Fun Club Why did Nintendo of America insist on using the term "upgrade" to try to sell people on the Wii U?

[Joe]

To say that the Wii U marketing was a failure would be an understatement, and it has already been said to death over the last decade plus. We could go on all day about what went wrong with the Wii U and how it was marketed, but the one (very pedantic) thing I want to focus on is something that I haven't seen many people other than myself bring up, and it's something that has bothered me for the last 10 years.

Around the holiday season of 2013, the Wii U was clearly in trouble, and Nintendo of America wanted to clear the air on the confusion around the system, trying their hardest to sell people on what the Wii U was. They released a marketing campaign called "Why We Need Wii U", which showed kids explaining to their parents the benefits of the Wii U and why it's the console to get. One of these commercials actually directly addressed the confusing name of the Wii U, trying to illustrate that it is not the same thing as a Wii.







The premise of these commercials is one thing, but what has driven me up the wall is how every single one of these ads uses the word "upgrade". They don't call the Wii U a new console, but they emphasize "upgrading to Wii U", and how "Wii U is a total upgrade." This was clearly a deliberate decision, as one of the ads uses the word as many as three times in 30 seconds.

I have been trying to figure out why they went with this choice and it utterly baffles me. Wouldn't you think it would clear the air more if they specifically said "it's a new console"? Calling it an "upgrade" makes it sound like an optional thing, or again - an add-on to the Wii rather than its own entity. It makes the whole situation even more confusing.

Was the word "upgrade" trendy back then? I don't remember it being so at the time, because that terminology stuck out as weird to me the first time I saw those ads back in 2013. There had to be some reason they put all their chips in that phrase, right? Any ideas?

Yes, this is extremely pedantic and trivial, especially since the Wii U is in the distant past at this point. But I can't deny how much this tiny thing has gnawed at my brain since 2013. I'm hoping at least some of you can help me figure this out.

 

[crazybenjamin]

I wouldn't say the use of the word "upgrade" was that egregious. I've had people talk about "upgrading" when they trade in their phone for an all-new one, and Sony did eventually go on to use that word to a much greater effect:

 

[ze_]

But you would refer to a purchase of a PS5 as an upgrade over a PS4, too. I don't think this term is the real issue.

 

[metwars]

Because it is an upgrade, just like how the series X and PS5 are upgrades as well. They are more powerful hardware so it is true. It might have been much more confusing with everything else surrounding, what with only focusing on the controller and the big launch title being a similar looking new super mario game. But if you are trying to sell your current market to buy your "sequel" product, saying upgrade is the correct term to use.

 

[Joe]

You're all correct, and that in other contexts, the term has been used effectively. I think what got to me at the time and since was that I felt Nintendo needed to more clearly explain that the Wii U was actually a brand new system and not an add-on. I think saying "upgrade" to refer to PS4 to PS5 makes sense, but Wii to Wii U needed more context than what they gave, in my opinion.

 

[Lucifer]

You're all correct, and that in other contexts, the term has been used effectively. I think what got to me at the time and since was that I felt Nintendo needed to more clearly explain that the Wii U was actually a brand new system and not an add-on. I think saying "upgrade" to refer to PS4 to PS5 makes sense, but Wii to Wii U needed more context than what they gave, in my opinion.

The fact that they needed to explain what the Wii U was just goes to show how they failed with the Wii U brand.

These commercials are horrible lol.

 

[Tye]

Because Nintendo was trying to get Wii owners to literally upgrade to Wii U—that’s why. The Wii U was a total upgrade from the Wii in every way—that is, it could do everything a Wii could do, plus much more. Your Wii games, controllers, save data, etc. will all work on Wii U, plus you’ll be able to play the latest new HD games, too. You’re not starting over from scratch like with other consoles.

For example, if a parent is looking to get their kids a new console, but they already had a Wii (which was a very common situation), their options are to upgrade to Wii U, or to buy another console that wouldn’t make use of your Wii stuff and would require more extra purchases. I’ve used this same messaging myself (even before Nintendo started doing the same in commercials) in order to explain the Wii U’s appeal to customers when I worked at Toys “R” Us—and it was often effective!

Problem is, talking to a customer in a store is very different from a commercial that’s incapable of two-way communication. I was often able to get parents to understand exactly what Wii U was and why it would be a great value for them to upgrade to that from their Wii rather than go with an entirely different console, but Nintendo’s commercials could not pull this off anywhere near as effectively, unfortunately. There was also the issue of many casual Wii owners having moved on by that time, and Nintendo was never going to win them back regardless.

I do believe Nintendo wasn’t entirely wrong to go with the “upgrade” angle and appeal mostly to kids, though, because that was probably the strongest audience for Wii U—kids who upgraded from Wii to Wii U. While older core gamers may not have had as much as they would have liked from Wii U, I know tons of kids loved their Wii U and the games they had for it—that’s part of why we’re seeing so much Wii U nostalgia right now as those kids have grown up.

 

[RennanNT]

Thinking about the Wii U games they could use to advertise:

• Pikmin 3, so niche they didn't even bother mentioning
• Wind Waker HD, which didn't sell the cube when was a new game
• Wii U Sports, whose main appeal is the Wii mote which isn't included in the box
• NSMBU, 3DW and Rayman Legends. People who like single player platformers could get a 3DS+NSMB2+3DL+Origins for less than the Wii U alone costs. So, the main selling point here is the multi-player... which needs extra controllers.

Their best bet was people who were already invested on their ecosystem to upgrade, since they already had Wiimotes and already knew the appeal of couch multi-player.

"Upgrade" conveys "it still has what you like on the Wii but better", while a "new system" doesn't. With the gamepad looking nothing like a Wiimote, I see why they chose the former.

These 2013 ads could have been done better, but with the initial damage and that lineup, I doubt anything would have much impact at that point aside from telling lies and scamming people.

 

[BassForever]

The only reason the upgrade marketing was faulty was due to how poor the original unveil of the WiiU was. When even the gamer(tm) bubble was confused if the WiiU was a new console or not, your hope of the mainstream understanding was non existent. As others have said, consumers were used to upgrading since similar terminology was use with cell phones and tons of other appliances over the decades.

 

[Vookatos]

It's a completely normal word. Honestly, I believe that just like with any console more than the name or the marketing the only reason Wii U failed was games.
You can recover from 599 US dollars and the general perception that your console has nothing, you can recover from anything. The problem really was just that they kept chasing the audience that was long gone.
New Super Mario on launch would be a good idea if they weren't, but hardcore players aren't interested in the game that looks exactly like the one they've played released like 3 months after another game in the series.

Hell, compare 3D World's launch trailer and Odyssey's one. I would argue that 3D World might be a better game, but the initial trailer left me sad because it was just "what if 3D Land but for more people!" yet again going for casual audience. A lot of the games felt like sidegrades and even if it did retain casuals... I believe the conversation would be "Was the Donkey Kong new? I think I've played this Mario"

If the system launched with Mario Kart maybe something could be done, but it faced a year of effectively nothing.

 

[LinkURL]

For me the names 3DS, 2DS and New 3DS are even more confusing than Wii U, but in any case this did not limit their sales.
I think it's time for us to stop blaming the failure of the Wii U on things like the name or marketing, the console didn't have a general appeal and that's what killed it.

 

[Shadow]

The fact that they needed to explain what the Wii U was just goes to show how they failed with the Wii U brand.

These commercials are horrible lol.

MOD EDIT: NSFW image removed

The dad seems impressed though!

 

[OctoSplattack]

I think the word "upgrade" is fine. The problem is that they sucked at making it seem like an appealing upgrade. As much as I love Pikmin 3 and Super Mario 3D World, It took until 2015 for the system to have any big exclusive releases that seriously set it apart from what was being offered back on Wii or the concurrent 3DS, and Nintendo had already written off the system at that point.

 

[KarlRemarx]

The only way the 2nd screen concept could possibly have been salvaged was if the system was compatible with DS and 3DS games out of the box, where it would have been the inheritor of the entire Wii/DS/3DS libraries. Even that probably wouldn't have salvaged the two main failings of the system:

-Splitting your attention between a TV and a 2nd display isn't very appealing and at best just delivers a worse version of the DS experience, where both displays are in your field of view
-The software schedule was awful and a lot of it's best games barely made use of the 2nd screen

Remember that the WiiU wasn't the only attempt to do this - Microsoft also rolled out the failed Smartglass concept which was attempting the same thing, both of which were piggybacking off the misguided idea that people were actively multitasking when they e.g. were looking at their phone or iPad while watching TV, and that this would somehow extend to something that requires 100% of your attention in most genres (videogames). The concept itself is inherently poor.

Ironically the one area where the 2nd screen would have had a lot of potential would have been delivering OS functionality to the user while they play (i.e. friends, messaging, Miiverse etc) - but this is a fringe benefit and also largely undeliverable on WiiU's infamously slow OS.

 

[Stopdoor]

I do believe Nintendo wasn’t entirely wrong to go with the “upgrade” angle and appeal mostly to kids, though, because that was probably the strongest audience for Wii U—kids who upgraded from Wii to Wii U. While older core gamers may not have had as much as they would have liked from Wii U, I know tons of kids loved their Wii U and the games they had for it—that’s part of why we’re seeing so much Wii U nostalgia right now as those kids have grown up.

Do you really think this is a sizable group though? I imagine for half the kids who loved the Wii U, it was probably their first console. There's only a tiny window of kids old enough to play one console and be excited to upgrade to the next, before they "age out" of Mario games and stuff. That's how it was for me - I was deep in the GameCube, excited as heck for the Wii, but then I was a teenager who was lured by the Xbox and PlayStation during the late Wii/Wii U reveal. The Switch marketing positioning the console for like every demographic seems much, much smarter - but it is harder to imagine they could've pulled it off with the Wii U's library and form factor.

 

[lexony]

The word "Upgrade" is honestly the least problematic part of these commercials.

 

[Felony]

I think the thumbnails for those videos say a lot.

I'm not sure the majority of Wii owners were the type to hear "upgrade" and immediately get invested. I know people who still use a Wii daily... For exercise and socializing and whatnot. Sure, they work/live at a long-term care facility but those folks sure don't care about upgraded hardware. Neither do some of my friends who kinda stopped buying new consoles after that period. And don't recall the younger kids in my life having much of a concept of iterative consoles. The Wii was such a lightning in a bottle phenomenon, and demographics of adopters was pretty damn varied with an outrageous amount of older people, and then the Wii U was announced as... a Wii with a more complicated controller (at a glance). iPads and stuff were becoming mainstream around that time, so I'm not sure a lot of people who utilized a Wii were as familiar as the general person who basically knows what a tablet is at 2. And if it was working fine -- that ease of use being a selling factor for a lot of people -- why spend $350+ US on something that they'd get the same use out of? I mean, I don't know if upgrade specifically was a poor choice, more like Nintendo wasn't sure who they were really trying to grab the attention of. Think of the first few years of software. It was all over, kinda half baked, capitalized more on IP than creativity (where the pad basically was just a map for a lot of earlier titles). The Wii U was just an Alec Baldwin misfire on the set to the big Switch.

 

[Dekuman]

I don;t think 'upgrade' was the problem, and if it was, it's item #20 on a list of bad decisions.

At the very top of the list is i feel even Nintendo themselves didn't know how to position the Wii U. The userbase expected it to be the Wii 2, they thought it was more clever to upend expectations like with the Wii and DS and introduce a console with a screen for a controller then got stuck with no really good ideas on how to execute it.

I know the above paragraph sounds like a branding issue, but the core of the issue, with the benefit of hindsight is the 2nd screen. It immediately made it difficult to 1) message /market the idea 2) internally the devs didn't have very many good ideas to make compellinn games and it showed.

 

[Jersh]

You're all correct, and that in other contexts, the term has been used effectively. I think what got to me at the time and since was that I felt Nintendo needed to more clearly explain that the Wii U was actually a brand new system and not an add-on. I think saying "upgrade" to refer to PS4 to PS5 makes sense, but Wii to Wii U needed more context than what they gave, in my opinion.

Calling it an upgrade is all that really needs to be done, and anything further just draws attention to how poorly understood the system was, which they wanted to avoid. The point is still made - the Wii U at $300 was an upgrade over the Wii and (according to Nintendo) worth your money.

If you're trying to state that a marketing campaign that drilled its status as a new console into your brain would've been more effective, I don't really agree. One of the biggest reasons no one knew what the Wii U was was because Nintendo never successfully grabbed the general public's attention to it in the first place. Nintendo Land was something you needed to get hands-on with to understand the magic, it wasn't externally obvious like Wii Sports (and also wasn't as great without a decent sized group). The confusion wasn't just a failure of marketing, but a symptom of indifference to the product at hand.

The only marketing thing that maybe could've helped imo would've been calling it the Wii 2 from the start, but frankly that would've felt misleading (though it would've made more headlines). A 2013 ad campaign a year after launch was never going to amount to much.

 

[Serif]

I think people are more likely to upgrade portable devices than a stationary one. The older model is easier to pass down to, let's say, a younger sibling, and less of a hassle to trade in or sell. There's a personal aspect to owning a portable device, a desire to be seen with the latest tech toy (which companies like Apple are well aware of, hence pushing for near yearly phone upgrades). At least in the context of portable gaming consoles, they tend to be less expensive and easier to pull the trigger on a purchase. And the sort of upgrades that a portable device can bring built-in can offer other tangible benefits than new software or more power, like a refreshed screen, better battery life, or lighter weight. Nintendo has been capitalizing on this as far back as the GB Pocket and continuing a line of handheld upgrades all the way to the Switch OLED, preserving backwards compatibility between generations when they could to sustain more seamless transitions, and offering QoL upgrades in the middle of a generation with DSi/n3DS/OLED.

That being said, people still upgrade home consoles, if they're worth upgrading to. I don't even personally see the Wii U as an upgrade over the Wii, even now when people praise it for its homebrew scene, I refuse to budge. The OS is ugly and bloated, the console is less aesthetically pleasing, Wii games look and run the same, there's no improvements to motion controls since the Wii Remote Plus is already supported on the Wii, I dislike the gamepad, and second screen gaming in the living room is just not a sound concept. If a video game enthusiast like me can't be convinced, what hope is there of convincing the vast crowds who bought a Wii for its novelty and/or because they specifically find the idea of motion control gaming appealing, an idea that the Wii U pushed aside by pivoting to a traditional controller with a screen shoved in the middle. If anything I imagine Wii gamers would find the Switch more exciting since the joy con are a clever continuation of the split motion control scheme.

 

[Tye]

Do you really think this is a sizable group though? I imagine for half the kids who loved the Wii U, it was probably their first console. There's only a tiny window of kids old enough to play one console and be excited to upgrade to the next, before they "age out" of Mario games and stuff. That's how it was for me - I was deep in the GameCube, excited as heck for the Wii, but then I was a teenager who was lured by the Xbox and PlayStation during the late Wii/Wii U reveal. The Switch marketing positioning the console for like every demographic seems much, much smarter - but it is harder to imagine they could've pulled it off with the Wii U's library and form factor.

It was certainly a sizable group within the audience of Wii U owners, yes. And I wasn’t talking strictly about kids who grew up with both Wii and Wii U, but rather families; that is, families who had a Wii and later upgraded to Wii U. They could have purchased their Wii for their young kid who became a preteen when the Wii U came out, or they could have had multiple kids with the Wii having been an older kid’s console while the Wii U was mainly for a younger kid, or the parents could have gotten a Wii just for themselves before even having kids and then had a kid once the Wii U released. But even for kids that grew up on Wii and had become teens by the time the Wii U came out, it’s not like the Wii U had no games that could appeal to them, too. Regardless, it was a common enough situation that I saw it all the time at work, and it was easily the most common type of customer looking to potentially buy a Wii U from my observations.

Nintendo was clearly betting on existing Wii owners—which were primarily families—upgrading to Wii U, so it makes sense that they would lean into that with their marketing. Unfortunately, Nintendo was never going to win back most of that casual Wii audience regardless of how they handled the Wii U because they had already moved on to mobile by that point. I’m not really sure what Nintendo could have realistically done to change the fate of the Wii U, especially after it had already launched. Maybe having a game on the level of Breath of the Wild at launch would have helped significantly with the core audience, but that would have never happened anyway. It was Nintendo’s first HD console and they weren’t going to be able to release an enormous game like that at the system’s launch. With Switch they had the advantage of being able to use all the knowledge, experience, and resources they had built up from the Wii U to get a tremendous head start.

Honestly, in many ways the Switch directly owes its success to the Wii U. Without Wii U there would be no Switch as we know it.

 

[Razgriz]

The premise of these commercials is one thing, but what has driven me up the wall is how every single one of these ads uses the word "upgrade". They don't call the Wii U a new console, but they emphasize "upgrading to Wii U", and how "Wii U is a total upgrade." This was clearly a deliberate decision, as one of the ads uses the word as many as three times in 30 seconds.

I have been trying to figure out why they went with this choice and it utterly baffles me. Wouldn't you think it would clear the air more if they specifically said "it's a new console"? Calling it an "upgrade" makes it sound like an optional thing, or again - an add-on to the Wii rather than its own entity. It makes the whole situation even more confusing.

Was the word "upgrade" trendy back then? I don't remember it being so at the time, because that terminology stuck out as weird to me the first time I saw those ads back in 2013. There had to be some reason they put all their chips in that phrase, right? Any ideas?

Yes, this is extremely pedantic and trivial, especially since the Wii U is in the distant past at this point. But I can't deny how much this tiny thing has gnawed at my brain since 2013. I'm hoping at least some of you can help me figure this out.

I think it might've been related to just how messy the Wii U's development was on it's own and how that likely fanned out over the marketing.

They started work on it in 2008 where it was originally intended to be something like the DSi to the DS; just a small scale upgrade to the tech in the device with full backwards compatibility to the Wii whilst preparing it for more modern luxuries now that the hardware is less constrained. That was eventually massively expanded on because as it turns out, writing your entire OS on the idea of "launchers" was falling out of fashion (the Wii internally doesn't really have an operating system - it runs on something called IOSes that together make up "the OS", but a lot of control is given to games in terms of how they want to use IOSes - it's a technical nightmare for security but works well if you want to maximize the software performance).

The problem is that the Wii "update" becoming their next-gen console was never clearly conveyed to... anyone within the company or to investors until it got way out of hand. Nintendo denied working on a sucessor several times while it was in development, Miyamoto more or less confirmed that while they wouldn't ditch motion controls, they really wanted to move to portable hardware (considering how well the DS did, this is really not a suprise and unlike the Wii wasn't really the result of dumping the thing in a bunch of elderly homes) and when they unveiled the name of the Wii U, they took a 10% stock drop on that alone because it was still seen as just this "expanded version" of the Wii.

 

[Bulborb]

To say that the Wii U marketing was a failure would be an understatement, and it has already been said to death over the last decade plus. We could go on all day about what went wrong with the Wii U and how it was marketed, but the one (very pedantic) thing I want to focus on is something that I haven't seen many people other than myself bring up, and it's something that has bothered me for the last 10 years.

Around the holiday season of 2013, the Wii U was clearly in trouble, and Nintendo of America wanted to clear the air on the confusion around the system, trying their hardest to sell people on what the Wii U was. They released a marketing campaign called "Why We Need Wii U", which showed kids explaining to their parents the benefits of the Wii U and why it's the console to get. One of these commercials actually directly addressed the confusing name of the Wii U, trying to illustrate that it is not the same thing as a Wii.







The premise of these commercials is one thing, but what has driven me up the wall is how every single one of these ads uses the word "upgrade". They don't call the Wii U a new console, but they emphasize "upgrading to Wii U", and how "Wii U is a total upgrade." This was clearly a deliberate decision, as one of the ads uses the word as many as three times in 30 seconds.

I have been trying to figure out why they went with this choice and it utterly baffles me. Wouldn't you think it would clear the air more if they specifically said "it's a new console"? Calling it an "upgrade" makes it sound like an optional thing, or again - an add-on to the Wii rather than its own entity. It makes the whole situation even more confusing.

Was the word "upgrade" trendy back then? I don't remember it being so at the time, because that terminology stuck out as weird to me the first time I saw those ads back in 2013. There had to be some reason they put all their chips in that phrase, right? Any ideas?

Yes, this is extremely pedantic and trivial, especially since the Wii U is in the distant past at this point. But I can't deny how much this tiny thing has gnawed at my brain since 2013. I'm hoping at least some of you can help me figure this out.

Those commercials are hard to watch. I remember them coming on T.V and me Cringing as a Wii U owner. Even though the Wii U is still my favorite console of all time.

 

[kasparov77]

wiiu thread yay
OP, I don't think the word "upgrade" was the issue, because that's what the wiiu is... coming from a wii or GC (had they added GC disk support and/or a way to play the entire gc library even if digitally but regardless)

also, check this cool thing i found on reddit:

 

[Ripfeld89]

The commercials are real bad because they position themselves in a state of desperation, presenting the whole concept of owning a Wii U as an argument that's yet to be won. They totally left behind the Apple-like bold flashy presentation stylishly presenting the hardware itself, no clear statement like "here is THE WII U."

I'd say "upgrade" can work in conjunction with sufficient clarity of message. You don't want to refer to the system as an upgrade as a noun, that's what makes it ambiguous, but as a verb it's fine.