Community Opinion. Always has been, always will be.
I think the rate of sales and game selection speak for itself. The Wii U isn't a console geared towards the gamer market. I still don't even know who the console is supposed to target. As I said before, the Wii U was allegedly going to target both the people who game a lot and the people who are more or less casual.
They haven't managed either. All they've done is cater to the biggest minority they could: Nintendo fans. Which sucks because that group has undoubtedly shrunk over the years, at least on the console front.
And because the console doesn't even know who it's supposed to be playing for, it doesn't have reach. Reach is necessary to make gamers who don't like it into gamers who do like it. If you can't change a person's perspective of your console, then they will keep thinking it isn't a real console. Throw into the mix piss poor marketing, yet another unconventional controller, and a bunch of half games, and what you get is a generally poor reception.
You don't even have to look that far to know that people aren't taking it seriously. Take Michael Pachter for example. We all hate his prediction rate, but I'm pretty sure he's stated before he loves the 3DS. To say things like Nintendo going third party is more or less a problem caused by the Wii U. He's not that stupid, he's probably just pissed off. Then there's that article that got linked this morning about Mario Kart 8 being a saving grace. Retailers are struggling to get the Wii U out there because it's so niche. They are banking on a single title to sell. They aren't even banking on the likes of Bayo 2 or X because guess what? They're gonna get little to no marketing because Nintendo are still unsure how to not go down Mario/Zelda Rainbow Field.
The perception of the Wii U is cracked into the dust heavily. The only people who actually know and want the console are those who already have it. Then you have things like Wii Party U, a party title that managed to sell the most Wii U units, or at least a more than anticipated influx, over in Japan last year. That just leads people to think that the Wii U is even more of a casual system.
The reason why people don't think the Wii U is a serious console is because they just keep hearing the silliest shenanigans about it. From titles, marketing, investor meetings, sales, the controller, hardware etc. People will find the tiniest thing to chew on. And since most people interested in the Wii U are more than likely finding their information online, they are chewing on the likes of doom threads abundant.
Honestly, Nintendo needs to up the game. This was never about power or titles; at was always going to be about reception, the whole shebang. If they even remotely promote Bayo 2 and X, I will give Chaotix another $10 worth the minis.
They havent even catered to Nintendo fans.
Wheres Metroid? Wheres Zelda? Where is any info whatsoever on X in the past half year?
Nintendo has gone full on frothing panic mode to try and reclaim the casual users they left on wii. Look at the games they have released.
Nintendo land, a minigame party game collection
Nsmbu, a 2d platformer.
Wii sports u self explanatory
wii fit u Self explanatory
Mario 3d world, a 2d mario in 3d, for the casuals who are terrified of traditional 3d mario (this is really a thing)
New super luigi U
Game and wario casual party games
Mario and Sonic olympics casual party games
Sing Party
Wii party u casual party games
Donkey KKng 2d platformer
Look at this. All of this is dedicated at capturing an audience Nintendo captured by focusing on new novel gameplay at the expensive of graphics. They got it because it was cheap, easy to undersand, and gave instant gratification fun from the moment they picked up the remote and saw a reaction to their movements (even if 99.99% of all games on the system were damnable waggle crap (Ai livemoves record then recognize function to be precise, self admitted garbage...) and not the real motion controls the system demonstrated it was capable of)
None of that exists in the wii u. The main reason to upgrade to wii u is more powerful hardware. The people who play wii fit, and wii sports, etc dont care about that, they bought a fricking wii when the ps360 were around. They dont care, and they sure as heck dont care to spend 300 bucks.
The gamepad is a far more sophisticated input tool on the user end than the wii remote. asymmetrical gameplay is a much harder concept to grasp than 'oh, crap happens when I wave this thing'.
Now, the Wii u has everything core nintendo gamers want compared to the wii. The power to output in HD. The power to render far more sophisticated environments and models, far higher resolution textures, far better lighting, an actual programmable shader pipeline. Traditional controls for people with their heads shoved too far up their rectums to learn new things, and an ability to continue investing in amazing fictional worlds while allowing the family to use the TV, without skipping a beat.
Except, Nintendo has focused on damn near absolutely nothing for this audience. What do we have seriously?
Pikmin 3, which, while wonderful, is a noticably smaller game than pikmin 2.
And uh.... erm....
A re release of a gamecube game, who that audience had likely replayed 30 times over by that point. GREAT GAME, already know every single nook cranny and corner. To the point that I found every single tingle statue despite the tingle tuner being removed from the game. The games great, but... it was clearly not intended for us.
You know what, Ill even throw in Platinums W101.
Amazing game, fantastic game, lots of replay value. I will be content to revisit it many times over the years. But like Pikmin 3 I cant play it content for a year straight or more with no other games to play.
Nintendo has done practically nothing whatsoever for the Nintendo loyal, in favour of persuing the casual gamer who hopped on in the wii generation.
So, of course the casuals arent going to buy, the wii u is too intimidating, not too mention they have no idea why they should spend 300 bucks for it, as they literally do not care that the wii u is far more powerful than the wii.
If they had just taken half of those games designed for the casual audience and assigned those teams games for the traditional Nintendo customer we would have 250% more games to play. We would have, what take off the odd end and just add 5 games to pikmin 3 and tw101 that would be out available for you to play right now.
Go ahead, name some of your favourite Nintendo franchises. Pick a combo of 5. Ill just post some random musings of my own.
Zelda, Metroid, Star Fox, Mother, adventure style 3d mario (mario 64 style)
Metroid, F zero, Golden, Sun Kid Icarus U, Eternal Darkness (Nintendo themselves own the complete rights)
First ever 3d Kirby adventure (puff balls movesets would be a joy to translate to a 3d adventure style game), Wave Race, Fatal Frame (Oh yeah, Nintendo owns fatal frame now) Raven blade, a new 3d wario world
or... what about brand new IP's, that contain an actual journey into an adventure to undertake?
How much better would the Nintendo experience be for you, for others, if right now. You could be playing them right now, ion your wii u, with the other 4 stacked and waiting, if there were just 5 Nintendo games for customers who play Nintendo games for Nintendo enthusiests gaming, and not minigames, or an oversaturation of level based 2d platformers.
Nintendo still wouldnt be lighting the charts on fire, after all, that wii userbase would still be gone. But the wii u would have a much larger userbase of all its Nintendo customers enjoying the high quality in depth games they get Nintendo systems for.
