As a homebrew device it is amazing. There are still exploits being found with a new, safe, simple method out now thanks to some crazy dedicated modders.
There’s a whole homebrew sdk. The Wii U can also run Wii and GameCube games by reconfiguring the hardware (or some other sort of firmware voodoo). That’s three generations of video game libraries that can be explored on one console!
Always felt like it deserved more popularity, but it couldn’t compete with the ps3/4 and Xbox 360/one.
Especially considering a lot of Wii buyers were not exactly deep gamers, but very casual customers.
The Wii U marketing was a total disaster. Using the same name as a well established, casual platform, with a tiny suffix + pushing the "same gamepad compatibility" makes this hardware looks like an expensive "revised" version.
I can't understand how Nintendo didn't catch on this.
This is a bit of a meme, but it isn't generally true. The Nintendo 64 and GameCube were pretty cutting edge in their day. At the time the Nintendo Switch released, the Tegra X1 was still about as cutting edge as mobile GPUs came (in early 2016).
What Nintendo is about - to a fault, some would argue - is cost cutting. Sometimes that means they use older stuff, but using older stuff isn't always the best cost cutting balance to strike. The article even notes this:
> To be fair, it’s known that Nintendo’s choices are not always based on ‘cutting-edginess’ but on cost and supply.
Switch is as much a console as it is a mobile device. Compared to an XBox, a Switch is a few horses short of a full stable.
Even the blockbuster Wii could only do 480p while contemporaries were doing HD.
What Nintendo does well is make the tradeoff worth it. Both the Wii and Switch make up for their reduced graphics by pioneering new ways of thinking about console gaming.
The meme is about "Nintendo consoles have outdated technical capabilities and the games look like shit", and that is accurate.
It did, and it shows in that many of the top-selling games on Switch are ports of Wii U games.
That said the Switch remains underpowered compared to contemporary game consoles.
I had a Playstation 2 and 3 before, but since we became parents, we wanted something family-friendly. We seriously considered a Wii U, but were totally put of by the Wii U controller, which seemed clunky, annoying, and expensive to replace in case it breaks. It was the primary reason we went for the XBox One that generation.
We got a Switch pretty soon after it was released and love it (our daughter also has a Switch Lite).
You were right on all counts. It was a pretty terrible controller. Flimsy, heavy, way too big. And it was actually impossible to replace; they never offered replacement pads for sale, you had to buy a whole new console or find someone who fried their console and wanted to sell just a pad.
clunky
However, I can certainly understand that it looked massive and heavy. That was my assumption as well. Bit of a marketing issue there.
annoying
expensive to replace in case it breaks
But, once again, your assumption totally made sense. Another marketing issue.
It was the primary reason we [passed on it]
> LiPo 3.6 V DC 2550 mAh (upgrade WUP-013; 8 hours use)
The battery life was completely irrelevant to me. I just kept it plugged in.
Thing felt like a failure the moment it was announced. Doubly so when its second E3 felt like a second attempt at the initial announce and still didn't do much to clarify what it had going for it. Triply so once you realised how limited it was.
That it took several years for games willing to engage with the platform enough to be capable of being as big of a mess as Star Fox Zero was seems like a bigger flag of its issues than the game sucking tbh. Just not an enticing format at all.
The controller is meh, however most games also let you play with a pro controller. The screen on the Wii U brick is barely used.
And if you have a party or so just let them bring their Wii controllers, all the multiplayer games support them.
If you are not a classic gamer but are looking for some gaming fun it might still is the perfect console for you
The games library was just too weak honestly, I think that was the main thing. The software problems were in large part caused by Nintendo under-speccing its machines catching up to it. Multiplatform's were particularly adversely affected.
All in all you were better off buying a PS4 honestly.
I owned a Wii and loved it. To this day I don’t know what the selling point(s) of the Wii U were supposed to be.
I just don’t think it was marketed well.
[1] https://www.polygon.com/2015/3/27/8303247/the-legend-of-zeld...
Not always. The N64, for example, tried to be cutting edge.
- OTB web browser
- OTB audio and video chat with friends, native support for 3rd party headsets
- real-time direct messaging (via Miiverse) notifications and other friend notifications via the home button LED
- Ability to view online status of friends
- High definition graphics
- 5+ player synchronous local multiplayer
- built-in Nintendo TVii service
- built-in support to use the gamepad as a TV remote
- eShop selections for mobile retro consoles (e.g. GBA, DS)
- background installations and updates
- accelerometer, gyroscope, front-facing camera, touch screen, IR sensor, NFC all packed into the gamepad
- full backwards compatibility with a prior console (Wii)
Not to mention, all online services were free to use. And those still existing, are still free.
Edit: As a kid, this was the first console that had just enough 3rd party support for me to enjoy games like Fifa, Need for Speed, and Call of Duty akin to an Xbox 360, while also hosting all my favorite Nintendo games. It was a fun system, even if it was poorly advertised and a bit awkward. But I enjoyed the gimmicks and I still use it, mostly for playing exclusives that never made it to the Switch.
Edit: This is an optional install, not OTB.
Wasn't the Wii, at least initially, compatible with gamecube? Mine even has gamecube controller and memory card slots.
Otherwise, all Wii models had GCN game, controller; and memory card support.
Fun fact: the Wii was a modified GameCube for a bit of its development cycle. Prototypes of the Wiimote with a GCN have been found.
It's good that they basically built a product that was impossible to market badly with the switch, it probably sells itself, considering the form factor and all of the first and third party support they have now.
Splatoon— second player without split screen.
New SMB U— gamepad player can spawn blocks to help you reach secrets.
Wind Waker— map and inventory.
But an awful lot of titles just mirrored the TV or had a button to enable off-TV play.
I think shared/split screen on the TV adds an additional social element to it. Otherwise it's just all of us playing on their phones/Switch.
While it wasn't necessary it freed up screen space for the main diaplay while also allowing you to play only on the gamepad.
The best overall use is the Nintendo DS emulator. Unfortunately only few games are available for purchase but with a bit of hacking the compatibility is great.
Compare that to the Wii U back then: Turn on and play.
Nintendo even achieved to keep this mindset with the Switch: It will update in the background so usually you just turn it on and play.
I don't agree. I play my switch maybe once every couple of weeks, and almost without fail there's a system or game update that it asks me to install.
Granted, _most_ updates can be put off for a while by hitting "update later", but I see very little difference between the consoles (and PCs) in terms of update behaviour these days, for better or worse.
With Wii U games rarely received patches, everything was on the disc and ran off it too.
However, we used play Fortnite quite often on both the Switch and the PS4. On the Switch it was ready immediately in most cases. If not, the update loaded and was installed rather quickly. Compare that to the PS4: It's updated in about 50% of the cases. If not, downloading takes very long and then it is applying the update so slow, that we usually just give up.
At some point, if someone buys a ps5 or xbox for power only. Then they just get a pc, those consoles takes years to design. By the time they're released, it's already outdated
I don't think that's really true. Hardware moves slowly enough nowadays that really good hardware from a couple of years ago is still very competitive with today's hardware. And if you tried to build a PC with comparable specs to, say xbox series x, you'd be paying a very substantially larger amount because MS have economies of scale and a strong negotiating position.
Nintendo, on the other hand, tries to appeal to a much broader market. They learned from their success in the 80s, when pretty much every North American living room with kids in the household had an NES and a stack of games on top of the TV. Nintendo sees themselves as friendlier to casual gamers and families. They want to the "the safe choice" when grandma or grandpa whip out their checkbook at Walmart to buy a gaming system for their grandchildren.
Just being family-friendly doesn't quite guarantee success, which is why they've always been exploring new ways to interact with video games. Basically every new console they've introduced has had controllers markedly different from what came before. (Even if it turns out they were not necessarily _better_ than what came before.) In the case of the Wiimote, they pretty much hit a home run. It was not only a novel input method, it turned out to be loads of fun for casual gaming, social gatherings, and families.
Actually, consoles are tricky to develops on because they are quiet restricted from hardware standpoint, so you have to invest a lot in hardware knowledge.
Luckily they ported it to other consoles too. My kids are still playing it with their friends.
I hope they are working on a successor.
NES: Well designed. SNES: Well designed. N64: Hampered by the originally 12-24 MB cartridges as opposed to 650 MB CDs. GameCube: Well designed. A little hampered by the 1.4 GB mini DVDs as opposed to 7.8 GB DVDs. Wii: Underpowered, but a surprise smash hit capturing that era’s sensibilities (like the PS2). Wii U: Clunky and awkward, which however led to the Switch. Switch: Well designed.
GB: Well designed. GBC: Well designed. GBA: Well designed, however with a very bad audio quality as compared to the SNES. NDS: Well designed, again with very bad audio quality, and a surprise smash hit capturing that era’s sensibilities (like the PS2). 3DS: Hampered by its pitiful 2004 era 200 MHz CPU and 240p display. Clunky and unremarkable, which had a success in its second half of existence because people just want Nintendo games. Switch: Well designed.
It’s more complicated than a simple good or bad checkmark whether a thing is popular or not.
With the tech at the time, the Game Boy wasn't going to have a better screen without seriously compromising battery life. Case in point, the Sega Game Gear which was graphically way better than the Game Boy but died fast if you took it off the wall plug.
The GBC didn't have the same excuse; it was so many years newer, and it offered very little over the Game Boy other than a color screen. And its color screen still looked like a joke next to a Game Gear. Given how much newer the GBC was than the GG, I doubt Nintendo couldn't have made a handheld with Game Gear-quality graphics but without the awful battery life.
But it doesn't matter, because the GBC had an awesome games library and people loved it.
Success is more dictated by 4 main constraints or factors: - Game selection and support - Price point - System performance (including storage) - Innovative-ness or accessibility
Successful consoles typically met at least 3 of the above. For example the Nintendo Switch had very mediocre system performance, but it had great (1st party) game support, priced lower than competing XBox and PS4, and seemed very approachable for all demographics.
Nintendo Switch had the most powerful GPU of any mobile device released at its time. Furthermore it has 4 GB of RAM. Just the Cortex A-57 CPU wasn’t bleeding edge any more, having been replaced by the Cortex A-72 by the time of the Switch with a higher IPC of 16%. It was a well balanced system.
You might be mistaken because mobile CPU performance grew in an unparalleled explosive fashion, and the Cortex A-72 was already replaced by the A-73, A-74, A-75, A-76, A-77, A-78, and A-710 by now. But this is unfair to a system where its design was frozen already 6 years ago.
It just means that, if a successor Switch is built the same way, and a Cortex A-78 is used, its CPU would have ca 2.6x IPC. If it ran at twice the clock speed, its CPU performance would be 5.2x.
You’re being unfair because CPUs grew so much.
The game didn't age as gracefully as other StarFox games.
> Similarly to how the Wii Remote mangles the Bluetooth protocol to avoid third-party usage
with "mangles the Bluetooth protocol" being a broken link. Anyone have information on this? I'm interested in how so.
https://github.com/xwiimote/xwiimote/blob/master/doc/PROTOCO...
Just remove the extra text
The console initially promoted the gimmick of being a controller for cable TV, as seen by the blue TV button the bottom of the gamepad. This was at a time when cable TV was starting to die out for the younger crowd. The original Xbox One made a similar misguided focus on controlling TV, while the overall market was making a major shift to streaming in that period.
Next, the gamepad used a resistive touchscreen instead of a capacitive one. Phones with capacitive touchscreens had been the norm for years at this point, making the Wii U touchscreen feel very low quality.
The gamepad came with too small of a battery, which limited the gamepad's use as a portable console, which was already tied down to being nearby the console itself to stream games smoothly. The battery could be easily upgraded to a larger size, but it had to be purchased and installed later on.
The base console only had 8 GB of storage. The deluxe model only came with 32 GB of storage and cost an extra $150 (for $350 total). The console largely focused on using discs for games, but the next gen of Xbox and PlayStation consoles showed that internal storage was important. The Wii U had an SD card slot, but SD cards could oddly not be used to expand game storage; USB storage could be used however.
The Wii U had some very strong game releases that eventually saw successful ports to the Switch, and it also had the best Virtual Console release of games in any console ever, that the Switch still has not matched. The value of a Wii U by the end of its life was insane. It's the only console where so many incredible games (almost all of Nintendo's catalogue through the Wii - but not the GameCube) could be played on the system. I think the console just focused on all of the wrong things in the minutia. Tie that with terrible marketing, and the console was doomed to failure. The Wii U's genius was later revised upon and proved to be a success with the Switch. Despite it's failures, the Wii U was a great console that is one of my favorites of all time (along with the PlayStation Vita).