario game we released five years ago.
  • Nah, Kevin you idiot ! It's a tablet that lets you control your remote to the TV so you can watch football.
  • The US football or the one where they use their foot ?
  • Yes.
 
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They were trying to highlight what they thought would be the console's most important and interesting feature, while also associating it with the Wii in order to take advantage of the Wii's success. It sounds reasonable, but in the end, these two plans put together just confused people about what that thing was.
 
Another huge mistake imo is that they thought the wii brand was still strong.
At that time wii, within general audience, was synonymous with "underpowered", "waggle" and "shovelware".
They were totally out of touch, thinking their brand was still the cool and hot thing.
 
giphy.gif

carlosfilho said:
They were trying to highlight what they thought would be the console's most important and interesting feature, while also associating it with the Wii in order to take advantage of the Wii's success. It sounds reasonable, but in the end, these two plans put together just confused people about what that thing was.
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Seriously, though, I think this is on point.
 
I think they were really trying to recapture the wii audience by focusing on the controller. But by 2011, most of that wii audience had already left the wii, and this wasn’t going to get grandma interested in playing bowling like wii sports did. The Wii U was a fine system tbh. I think if Nintendo spent more time catering to the core at launch, then letting positive wom spread, it could have been a hit. I mean, that’s sort of what they did with the switch in a way. Its primary launch game was definitely something that was aimed at more experienced players rather than the casual market
 
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i-do-whatever-i-want-daniel-espinoza.gif


Most likely they had an idea and realized too late that it was a bad idea to pivot back so they had to make the best of it in a bad situation.
 
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I am one of those who have one. They could have pushed more units if the gamepad wasn't this ugly and they called it Wii Ultra. The idea is not bad, it is the execution where it falls flat on Its face.
It is a ton of plastic, in teardown you can see it could have been so much smaller, sleeker. The console itself couldn't have been blander in its design. There was even a TV ad, where the bezels looked smaller, more attractive, fueling a short lived discussion about a redesign. I love the games, actually am impressed by the hardware efficiency but ultimately hate the design.
 
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Things they could’ve done to at least help with it getting off to a better start.

-When you announce it say “we would like to introduce our next generation system. This is the successor to the Wii…and cue video that focuses on the damn system.

- Call it the Wii 2. Wii U is so dumb of a name.

-DELAY Skyward Sword and have it launch on Wii 2.

-Pack in Nintendo Land. I love this game, but if you want to follow the Wii then pack it in with the base model or the black model with Nintendo Land is the only model at a cheaper price. The Wii only had one model.

-New Super Mario Bros U releases February/March 2013. With moving Skyward Sword to launch, then Mario U can move to early next year. At least it’s something to keep some kind of momentum going. Closes the long ass gap to Pikmin 3.
 
In the end, I loved the Wii U, but Nintendo really did fumble the ball as far as conveying this was a brand new console/next-gen machine. The name did it no favors either and I pray to God they don't fumble the naming of the Switch successor. Call it Switch 2. Plain, simple and, most importantly, CLEAR.
 
I think delaying Skyward Sword and releasing it in HD, with stick sword combat a la the Switch release, and the second screen inventory from Wind Waker HD, would have got the console off to a much stronger launch. I don't know why Nintendo thought releasing a new Zelda at the tail end of the old generation rather than as a launch title for the best generation was ever a good idea.
 
Short answer:
Both with WiiU and 3DS Nintendo didn't decide which aspects of the console experience to prioritise and and tried to do too many things at once, as a result the consoles weren't particularly good at any specific one.

Longer answer:

I think (but that's my speculation) at the time Nintendo was already thinking of ways to merge thier home console and handheld division but the techology wasn't there yet.
As an intermediate step I think they wanted to make a console that could be played both like a Wii and like a DS (hence the second screen).

At the same time they wanted to properly follow-up the Wii and retain their userbase, hence they kept the branding, motion controls and retro compatibility.

They wanted to catch up with X360 and PS3 hence they wanted a suitable platform to get 3rd party ports.

They tryed to do all these things at once and as a result the console was too complex to understantand, it was too expensive and it didn't emphatize motion controls enough to be a proper Wii follow-up, it was too underpowered and it arrived too late to get some attention from PS3/360 users.

It wasn't just a problem with presentation or naming, the console itself was ill conceived.
 
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JazzPotatoes said:
I think delaying Skyward Sword and releasing it in HD, with stick sword combat a la the Switch release, and the second screen inventory from Wind Waker HD, would have got the console off to a much stronger launch. I don't know why Nintendo thought releasing a new Zelda at the tail end of the old generation rather than as a launch title for the best generation was ever a good idea.
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+100M userbase. It probably sold more thanks to that than it would have sold on WiiiU.
 
Dark Cloud said:
-Pack in Nintendo Land. I love this game, but if you want to follow the Wii then pack it in with the base model or the black model with Nintendo Land is the only model at a cheaper price. The Wii only had one model.
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Just remember that pack-ins aren't free - they are calculated into the MSRP. The Wii hardware was sold cheaper in Japan because Wii Sports was sold separately. Anyway, I love Nintendo Land's theme but the control mechanics were never going to be as mass market as the simpler Wii Play / Wii Sports series.

Dark Cloud said:
-New Super Mario Bros U releases February/March 2013. With moving Skyward Sword to launch, then Mario U can move to early next year. At least it’s something to keep some kind of momentum going. Closes the long ass gap to Pikmin 3.
Click to expand...

I think they needed to have more first-party games at launch and launch window -- not move and spread out their meager unexciting line up. That's one thing they really did well with year 1 of the Switch.
 
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linkwashere said:
+100M userbase. It probably sold more thanks to that than it would have sold on WiiiU.
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Skyward Sword on Wii, only sold like 3 million copies. Even for Wii U games, that's on the low end.

Having a 100 million user base doesn't really matter if that install Base isn't buying games and doesn't want to use a peripheral.
 
I wonder if they were somewhat embarrassed by the look of the Wii U console itself.

It is somewhat unattractive or awkward by Nintendo standards.
 
IIRC, Iwata even admitted the following day that showing at least a picture of the actual console before talking about the controller would've helped prevent the massive amounts of confusion.
 
carlosfilho said:
They were trying to highlight what they thought would be the console's most important and interesting feature, while also associating it with the Wii in order to take advantage of the Wii's success. It sounds reasonable, but in the end, these two plans put together just confused people about what that thing was.
Click to expand...
Spot on.
I think their mistake was just assuming everyone would naturally understand Wii U was a successor, but the message just didnt get across.

Maybe if they had taken time to show the console itself, maybe if they had given it a less confusing name, maybe if they had launched with an exclusive that blew peoples socks off rather than a NSMB game that looked identical to the previous ones (I still love it regardless tho), and so on.

Their plan made sense on paper, but none of the elements added up. It just goes to show how important good marketing is, and I'd say they certianly learned their lesson with the Switch (and hopefully beyond)
 
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Playing starfox feels like Homer at Lisa show, ad it was a shame, because that remake was fantastic
 
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People have mentioned many (good and true) reasons of why the WiiU failed: an outdated hardware concept that came out too late for any real "novelty" feeling, a botched marketing campaign, high price for old hardware etc.

What I feel people underestimate is that Nintendo had lost a lot of goodwill with gamers by the time the WiiU launched. The Wii had been pretty much dead in the water and word of mouth had largely grown negative by then. The WiiU pretty much missed the mark on all fronts -including a very lackluster launch lineup.

I am glad we are done with that system. RIP.
 
I just wonder what they were thinking during the later years of the Wii era, as well as the Wii U. They must have done 0 market research.
I assume arrogance got to their had and they thought people would keep eating shit like Wii Sports and Wii Music, they wanted easy money.
 
What I found even more unforgivable was that they then had an entire year before they next showed off the hardware and they did absolutely nothing to correct the situation.

I’d go as far as to say that the Wii U was absolutely unacceptable as a product and was pretty much gross negligence. Heads should have rolled.

- The Name: Wii U. Surely Wii 2 would have been better and more of an instant way of telling the audience of what the console was supposed to be - a successor to the Wii. The name Wii U just didn’t communicate anything at all. There was even a tablet for the Wii called U-Draw.

- The system: To the untrained eye, the system even looked like the original Wii. You wouldn’t instantly see the console itself and think - that’s something new, that’s something different. Imagine the PlayStation 2 was called the Playstation U and looked 90% the same as the original PlayStation! Just wouldn’t happen.

- Games: The Wii U was a generational leap in graphics over the Wii and was Nintendo’s first HD system. If you weren’t already confused by the name and the system looking almost exactly the same as the OG Wii, the lead title for the Wii U is called Super Mario Bros U and looks exactly the same as Super Mario Bros Wii! Imagine Nintendo launched the Nintendo 64 and the new Mario game looked exactly the same as Super Mario World. See how utterly mental that sounds? It happened with Wii U.

- Donkey Kong - Listen, I love Tropical Freeze but it was the right game at the wrong time. People were hyped to see a game which really pushed the new systems capabilities and they were hoping Retro Studios would be the game to do this. Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze is then shown and AGAIN, to the untrained eye, it looks exactly the same as Donkey Kong Country Returns on the Wii!! (Great game though!)

- Game boxes. The games came in DVD cases instead of Blu Ray cases. This is only a smaller point but even something like this made the console feel inferior. At the end of the day PS3 and 360 games came in Blu Ray boxes. Everyone knows a Blu Ray is better than a DVD, so why are Wii U games in old fashioned DVD sized boxes? It’s not a good look.

- The two versions. Having an 8GB and 32GB made no sense at all. I remember Iwata doing an unboxing of the 32GB and he was talking as if 32GB was huge.

Then you add in the huge day 1 update, the super slow UI, only one gamepad per console etc. It’s just beyond comprehension how all this was managed.
 
YolkFolk said:
He was wrong.

shopping



71KIrKfAejL._AC_US1200_.jpg
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One thing that immediately jumps out as a problem here is that the U in the Wii U logo can be hard to make out at a distance. It looks like the Wii logo with a weird asterisk, further communicating the idea of an add-on.
 
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At least we got that cool realistic zelda tech demo, I was actually really hype after seeing that back in the day
 
I remember trying to force myself to be hyped for this thing so bad, but there was just so little to grab on to at the beginning.

Aside from all the problems already mentioned, other than the fact you could switch to that screen, nothing they showed made the gamepad look particularly appealing. It was mostly tech demo stuff divorced from the actual games, and the full games that weren't just repurposed tech demos and actually made the gamepad feel useful, additive, and welcome and not just like gimmicky shit you'd have to accept as part of the package... weren't there.

And frankly, nor were they common during the whole lifetime of the system. And I think that's part of the reason we've seen so many ports that really didn't have to change that much. Which is great for posterity, but not so good when the gamepad is the alleged crux of your system.
 
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It was truly nuts. It’s also wild they revealed this thing 18 months before it launched. That would never happen these days. Imagine if Nintendo suddenly released a Switch 2 trailer today and said “it’s coming February 2025.”

This such an interesting contrast to compare this to the Switch trailer. This one was so lifeless and sterile while the Switch trailer was brimming with energy and excitement.

I did find it funny that in the Iwata Asks interview he’s reading, it’s about Steel Diver. Two whiffs for the price of one.
 
Branduil said:


Just one of the all-time worst console reveals ever conceived, if not THE worst. Let's just go over all of the mistakes:
  • Initial shot has an out-of-focus Wii U console next to the TV. It is not immediately clear this is not a Wii. First mistake.
  • The player is playing a Wii game with a Wii controller, so this reinforces the initial confused assumption.
  • Time for Nintendo to show the first new amazing feature of the Wii U: you can use your TV to... watch TV.
  • "Switch from TV to the New Controller" combined with footage of playing what looks like Super Mario Wii on a giant white tablet. The assumption that this is merely an add-on to the Wii is now locked in place because of the worst messaging in gaming history.
  • We spend over two minutes watching Nintendo talk about "the New Controller" next to footage of Wii games, using Wii controllers and Wii accessories alongside the tablet. At absolutely no point during this footage does Nintendo establish this is a new console, rather at every point they reinforce the idea that this is merely another accessory to the Wii.
  • FINALLY, at the very end of the trailer, we see footage which is clearly beyond the power of the Wii. However, since this is also clearly pre-rendered, it does little to repair the damage already done.
  • The Wii logo transforms into the Wii U logo. It is still not clear this is a new console.
Just boggles the mind how they thought this trailer would be received and understood. It was so bad, and so confusing, that even hardcore fans who knew better initially thought it might just be an add-on. I've thought about it and no, I still cannot figure out why they thought this would work.
Click to expand...


This is way worse than I remembered. Wow.
 
I actually don't think the entire concept was dumb, it just didn't end up being a good solitary hook for a game console.

You have to understand a few of the trends from the time:

- Touch screen controlled, internet connected devices were at the center of the tech universe.

- Social media and online video were HUGE and growing rapidly at this time. So you can see them trying to bring those concepts into the living room with some of the sharing features.

- Wii largely gained popularity because of the easy utility of picking up the controller. Nintendo had tried to grease these wheels by offering lots of low-stakes, non-game activities like the News Channel, Weather Channel, and Everybody Votes. You can see them trying to replicate those ideas with the lifestyle stuff involving the GamePad.

What ultimately made the whole reveal (and later, the launch) fall flat is that they never swooped in with a killer lineup of games to justify the added price tag of the system. I thought Nintendo Land was great but it clearly had poor mass appeal compared to something like Wii Sports. It wasn't really until Mario Kart that we got a game that really pushed systems.
 
Yeah that was indeed a very weird first impression.

I had to blink one, two, three times when they showed the console (not the gamepad, but the actual console) like… “oh so it’s a portable console compatible with the Wii. Very n-“

And then wait … the console looked different from the Wii … very different… wait, it’s…. a brand new one?

Huh.
 
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