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  • - This video is sponsored by Mevo.

  • Hey guys, this is Austin.

  • The Wii U was the biggest flop in Nintendo history.

  • Now sure, they had weird experiments like the Virtual Boy,

  • but coming off of the massively successful Wii,

  • there was a real sense that Nintendo could do no wrong.

  • And yet, we have this.

  • Reason number one, is a simple one.

  • The name was just not a good idea.

  • Now, don't get me wrong, the Wii U

  • was not a bad console, but a lot of people

  • first of all didn't even realize

  • that it was even a separate console by itself.

  • Lots and lots of people just thought

  • that it was a tablet add-on for the original Wii.

  • And I mean, with ads like this, can you blame them?

  • - [Boy] And did we mention, togetherness?

  • - Just check out the simulation.

  • - Whoa!

  • - Don't get me wrong, a ton of people made fun

  • of the name of the original Wii,

  • at least until it was in basically every living room

  • on the face of the planet.

  • The problem is that six years after the launch

  • of the original Wii, Nintendo brought this out

  • and a lot of people just asked,

  • what exactly was it?

  • It is a big problem, when tons of people don't realize

  • that your shiny brand new console,

  • is an actual shiny new console,

  • not some add-on for the original Wii.

  • Especially when you consider,

  • that after 100 million sales of the original Wii

  • and merely 13 million with the Wii U,

  • Nintendo had a major branding problem,

  • that honestly could have been solved

  • by just calling this the Wii 2, or you know, the Wii

  • Want You To Buy Our Console Edition.

  • Reason number two why the Wii U was sales challenged

  • had to do with the tablet that served

  • as it's controller, the GamePad.

  • Now it's easy to forget that back in 2012,

  • tablets were touted as the next big thing.

  • Unfortunately, what was not the next big thing,

  • was a giant unwieldy tablet that was completely useless

  • if it was not connected to its base station.

  • That's the beauty of a console like the Switch.

  • It has pretty much none of the same down sides

  • as the Wii U, so you're going to be getting

  • a more powerful system, that's going to be a lot smaller,

  • a lot more portable, and to top it all off,

  • you can take it with you anywhere.

  • As opposed to the Wii U where,

  • you can take this anywhere,

  • as long as this is no more than 20-25 feet away.

  • With the Wii U, the GamePad relied

  • on a local wireless connection.

  • Now while that was fine for the most part,

  • get too far away and it completely falls apart.

  • However, once you're actually close to the Wii U console

  • it does work pretty well.

  • In theory, you could never plug this into a TV,

  • and just use the GamePad for all of your game play.

  • At launch, the GamePad also had another problem.

  • Not very good battery life.

  • So the first models would last somewhere in the neighborhood

  • of three to three and a half hours on a charge

  • which really isn't great for a controller.

  • Thankfully later models did bump that up to something

  • closer to six to seven, but if you're one of those

  • early adopters of the Wii U, you had better not

  • stay too far from a charger with this guy.

  • Now this might sound like a little bit of a nitpick,

  • but one of the issues, especially with games like

  • Super Smash Bros., is that while

  • this is always gonna be one of your controllers,

  • you can only ever have one GamePad paired

  • with the Wii U at the same time.

  • Meaning that if everyone comes over

  • for a game of Smash Bros., someone's always

  • gonna get stuck with the giant controller.

  • However, don't get me wrong,

  • this is not all bad by any means.

  • So first of all, the idea that this has a lot

  • of interesting tech that was legitimately new

  • for the time is cool.

  • Stuff like NFC support for Amiibos,

  • which would come a little bit later,

  • really was the first time that this

  • was ever shown in a Nintendo console.

  • And the idea that you do have a camera,

  • you do have decent controls,

  • even though it's a little bit big,

  • a touch screen, there's a lot to like here.

  • But, this was a major hurdle for the Wii U to overcome

  • and a lot of people just straight up thought

  • that it was an accessory for the original Wii.

  • Kinda hard to get over that one.

  • - Hot buttered popcorn, that's a deal!

  • - Before we move on, I wanna

  • give a huge shout out to Mevo for sponsoring this video.

  • So what you're looking at right now

  • is being shot on a Mevo camera.

  • It's basically the next best thing to having your own Ken.

  • What's so cool about the Mevo,

  • is that it is a small pocketable 4K camera

  • that has full capabilities of turning itself

  • into a livestreaming control room.

  • So basically, once you pair it with the app,

  • you can use that to be able to pan around the shot,

  • do zooms, do punch ins, and all of this stuff

  • is going to be completely digital thanks to that 4K sensor.

  • What makes the Mevo unique, is that this single camera

  • can livestream to a variety of sources

  • including YouTube, Facebook, as well as Periscope.

  • What's cool is, because it's so small

  • and it does have a tripod mount in the box,

  • you can easily set this up on the go.

  • So in addition to being able to work over wifi,

  • you can also connect it to your phone

  • and use it over LTE to livestream

  • something like a concert, or in my case,

  • I can livestream a super cool match of Mario Kart.

  • One of my favorite parts really is how the app works.

  • So really simply I can say, zoom out on the shot.

  • I can tap on my face, I can tap on the screen,

  • I can sort of punch in, punch out,

  • there's really so many different options

  • to be able to kind of get a more studio quality experience

  • out of a camera that is really going to fit in your pocket.

  • So if you wanna up your livestream game,

  • definitely be sure to go check out the Mevo

  • at the link in the description,

  • and while you're there you can check out my coupon code

  • which'll get you like $50 off.

  • Anyway, huge shout out to Mevo for sponsoring this video.

  • - Here's why we need Wii U.

  • Reason number three has to do with power.

  • It's easy to forget, but the Wii U actually came out

  • only a year before the Xbox One and the PS4.

  • Where the Wii was essentially just a faster GameCube,

  • the Wii U did some legitimately interesting stuff.

  • Of course, one of biggest leaps, was the leap to HD,

  • something that the Xbox 360 beat it to by like seven years.

  • However there was more to it than just that.

  • As opposed to the anemic single core CPU

  • that was found in both the GameCube and the Wii,

  • instead the Wii U stepped all the way up

  • to a triple core PowerPC processor.

  • Although, this was hardly cutting edge, even back in 2012.

  • Nintendo also included a dual AMD GPU set up.

  • Well, technically at least.

  • So in addition to the standard GPU,

  • which is what the Wii U uses to run its normal games,

  • you're also going to be getting a copy of the Wii GPU.

  • Now this is for backwards compatibility,

  • and it does work really well here.

  • Although interestingly, you actually can unlock

  • GameCube backwards compatibility as well,

  • although that is definitely not going to be fully supported.

  • At least, if you ask Nintendo.

  • With two gigs of RAM, the Wii U does have

  • a healthy advantage over Xbox 360 as well as the PS3,

  • and in a lot of ways, the Wii U is

  • going to be more powerful.

  • Unfortunately, the Wii U came out in 2012,

  • and again, being only a year away

  • from both the Xbox One and PS4 meant

  • that this really had a difficult time competing

  • with the current generation of consoles.

  • Just like the Wii, it had a lot of interesting capabilities,

  • but high performance definitely wasn't one of them.

  • Reason number four has to do with price.

  • So when the Wii U first came out there were two models.

  • First of all, a basic white version

  • which looks very, very similar to the original Wii,

  • and then there's the black deluxe edition,

  • which was a little bit more expensive,

  • and at least didn't look quite so much

  • like the console that it was replacing.

  • (clears throat)

  • Considering that you were getting a console

  • with roughly the same power as the outgoing

  • Xbox 360 and PS3, prices weren't exactly cheap.

  • So the basic model came with only eight gigabytes

  • of storage for $300, and even stepping up

  • to the deluxe model would still only get you 32 gigs

  • of storage at a $350 price tag.

  • Now to be fair, it wasn't all bad from the start.

  • The first couple months of the Wii U being on sale,

  • Nintendo sold over three million units.

  • Unfortunately after that, well sales kinda fell

  • off of a cliff, and they really never recovered.

  • Due to the high cost of the GamePad which had

  • to be included with every single Wii U,

  • Nintendo really didn't have a lot of options

  • to be able to boost the lagging sales.

  • So after about a year, they were able

  • to drop the price on the deluxe model

  • from $350 to $300, which did make an effect,

  • but at the end of the day, there really was not a lot

  • of room for them to do anything besides hope that people

  • would finally buy this misunderstood, wonderful console.

  • Now if that was the only problem with the Wii U,

  • they probably would have been just fine.

  • However, with problems quickly mounting,

  • the Wii U having only been on sale for less than a year,

  • the real challengers were coming up very quickly.

  • PS4 and Xbox One, as you might imagine,

  • very quickly outsold the Wii U, and never looked back.

  • That brings us to reason number five,

  • why the Wii U was a failure.

  • Third party support, or more specifically

  • the almost complete lack thereof.

  • Now let's be real, the original Wii did have a lot

  • of third party games, the problem was,

  • most of them were complete garbage.

  • (marching music)

  • However, with a hundred million consoles in the wild,

  • a lot of developers, in fact, pretty much all developers

  • really didn't have a lot of choice,

  • you had to make a Wii game.

  • Now when it comes to the Wii U,

  • they didn't really have that constraint,

  • which meant that they really didn't have

  • to actually make Wii U games, and so, they didn't.

  • To be fair, there were some third party games

  • on the Wii U, most specifically Ubisoft

  • actually did support it for the first few years.

  • However, the issue was, is that with so few consoles

  • in the wild, and such a huge disparity

  • between the performance of the Wii U

  • and the brand new Xbox One and PS4,

  • it was very difficult for developers

  • to justify spending the time and money

  • to bring an actually decent Wii U game to the platform.

  • Making things more complicated

  • was the promise of the GamePad.

  • Of course, most first parties didn't take great advantage

  • of this, so when it comes to third party support,

  • yeah, that really wasn't a thing.

  • Now to really put things in context,

  • the finally tally here in the US for third party games

  • released on the Wii U, was a mere 118 titles.

  • That is far less than any other main Nintendo console.

  • By a lot.

  • Now don't get me wrong, there were some amazing

  • Nintendo titles for the Wii U,

  • but at this point, almost all of them have been ported

  • to the Switch, and are oftentimes

  • even better than their original versions.

  • The ones that haven't been ported

  • are pretty much already on the way.

  • It was a cool console, there was a lot they did right.

  • But the games either weren't there,

  • or are just better on Switch today anyway.

  • It's kind of ironic to think that the Switch

  • really is just a Wii U 2.0 with the tech

  • that actually supports the original vision.

  • Sometimes it just goes to show,

  • success and failure can be two different sides

  • of the same coin.

  • - And that's how it's done.

- This video is sponsored by Mevo.

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