What would encourage you to buy a Wii U?

[Linkachu]

It's not hard to see that Wii U's getting down on its luck. Sales are the pits and there's very little to discuss on the system because, well, there's very little on the system in general (especially for Europe). It's a sad state of affairs. XD

So I'm curious now. For those of you who don't already own a Wii U (which is likely everyone but myself and Alex ), what would be enough to encourage you to finally buy Nintendo's new console? Or are you already 100% dead set on never buying one?

 

[Doctor Oak]

The main reason why no-one's buying the system is that there are no games for the system.

Despite all their claims that they'd learned their lesson from the 3DS, Nintendo went into the Wii U launch with no games for months afterwards. It shouldn't have been this way, but Nintendo delayed pretty much all of their titles (or scrapped them entirely - see Scribblenauts in Europe) and we've lost one of the biggest titles of the system's touted launch by Rayman being pushed back to the end of the year.

The fact is that the Wii U still doesn't really have anything going for it. There are no hard and firm dates for any of Nintendo's own titles and nothing has really been announced since launch other than the WindWaker remake.

It's taken until this year, 2 years after the 3DS came out, for the quality games to finally start coming for it. It's seeming more and more likely that the Wii U will follow the same pattern.

This is incredibly destructive, though. The 3DS is basically in a league of its own as its major competitors are mobile devices - but they'll never match up to the full 'premium' gaming experience that the 3DS can offer. The Wii U, however, is already pretty underpowered. It's a major step up from the Wii, and a bit of a step up (in some regards) to the Xbox 360 and PS3 - but none of those are the system's actual competition. The real competition lies in the new Xbox and PS4 that will hit this year - seemingly long before the Wii U actually gets any real support.

How can third parties justify the excess cost of downgrading a game for the Wii U when Nintendo can't even get the sales of the hardware itself on a consistent level with their own titles?

The system can't support the new major game engines (Unreal 4, Cryengine 3, Frostbite 3) that most AAA games on the Xbox, PS4 and PC will run on, and worst of all, it's extremely likely to be the only system running on the PowerPC architecture from now on (everyone else will be running PC-like x86 architecture), which will make porting everything to it far more difficult than making multiplatform titles across the three other major platforms.

It's looking increasingly bad for the Wii U being able to garner third party support - and that's going to lead to the exact same problems the Wii suffered from, only this time, without the massive sales that the WIi managed to achieve through a perfect storm of media hype and price.

The Windwaker remake alone is enough to make me happy I own a Wii U, so I won't regret my purchase. But I can't really see a bright future for the Wii U unless Nintendo gets their wallets out and starts making deals. We're already looking at a year where none of the main multiplatform games will be on the Wii U - and there are a significant amount of massive multiplatform titles this year.

Honestly, I feel Nintendo have made a massive error of judgement in the Wii U's specs. With sales as poor as they are, I don't think they can really expect (or afford) to keep this going for a full generation, either. If things don't pick up within the next year, shareholders are going to demand action, and that could mean an early death for the Wii U.

 

[precita]

Aside from a 2D Mario that's rehashed 3 times over already, there's nothing much to buy on the console yet. Maybe towards the end of the year if there's a price drop and a 3D Mario and Pikmin 3 comes out.

I think Nintendo is banking too much on Pikmin as well. Pikmin 2 came out in 2004 which was nearly a decade ago, the current generation of fans probably don't even remember the franchise as it only sold decently on Gamecube which was Nintendo's worst selling system.

 

[Coreysawrus]

The only thing preventing me is money but there are games I'd rather spend my money on for a console I already have like Luigi's Mansion 2, Tales of the Abyss and Fire Emblem Awakening just to name a few

 

[Linkachu]

Aside from a 2D Mario that's rehashed 3 times over already, there's nothing much to buy on the console yet. Maybe towards the end of the year if there's a price drop and a 3D Mario and Pikmin 3 comes out.

I think Nintendo is banking too much on Pikmin as well. Pikmin 2 came out in 2004 which was nearly a decade ago, the current generation of fans probably don't even remember the franchise as it only sold decently on Gamecube which was Nintendo's worst selling system.

They re-released both Pikmin 1 and Pikmin 2 on Wii as part of the New Play Control! collection so technically the games have been promoted a bit since their original releases. I do agree though. Pikmin has always appealed to a niche crowd at best; it's not a system seller like Zelda, Mario, or Pokemon. While I appreciate Nintendo delaying Pikmin 3 several times in order to perfect it, they really needed something to fill the gap before its eventual release. The Virtual Console would've been one such means of filling that gap but they couldn't even get it up n' running in a timely manner...

 

[Demelza]

It needs more games to tempt me. The console itself is really interesting and I'd really like to own one, but can't justify doing so until it has a decent amount of games to play on it. It's much easier to justify buying a handheld like the 3DS from lunch than it is a home console, mostly because of the price and the fact I'm more likely to use a handheld than I am a home console. But I think that is the issue in general, the only thing stopping people buying a Wii U (as long as they're fans of Nintendo), is our lack of games. The fact that sales went up a considerable amount when Monster Hunter was released kind of speaks a lot in this case.

Either way, at this point there are enough 3DS games coming out that I want to give my full attention to, where I likely won't be looking at owning a Wii U until Christmas, by which point we should have a few decent games.

 

[precita]

[
They re-released both Pikmin 1 and Pikmin 2 on Wii as part of the New Play Control! collection so technically the games have been promoted a bit since their original releases. I do agree though. Pikmin has always appealed to a niche crowd at best; it's not a system seller like Zelda, Mario, or Pokemon. While I appreciate Nintendo delaying Pikmin 3 several times in order to perfect it, they really needed something to fill the gap before its eventual release. The Virtual Console would've been one such means of filling that gap but they couldn't even get it up n' running in a timely manner...

Yeah. Gamecube was Nintendo's least selling system even though I enjoyed it immensely and a franchise that started on it like Pikmin was sort of doomed not to become as popular as the others. I don't think the Play control ports sold much at all.

Gamecube is now a two generation old console, I mean the thing came out all the way back in the ancient year of 2001 for goodness sakes. A lot of people just don't realize how much time has passed since the early 2000's.

Its kind of the same with Pokemon, when you realize the year 2003 till now makes it an entire decade since Ruby/Sapphire released outside of Japan, yet Hoenn doesn't feel "old" even though it should be. God I still remember when the third generation was going on as if it were only yesterday, and I'm like, "Wow, Hoenn is 10 years old now?"

 

[Magpie]

Once Pikmin 3 is out I will consider getting a Wii U. It's the only game that interests me enough to want to get a Wii U at if I'm honest. Some sort of epic Pokemon game for it would do the trick too, even if it was some sort of new version of Snap, because I never played the original and I think I'd enjoy it xD