Topic: What Happened to the Wii U GamePad’s Potential?

[Luigi Dude]

Or alternatively what SHOULD have Nintendo done that would have resulted in a successful console?  What they did clearly didn't but all suggestions to have different specs or a different controller get crapped on.  So what the hell should they have done?  Nintendo themselves should be trying to figure that out to avoid this outcome next time around.

Well for starters the system shouldn't have been $100 more expensive then the Wii was at launch since the 3DS already showed them this is a bad idea.  Then they shouldn't have taken all the hype away from their biggest launch title by releasing a similar experience on a much cheaper system only 3 months earlier, resulting in every who wasn't a hardcore Mario fan to have no reason to buy the system.  Finally you don't let the system have a 9 month drought with the next big being Pikmin 3, which was the sequel to a series that hadn't had a new installment in 9 years and wasn't exactly a huge seller in the first place.

Seriously, do you think a PS4 power level system would have solved this?  It would have just made the biggest issues the system faced worse since it wouldn't have been even more expensive, with games taking even longer to make.  Yeah Nintendo might have gotten more ports but that wouldn't have done much when people could have gotten the same games on the 360/PS3 during that same time.

[jarodea]

The DS passed the PS2, and I don't think there's such a difference between consoles and handhelds that they shouldn't be influenced by each other.

Sorry I'm a couple days late, I have precious little free time and as fun as this is I can't devote much to it.  Anyways, I went looking for official info that the DS passed the PS2 and found none, the PS2 was 1 million ahead and still selling 3 years ago and both no longer sell.  I looked up "DS outsells PS2" and found the source, VGChartzzzzzzz requoted by multiple Nintendo fanboy sites and blogs. 

Well, I would hope NWR was above that but either way, for the sake of argument it doesn't matter.  What matters is Sony took cues for their console from the most popular console of all time, and Nintendo from the most popular handheld of all time.  We're seeing how that worked out for both. 

Such a juicy thread, I really wish I had the time to go bull in a china shop in here.

[NWR_insanolord]

I would bet a whole lot of money Nintendo sold well over a million more DS units in the last three years than Sony has. I'm pretty sure they're still producing them, which Sony is not with PS2.

[pokepal148]

I would bet a whole lot of money Nintendo sold well over a million more DS units in the last three years than Sony has.

Of course they did, sony doesn't sell DS games.

[Ian Sane]

So Nintendo copied from the most successful handheld of all time for their console and it didn't work.  Prior to that Sony copied the most successful console of all time for their handheld and the PSP didn't do all that well.  So if you're going to copy the blueprint of a successful videogame system it appears you need to stay on the same format.  The formula for success with handhelds and consoles is clearly different.  Nintendo made size and power consumption a priority with the Wii U design - two essential concerns for handhelds that mean jack squat on consoles.  Sony, and practically every other attempted Game Boy competitor, pushes for spec power on a handheld and never come close to Nintendo's success.