Adam Tyner

I don't think there was a single Wii U release at retail -- not just Nintendo, but from anyone -- between June 28th and October 7th. I guess no one here felt like talking about Paper Mario: Color Splash. Unless Nintendo pulls something completely out of their hat, Breath of the Wild is the only first party game on the horizon. Maybe I should've posted the Nintendo Selects price drop stuff here instead of in the deals thread just to have something.

They're fulfilling orders that were placed. Practically nothing, of course, but something more than zero.

Sonny Corinthos

Has anyone played Paper Mario: Color Splash? It's on my daughter's Christmas list and i'm wondering if the game will be too hard for her to play.

slop101

We're still getting a new Zelda on the U, right?

Adam Tyner

Yeah. With the possible exception of the Switch trailer, everything they've shown so far has been from the Wii U version.

EinCB

The last amount of Wii U hardware has been shipped to the North American market.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/11/...nding-in-japan

mhg83

Starts at 6:50 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_Qd8Lc8-DLc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Sonny Corinthos

A eulogy for the Wii U.

http://www.techradar.com/news/a-eulogy-for-the-wii-u

Michael Corvin

I knew it wasn't good, but 13.3m sold? That's abysmal, which makes them doubling down on basically the same concepts for the Next even more baffling.

Adam Tyner

To my mind, the core concepts of the Wii U are:

1) Bringing the DS/3DS' dual-screen gameplay to the living room. These systems all have one primary screen and a secondary touchscreen. For a further similarity, the touchscreens for the 3DS and Wii U are both smaller than the primary screens, even.

2) Off-TV play

Re: #1 -- the Switch (not the Next) has one screen at a time, not two. You're playing it as a handheld, or it's docked and you're looking at your TV. This is unlike the Wii U, where many games required or at least supported both screens being used simultaneously.

Re: #2 -- the Switch and the Wii U both do have off-TV play, but the Wii U barely worked outside of the same room. The Switch is truly portable. Not the same thing at all.

How do you think the Switch doubles down on the same concepts as the Wii U?

Not that the outlook for the portable world is all that sunny at the moment, but still, Nintendo's handhelds historically outsell their consoles. They've been fragmenting their userbase between console and handheld as completely separate ecosystems. Now they're uniting them. The way in which they're uniting them isn't what I would've liked to have seen (I would've preferred separate handhelds and consoles with the same software library), but this makes a million times more sense than what they've been doing. Even if the downward trend continues (and it probably will), the united userbase should still be large enough to make for a credible competitor in a way they weren't on their own. Do you disagree?

I don't know what can be done to right Nintendo's ship, but this seems like a smarter move than a lot of the alternatives. Status quo is obviously a no-go. Chasing the teraflops crowd with the highest-end hardware is destined for failure. Going portable only is dangerous. Going third-party would stomp out a lot of what makes Nintendo great. Mobile-only seems like an absolute worst case scenario, even worse than Nintendo going under entirely. At least the Switch is something new, unlike the underperformance/failure of their iterative generation, with the 3DS basically being "the DS, but 3D!" and the Wii U being "the Wii with a tablet controller we're not really sure what to do with!"

I'm not really excited about the Switch yet, but if they launch with the right software and actually support the damned thing, it could be something special. Nintendo definitely saw the writing on the wall for the Wii U and cut out quickly. Most of Nintendo's teams haven't put out a Wii U game in a couple of years, and although that obviously sucks for us, that could be great news for the Switch. Hopefully they've been working towards a hell of a library for its first year.

PerryD

I never understood why they didn't have their normal price drops for the system. It should have dropped to $249 in 2013, $199 in 2014, then maybe a couple color choices, dropping to $149 last year. But to stick at $299 for 4 years?

Adam Tyner

My guess: the Wii U was such a fundamentally undesirable console that a price drop would've done little-to-no good. They might even be making more money selling full price consoles to a smaller audience than selling discounted consoles to a slightly larger audience. It was such an immediate failure that there hasn't been a mid-cycle hardware revision the way a lot of consoles get too. Not worth the R&D. Because of the whole economies of scale thing, having to ramp up production to support a price drop might've been more trouble than it's worth too.

Maybe there'll be some fire sales closer to the launch of the Switch, though.

mattysemo247

I guess that is why the Switch is such a hard pass for me right now. I still feel burned by both the Wii and the Wii U. The Wii was partially my fault since I got caught up in the hype like many others, but I still have about a dozen Wii games that I will never touch. I got on board with the Wii U pretty late in the game and picked it up on a good sale. But shortly after that, third party stuff stopped coming out and then Nintendo would only release a couple games a year. For the most part, I was OK with it just being an HD Wii if the games were good, and for the most part, they were. So I'll continue to have mine hooked up and will probably even pick up Zelda once it's out.

Michael Corvin

It's the same exact concept with a longer range...i.e. outside the house.

General consumers were confused with the Wii -> WiiU naming and you don't think releasing what is essentially an identical console as the last one won't muck things up?

Adam Tyner

I don't see it that way at all, personally. When you said "concepts" earlier, I perhaps mistakenly took that to mean more than just off-TV play.

Just speaking for myself, when I think of the gamepad, I think of it primarily as a second screen to go with whatever I'm playing on my TV: the interactive maps in Splatoon and Pikmin 3, the map/inventory in Zelda, designing levels in Super Mario Maker, the second screen in Game & Wario and Nintendoland, local multiplayer without splitscreen in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, etc. (...and I obviously think of how underutilized it was outside of those sorts of games.) That's why I think of the Wii U as being Nintendo's attempt to bring the DS to the living room.

I don't see them as essentially identical, which invalidates the question. It's all guesswork about how people will react at this point, though, and we won't have a true answer until March. FWIW, I haven't seen anyone so far confused about whether or not the Switch is a peripheral or a new console, so that certainly seems to be one-up over the Wii U.

RichC2

Yeah I don't see that many similarities. The Wii U had a second screen attached to a home base with shitty range, the Switch is a fully portable game console.

The Switch isn't a great name, but it's better than Wii U. It better deliver though, you're setting yourself up for "Bait n Switch" headlines otherwise.

mattysemo247

Gamestop has Captain Toad Treasure Tracker and Mario Party 10 (both come with amiibo) for $20 each this week.

The Questyen

Captain Toad Treasure Tracker is one of the 5 best games on the system. Highly recommended.

BBEANLPHIE

Zelda Twilight Princess HD with amiibo is back down to $35. I have a feeling this will be OOP soon.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...0&ie=UTF8&th=1

Walmart also has it for same price

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Legend-of...ype=10&veh=aff

This can be used to price match at bestbuy also which is what I am doing.

Sonny Corinthos

Anyone know why Nintendo is recalling all unsold Wii U consoles from stores? No stores in my area has them in stock. You would think with this being it's last holiday season, Nintendo would try and sell as many as they could.

Nintendo is Allegedly Recalling the Wii U From Major Retailers.

https://www.geek.com/games/nintendo-...ilers-1683245/

The Questyen

The news site you linked has no clue why they're being recalled so how would a random poster here know?

slop101

My guess would be that Nintendo would rather buy back their unsold consoles from retailers, rather than have the retailers sell them heavily discounted, thereby "devaluing" their product.

Adam Tyner

I'll buy that, especially so close to the release of the Switch.

PerryD

The fact that they kept the price at $299 for the past three years kind of guaranteed its failure.

Adam Tyner

Alas, its failure was assured more than three years ago. As much as I love the Wii U, I think it's just a fundamentally undesirable product, no matter what the price. A drop would've goosed sales a bit, but I don't think it wouldn't have been nearly enough to pull the Wii U out of its tailspin (well, it was already smoldering wreckage in this analogy, but you know what I mean).

It's kind of funny to think of $300 Wii Us being taken off the shelf to make room for $200-$250 Switches. (Lord help Nintendo if they're any more than that.) Has a console at the beginning of its life cycle ever been cheaper than its predecessor at the end of its life cycle?

mattysemo247

That didn't stop Target a couple years ago. That's how I got mine for $150.