Wii U Worries and Woes

by Piyoz on Dec 17th, 2013

It’s no secret to anyone at this point that Nintendo’s latest endeavor at the home console market, the Wii U, isn’t doing too well in sales. Pretty poorly, in fact. Even below Nintendo’s low expectations. As I write this, four and a half million homes across the world house a Wii U console in all its screen-touchy, wiggly-waggly glory. Not that great, considering it’s been out for over a year now.

Meanwhile, the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One consoles sold by Sony and Microsoft respectively have sold upwards of two million units each in about three weeks. Yikes! There aren’t that many games out yet for either console, contrasting from the Wii U’s much more impressive variety in launch titles. The PS4 and X1 have both had numerous disc drive failures and technical issues upon launch, unlike the Wii U’s clean and efficient introduction. The Wii U has free online while PSN and Xbox Live require paid subscriptions. Heck, the Wii U plays Wii discs! The PS4 and X1 aren’t reverse compatible! It’s even less expensive than the competition! Despite having everything going for it, Nintendo’s new gaming box can’t seem to rock the charts in the same way that the Wii swept up and cleaned house.

What’s going on here?

Let’s look at not as gamers, but as marketing types.

Okay, so the PS4 is an upgraded version of the PS3. The Xbox One is an upgraded version of the Xbox 360. But is the Wii U an upgraded version of the Wii? Nintendo asserts that it’s not. It’s a brand new experience! It’s for everyone! Yet here we are: angry, confused parents not understanding why their Wii U games don’t play on their Wii. My casual playing friends just hearing about the Wii U for the first time and asking how you attach the tablet to the Wii. My Battlefield 4-addicted cousins wanting confirmation that the Wii U is for children and families while the X1 and PS4 are for “proper gamers”.

That’s poor marketing if I’ve ever seen it. I mean, I know what the Wii U is. You reading this know what it is. Four and a half million gamers know what it is. But the non-core gaming community? Those who made the Wii the most successful gaming console ever? Those who bought one for yoga and virtual fitness because Oprah said to? Those really hot Asian girls who play Wii Tennis in their bra and panties? Those affluent, upper-class white parents who want the newest, trendiest piece of tech in their homes regardless of function? These people have no idea what the Wii U is.

And that’s bad.

Poor marketing is one thing. But I think there’s something else at play here. And it’s not just Nintendo. There’s a broader problem that the Wii U is facing, and it really has nothing to do with the machine itself. Or its software. Or its overwhelmingly positive user feedback. The problem for the Wii U lies not in its internal machinations but in the gaming market at large.

The consumer base for video games (in North America, at least) has changed. This certainly isn’t the industry it used to be in the 80’s, or the 90’s, or the early 2000’s. Video games as an entertainment medium and an art form is still very young. For most of Western society, video games are seen as toys for children and young people who have 1) money and 2) time, and the assumption beyond that is that when these young people grow up they will do more grown up things like go to the bank, start families, and watch outdated sitcoms while falling asleep on the couch at 10pm. That’s the American way! But the Wii, a tiny, white box from the far-off country of Japanland came into our lives and surprised us with its beautiful simplicity. Video games can be about more than shooting and explosions! The whole family can enjoy video games! And you can play sports! And fun party games! And you can play with that Mario guy and his friend Pikachu!

Nintendo created its own market. After all, why compete when you can make your own entirely new audience? The Wii transformed gaming by exposing a brand new demographic of people to the medium. A more accurate term than “transformation”, though, would be “fad”. They created a fad with the Wii. And like all fads, its time came to an end. It took about three to four years, but the dust did settle as sales declined steadily. Games and machines still sold, mind you, just not enough to support an entire business model. What was the Wii left with? Miles upon miles of shovelware? Technically inferior games? Crappy ports of Call of Duty? A Goldeneye remake with incompetent motion controls? While the Wii was off widening gaming demographics with enormous, industry-transforming success, Microsoft and Sony were over in their corners improving the technical aspects of video games. Better hardware. More textures. Physics engines. You know, the stuff that most gamers actually look for.

Nintendo needed a new strategy. They couldn’t rely on the same Wii casual demographic. Yet Nintendo couldn’t just copy Sony and Microsoft and make a mainstream console again. The market for core gaming was saturated with military FPS, sports games, actiony-stealth titles, and RPG’s. What else is there? What could Nintendo bring to the table now? How can they reinvent the wheel? How do you choose a new direction from family-friendly, casual party games and serious, core games? The answer (in Nintendo’s minds) lie in all Eastern philosophy:

Balance.

Why choose between them? Why not have casual exercise and family party games that still seem to sell somewhat ALONG WITH core gaming that involves shooting foreigners, playing sports with your hands instead of going outside, and controlling vapid, anime-style characters as they venture through pseudo-philosophical adventures in playfully anachronistic settings? Keep motion controls. Just add enough hardware and visual power to match your competitors. Add online capabilities that aren’t laughable. Digital stores. Game demos. Indie games! Make deals with new developers and producers! Create new IP’s! Have the same party games and shovelware that your stupid siblings seem to love so much! Give them everything! And make it sexy!

And that, my friends, is the Wii U. Or rather, it was supposed to be. Unfortunately, the grooves and nooks of the gaming industry after the Wii shifted under Nintendo’s feet. That casual audience playing party games and doing yoga? They don’t care about video games anymore. They fill pawn shops, garage counters, and attic boxes with unused Wii consoles not used since the family Christmas party of 2009. Bargain bins of Wii dance games inundate GameStop floors.

And those core gamers? They already have Playstations. And/or Xboxes. Or Steam accounts. What can the Wii U offer them that they don’t already have? Bayonetta 2? New Smash Bros? Mario Kart? Super Mario 3D World? As of right now, those sorts of games are all the Wii U has. They’re its sole saving grace, holding it back from sheer extinction. And its the existence of these games and the core Nintendo IP’s that will never let the Wii U fail. At least not completely.

The Wii U isn’t popular because it has been so poorly marketed. Nobody knows what it is, or why it’s different than its predecessor. Nintendo’s only two options (the casual audiences and core audiences) have either lost interest in video games as entertainment or already find what they want on other platforms. Nintendo, you see, sought to become a jack of all trades, but the master of none. The Wii U is too smart for its own good. It’s such a smart, consumer-friendly, multifaceted machine, and it’s exactly that that has become its own downfall.

Video games are a budding, nubile form of entertainment. Unlike literature, theater, film, television, and music who have had decades or centuries to expand and diversify, video games are still in infancy. Video games have yet to find their place in mainstream society. Until then, they rest on the millennial fringe between children’s toys and the ironic entertainment of young adults. Businessmen in offices are still figuring out how to handle their products and consumers in the age of the internet and easy piracy. We have parents and little kids who are surrounded by so much visual and audio stimulation that something like Pokemon games is just like another way to keep up with the Joneses. And in other corners, brilliant, young minds experiment with this software and create original ideas like the artist and writers of the Renaissance.

In the grand scheme of things, the Wii was just a blip on the radar. It was a small bump in the road among all the other trends and fads that fill our consumer-driven world. Gaming as a trend/fad has almost entirely disappeared. Gaming as a hobby is just as strong as ever, if not more powerful. Companies like Valve, Sony and Microsoft seem to have a handle on this. Others like Nintendo, Google, Sega and Capcom are in the process of reinventing. Where they plan on taking their games and devices in the future is uncertain.

The Wii U may be an impressive machine, but it was made for the wrong market. It’s so ahead of its time that it’s somehow behind. And the Wii U and Nintendo don’t deserve that. It saddens me to see such an interesting and capable machine gather dust on store shelves just because the market around it is unsuitable. Such is capitalism, I guess. Survival of the fittest and all.

What do you think of the Wii U? Love it? Think it’s for babies? How do you think Nintendo and the industry at large have treated this console? Let us know what you think with a comment.

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