AuthenticM
Member
Great article from Patrick Klepek. On point.
So many Wii owners had no clue the Wii U existed, or if they did, what it was. My own sister owned a Wii. She had some games for it, such as Donkey Kong Country Returns. Her boyfriend is also a hardcore gamer who plays every iteration of Call of Duty and plays GTA V: Online a lot with his online posse (he does not frequent internet forums though). When DKC: Tropical Freeze was released in early 2014, I sent her a trailer and told her she would have to play this. She was very excited and said she would. I told her she would need to buy a Wii U for it though. Her answer was "What's a Wii U? Is it an accessory like the Wii Fit? How much does it cost?"
Stories like this are plentiful. Nintendo royally fucked up the marketing for this console. Marketing courses in universities should have their students study that case to understand how not to market something.
It's easy to forget this in light of Switch's early success, but it's worth remembering: no one bought a Wii U. I don't mean nobody, but in the grand scheme of things, nobody bought a Wii U. It helps explain how a souped up (but still excellent) port of Mario Kart 8 broke a franchise record last week, selling 459,000 copies in a single day. That's more than Mario Kart Wii's debut, 459,000 copies. Take a breath before predicting Switch will be a phenomenon in the same way Wii was, but it does underscore how much of a sales dud the Wii U proved to be.
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Nintendo isn't the first company to embrace re-releases. When PlayStation 4 launched, Naughty Dog and Sony quickly decided to port both The Last of Us, a game that came out at the end of PlayStation 3's lifespan, and the first three Uncharted games. Sony noticed that "a huge proportion" of people playing The Last of Us on PlayStation 4 were entirely new to the game.
This was true for Uncharted, too.
"We did a lot of research and discovered that about 80 per cent of the people that own a PS4 have never played Uncharted, period," said Naughty Dog community strategist Eric Monacelli in an interview with MCV from 2015. "That was one of the reasons why we thought remastering it would be a good idea."
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A big difference between PlayStation 3 and Wii U, however, is that while PlayStation 3 stumbled out of the gate because of a series of misguided and arrogant decisions by Sony, they turned the ship around. PlayStation 3 became a success, competing toe-to-tie with Microsoft by the end of the generation. Microsoft might have captured the mindshare of players early on, but after being humbled, years of hard work had Sony on solid footing before PlayStation 4.
This never happened for Wii U. Nintendo decided to axe it and move on.
The cynical way to look at Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is that it allows Nintendo to fill their release calendar with "new" games without actually releasing a "new" game. (To Nintendo's credit, they added new characters and tweaked the game's much criticized battle mode. It's a better game.) The cynics can be right and Nintendo can still be smart for releasing a game like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, all while the company works on brand-new games (ARMS) and needed sequels (Splatoon 2).
So many Wii owners had no clue the Wii U existed, or if they did, what it was. My own sister owned a Wii. She had some games for it, such as Donkey Kong Country Returns. Her boyfriend is also a hardcore gamer who plays every iteration of Call of Duty and plays GTA V: Online a lot with his online posse (he does not frequent internet forums though). When DKC: Tropical Freeze was released in early 2014, I sent her a trailer and told her she would have to play this. She was very excited and said she would. I told her she would need to buy a Wii U for it though. Her answer was "What's a Wii U? Is it an accessory like the Wii Fit? How much does it cost?"
Stories like this are plentiful. Nintendo royally fucked up the marketing for this console. Marketing courses in universities should have their students study that case to understand how not to market something.