It's good that Nintendo is going in a new direction with the next console, and hopefully it'll fare better after the initial hype.
The Wii was a huge hit when it came out, but after a while people just stopped talking about it. The whole motion control novelty started to wear off, and there was not a lot of stuff left to keep people entertained. Every now and then a first party game would drop and get people excited again, but the interest would fizzle out soon after. On top of that, all the ports of games from other system were always dumbed down and, when they tried to integrate the Wii remote, ended up being clunky to play. The 480p output and lack of a decent online system (really, adding people by MAC address?) didn't help either. The Wii was never the dominant console of the living room, but usually a compliment to a Xbox 360 or PS3.
The Wii U was a "meh" idea that hit at a bad time. It came out roughly a year before the rest of the generation, but got hushed when the next consoles were announced. Really, it could have made a huge splash when it came out. It beat the others by a year, and if it was released with a strong list of launch titles and planned games, then it could have been huge. I remember talking to someone about getting it a little while after it came out, and we just both agreed that there wasn't enough interesting games to warrant purchasing it. In addition, the game pad just felt a bit too "gimmicky" to a lot of people. It was a solid idea, but not enough to be a "selling point" for the console. If they put the resources that they used to build it into just making a solid console with a normal controller, they could have done something amazing.
Hopefully, they have something great planned, but with the trend defined by the past few consoles, it's hard to tell.
It's good that Nintendo is going in a new direction with the next console, and hopefully it'll fare better after the initial hype.
The Wii was a huge hit when it came out, but after a while people just stopped talking about it. The whole motion control novelty started to wear off, and there was not a lot of stuff left to keep people entertained. Every now and then a first party game would drop and get people excited again, but the interest would fizzle out soon after. On top of that, all the ports of games from other system were always dumbed down and, when they tried to integrate the Wii remote, ended up being clunky to play. The 480p output and lack of a decent online system (really, adding people by MAC address?) didn't help either. The Wii was never the dominant console of the living room, but usually a compliment to a Xbox 360 or PS3.
The Wii U was a "meh" idea that hit at a bad time. It came out roughly a year before the rest of the generation, but got hushed when the next consoles were announced. Really, it could have made a huge splash when it came out. It beat the others by a year, and if it was released with a strong list of launch titles and planned games, then it could have been huge. I remember talking to someone about getting it a little while after it came out, and we just both agreed that there wasn't enough interesting games to warrant purchasing it. In addition, the game pad just felt a bit too "gimmicky" to a lot of people. It was a solid idea, but not enough to be a "selling point" for the console. If they put the resources that they used to build it into just making a solid console with a normal controller, they could have done something amazing.
Hopefully, they have something great planned, but with the trend defined by the past few consoles, it's hard to tell.