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I always wondered about the round edge discs, that stood out and made them feel more premium quality. Didn't realize it was specific to Nintendo. I still hold t

I always wondered about the round edge discs, that stood out and made them feel more premium quality. Didn't realize it was specific to Nintendo. I still hold that the Wii U is one of the most underrated consoles in history, I still have mine and love it. The homebrew available takes it to a whole new level and provides probably the best emulation platform for playing retro games from Wii all the way back.

lapetitejort 3y ago
Compared to their previous hardware flop the Virtual Boy, which had a lackluster line-up of games, the Wii U should have absolutely succeeded. It had a great line up of games, whose ports propelled the Switch in its early life. Breath of the Wild should have came out a year or two before with excellent Game Pad integration. The Switch should have come out in 2019 with better specs, followed closely by Tears of the Kingdom running at a rock solid 60 fps.
- belthesar 3y ago
  There's plenty of theories out there as to why the WiiU didn't do as well as other consoles. I have my own, which centers around the Switch's eventual release, and what Nintendo wanted to make vs. what they could achieve at the time. My guess is that the dream of making the Switch was very alive at the time, but the hardware was not quite ready. A pivot to still incorporate the design DNA, but also save on iteration costs was likely made to keep development cheaper, hence the second revision of the CPU and GPU platform that we saw from the Wii and the GameCube before it. Because this stopgap console wouldn't be the new design they wanted, and they were iterating on the Wii platform, there was a decision to call the new console the "WiiU". This smells of "makes sense in the engineering department, but not to marketing". As a result, die hards (admittedly, like myself) were happy to purchase the console, and were willing to get read up on the differences, but capturing the casual, and probably more importantly, the parent audience, who remarkably during the NES -> SNES transition were adamant about not purchasing a new console because "they already have one" didn't understand that, while there was backwards compatibility, the console was certainly capable of standing on its own. It would have offered neat experiences with games like Breath of the Wild taking advantage of the WiiU gamepad with screen, and otherwise been easy to write software for as an existing developer on the previous platforms. It would have been a quite fine stopgap release if it had been marketed appropriately.
hbn 3y ago
The Wii U had a handful of good exclusive games (now mostly ported to Switch) but I think people lately have felt obligated to look back on it with rose-tinted shades because it flopped so hard. The reality is the gimmick of the console wasn't very intuitive/practical (jumping focus between controller tablet and screen isn't fun once the novelty has worn off) and also the OS absolutely crippled the console. It was SO SLOW to do anything. It was also pretty lacking in a lot of hardware areas. The build quality was lacklustre (the Pro controller was so cheap compared to the Switch's), and the memory was so limited that if you hit the home button in Breath of the Wild, when you closed it out the game would have to spin for a few seconds to load the game back into memory.
- sillywalk 3y ago
  " Cafe OS consumes 1 GB to run, that’s half of MEM2 that was supposed to be available for games. This means that the Wii U, having featured the immense amount of 2 GB of DDR3, only grants 1 GB to the most important application that users care about." https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/wiiu/ https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/wiiu/
- wly_cdgr 3y ago
  It was fine for what it was - a Switch prototype & a stopgap to hold space in the market while the Switch was finalized. The Wii U was a chump blocker, basically.
AndrewDavis 3y ago
> I still have mine and love it Same here. It's got a lot of great games, has backwards compatibility with the Wii, and because of the hardware similarity, with some homebrew (nintendont) you can load gamecube games and play them natively (ie without emulation). And having a hdmi port makes it more convenient than pulling out my Wii for Wii or gamecube games. That's three generations of Nintendo consoles in one. My only complaint is the gamepad. The battery life is terrible, even when not on and the console won't boot without it.

lapetitejort 3y ago

Compared to their previous hardware flop the Virtual Boy, which had a lackluster line-up of games, the Wii U should have absolutely succeeded. It had a great line up of games, whose ports propelled the Switch in its early life. Breath of the Wild should have came out a year or two before with excellent Game Pad integration. The Switch should have come out in 2019 with better specs, followed closely by Tears of the Kingdom running at a rock solid 60 fps.

belthesar 3y ago
There's plenty of theories out there as to why the WiiU didn't do as well as other consoles. I have my own, which centers around the Switch's eventual release, and what Nintendo wanted to make vs. what they could achieve at the time. My guess is that the dream of making the Switch was very alive at the time, but the hardware was not quite ready. A pivot to still incorporate the design DNA, but also save on iteration costs was likely made to keep development cheaper, hence the second revision of the CPU and GPU platform that we saw from the Wii and the GameCube before it. Because this stopgap console wouldn't be the new design they wanted, and they were iterating on the Wii platform, there was a decision to call the new console the "WiiU". This smells of "makes sense in the engineering department, but not to marketing". As a result, die hards (admittedly, like myself) were happy to purchase the console, and were willing to get read up on the differences, but capturing the casual, and probably more importantly, the parent audience, who remarkably during the NES -> SNES transition were adamant about not purchasing a new console because "they already have one" didn't understand that, while there was backwards compatibility, the console was certainly capable of standing on its own. It would have offered neat experiences with games like Breath of the Wild taking advantage of the WiiU gamepad with screen, and otherwise been easy to write software for as an existing developer on the previous platforms. It would have been a quite fine stopgap release if it had been marketed appropriately.

hbn 3y ago

The Wii U had a handful of good exclusive games (now mostly ported to Switch) but I think people lately have felt obligated to look back on it with rose-tinted shades because it flopped so hard. The reality is the gimmick of the console wasn't very intuitive/practical (jumping focus between controller tablet and screen isn't fun once the novelty has worn off) and also the OS absolutely crippled the console. It was SO SLOW to do anything. It was also pretty lacking in a lot of hardware areas. The build quality was lacklustre (the Pro controller was so cheap compared to the Switch's), and the memory was so limited that if you hit the home button in Breath of the Wild, when you closed it out the game would have to spin for a few seconds to load the game back into memory.

sillywalk 3y ago
" Cafe OS consumes 1 GB to run, that’s half of MEM2 that was supposed to be available for games. This means that the Wii U, having featured the immense amount of 2 GB of DDR3, only grants 1 GB to the most important application that users care about." https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/wiiu/ https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/wiiu/
wly_cdgr 3y ago
It was fine for what it was - a Switch prototype & a stopgap to hold space in the market while the Switch was finalized. The Wii U was a chump blocker, basically.

AndrewDavis 3y ago

> I still have mine and love it Same here. It's got a lot of great games, has backwards compatibility with the Wii, and because of the hardware similarity, with some homebrew (nintendont) you can load gamecube games and play them natively (ie without emulation). And having a hdmi port makes it more convenient than pulling out my Wii for Wii or gamecube games. That's three generations of Nintendo consoles in one. My only complaint is the gamepad. The battery life is terrible, even when not on and the console won't boot without it.