Nintendo was right about the Wii U. We were wrong.
primesuspect
Beepin n' BoopinDetroit, MI Icrontian
in Gaming
It's so true. At Icrontic gatherings where we have 5, 10, 20, 55 people over, nobody EVER gathers 'round the ol' Playstation or Xbox. The only console that consistently gets groups of people together in front of the TV, laughing their asses off, waiting in line to play games like Art of Balance, Smash Bros, Mario Kart, Super Mario Bros, etc.... is the Wii U. It's just a blast.
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What do you mean the most vocal nerds were wrong? This never happens...
Meh I have to give it too em, Nintendo has always been it's own worst enemy, but they always mannage to be successful somehow.
Mount Your Friends is a Wii U game?
No, but it's not an Xbox or PlayStation game either.
Also it required a bunch of cable wrangling, messing with TV settings and resolutions, and a half-open laptop perched precariously on the cabinet next to the TV.
It needs to be.
I think this is absolutely true about ever Nintendo console ever. I can still remember when @GHoosdum, @CB, @Zanthian & @Colgere all pitched in and got me a Game Cube for my birthday when I was living with Colgere and we would play Burnout crash mode for hours and hours at a time.
I don't think anyone around here was wrong about the Wii.
Let's see if that's true. Linking in the order I find them on Google:
@ardichoke was wrong about the WiiU.
I was wrong about the Wii in 2006.
@Kinetix2005 was wrong about the name.
@UPSLynx wrote an entire saltily wrong rant.
@tmh88 was wrong about motion controls.
PS and Xbox did this to themselves by continually encouraging developers to almost never make a multiplayer local console game. The only one I can even think of is Little Big Planet for playstation (never owned X-machines).
Actually it is available in the Indie section of the Xbox Marketplace.
Anyway, looking at my WiiU game collection, all the games have at least 2 player co-op and the vast majority are designed with 4 or more players in mind. When my local friends come over or vice versa, my WiiU is usually a top contender for whatever we want to play together with.
For the next Nintendo console I hope they go close to 100% local gaming. No streaming apps, no extra clutter in the UI, less console updates for features nobody is that interested in, more gaming, in fact 100% gaming. I think they are the one company that can pull that off and remain relevant. The Xbox and PS4 are these mish mosh entertainment hubs, and I think they have their place in this ultra connected world, but there is something about that simplicity of just picking up a game pad, hitting start and getting right to it.
I believe that despite being an excellent product that is the one thing that hurt the Wii U is that after a massive success with the Wii, people looked at the new one and didn't quite understand how it bridged from what they already had. I'm not 100% sure Nintendo even knew entirely where they were headed with it. It's not a particularly fantastic media hub, but it can be sorta kinda. As a social and online gaming experience it is very limited, but yet the mii verse is the first thing you see booting up. It was like they had ideas that just got in the way of their core competency which is making fantastic boundary pushing games.
The games that leverage the technology well do give you an experience you can't get anywhere else. Nintendoland is genius. Lego City Undercover wins my award for most unappreciated gem ever. Splatoon took a stale genre and did something totally fresh that no other company could deliver. Mario Kart and Smash Bros may each be a re hash, but there is enough there that you can't help but play them again.
I think the Wii U would have been a bigger success out of the gate if they would have said, guess what, we do games, that's it.... You can't get a console that gives you that anywhere else, the best and most innovative games. Let them be a "me too" media hub, at Nintendo we make great games. Lean out the UI, make it simple for casual users to understand and they would be back to where they were with the origional Wii. That's what I want from their next gen. Embrace the games, let everyone else do everything else.
I was wrong, I thought it was just an add on for the WII at first.
This sounds like you're trying to denigrate the concept of a gaming PC in the living room because your particular implementation of it was haphazardly-approached. Nothing of the sort is required, you simply chose to do it this way.