Defenestra said:
The Wii U's touchpad controller seems like a really weird decision to me, but the other two seem to be mostly going on about how they're good for not playing games, so at least Nintendo remembered what the bloody thing was for.
It was absolutely a mistake. It costs $140 to make which wildly inflates the cost of the system while having no real games for it. It also added a significant amount of complexity to the system which does hurt them with the elderly and casual gamers who made their Wii launch so successful. It was a really bad move and it isn't even as complex as a basic smartphone is nowadays (for example, a camera that faces forward or multi-touch screens).
It's basically a glorified monitor with a controller wrapped around it. This should have been an optional peripheral that they forced on consumers. XBO made the same mistake, but less costly. Though Microsoft has admitted that the Kinect 2 also costs almost as much as the console to make. So maybe it will prove to be just as costly.
I'm not really falling over myself with the desire to purchase any of this generation's consoles, but Nintendo's offering is the most appealing to me right now. Kind of sad, really.
Looking at Nintendo's offerings is looking at a years-breadth of titles for a console that has been out since November 2012. For being out for over a year, their list of desireable titles is shameful. I would not expect them to somehow then turn around and match or exceed the offerings that the PS4 and even the XBO have lined up for the coming year. You've got to realize that the ps4 and XBO haven't been out for even two months yet. The fact that you're not giving the WiiU a clear advantage despite having that year should mean something to you.
Take a look at the WiiU's performance and tell me what they had in their first month that had you excited. Their lineup was almost entirely games that had already been out for months that were just re-released for the WiiU.For starters, they literally had nothing new released from December 14th 2012 to March 5th 2013. A quarter of a year with a new console that had complete radio silence. That's only in the US, other nations had longer gaps. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wii_U_games
They had New Super Mario Bros. U, which I think was really good and has sold over 3 million units. But that's only one of four titles that have reached 1 million units (I'm counting New Super Luigi U. since it was at .97 million at the last count). Compare to the PS4 which has fewer units sold so far but has 5 titles that have breached 1 million despite only having been in existence for two months. The ps4 has 102 games out in the ether compared to the WiiU with 130. Again, this is despite the WiiU being out for more than 13 months.
Sony has promised something like 21 first party titles within the first year of release and has pretty much full support from the third party community. Something the WiiU has recently lost from all but the few companies that have something coming out on it soon. I suspect those will drop support too once their games have been released for awhile.
So we should not only see significantly more titles come out on those consoles but the next few years should see significantly less going onto the WiiU which has failed to outpace even the Dreamcast in unit sales despite there being a larger consumer market than there was in Dreamcast's era. So, accounting for consumer market inflation (if you will), even if it managed to match the dreamcast it would be doing shitty. They have thankfully exceeded 5 million units as of 13 months.
Add all this to the fact that the WiiU doesn't plan on pursuing online muliplayer for most titles (and have a crappy network) and suddenly there's a lot of things left wanting for pretty much every gamer.
