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GoNintendo Thought - Why did the Wii U fail to capture a widespread audience?

by rawmeatcowboy
19 October 2016
GN Version 5.0

Fun day with a good friend. It was some work related stuff, but nothing that you guys don't already know about. No secrets here. Just time with games hitting 3DS before the year closes out. I'll share those impressions with you all soon. For now, I'd love to have you answer this question! See you in a few, short hours.

I spent much of the day with a good friend. We attended an event together that involved a lot of Wii U/3DS playing. This friend is definitely well aware of the Wii U and 3DS, but he doesn't have much time at all to play games. That has a lot to do with him having a 3 year old son, as well as a daughter on the way. In his own words, the early years of a child's life is when you sacrifice a lot of who you are and what you want for the betterment of your child. A selfless and wonderful act to be sure. It also leaves him precious little time to do anything related to his hobbies, including gaming. He's looking into how to change that in recent months.

As I said, today was a change for him. He had a few hours to just sit and play games. He played some titles that are already available and a few others on the way (all games you already know of). While I was playing these games alongside him, I could honestly see just how much fun he was having. He actually came away from this event with the plan to pick up a 3DS and play it when he does get some time to himself.

Why didn't he want to buy a Wii U? Well, he knows that Nintendo has a new system coming out. He also finds it a lot easier to take a portable around with him to get some gaming in. There's not a lot of time to sit down and play a game infront of the TV. All those reasons make a lot of sense to me. With all that said, he really does like the Wii U and has been quite impressed with the games he's played.

This lead him to ask me a simple question. He wanted to know why the Wii U hasn't had the success of the Wii, or at least roughly equal success to the PS4/Xbox One. As he was talking to me, you could just see that he couldn't figure the answer out. He played lots of games he liked and he enjoyed the aspects of the system he used. Being a Wii U fan, it was a heartbreaking reminder to see that the system never really hit a stride and failed to capture a big audience.

I'm still thinking about his question right now. Is there a single reason why the Wii U didn't find a bigger following? Was it a number of factors for the system? Was it just poor timing? Did the verbiage before/at launch just leave too many confused out of the gate? Was the lack of third party software just too much for gamers to deal with this time around? There are so many questions that can be asked and we'll never have an actual answer to them.

I figured I would turn to you guys and ask you the same question my friend asked. Why didn't the Wii U catch on? In your opinion, what held the Wii U back? Leave a comment and let us know.