Is the Wii U Dead?

Earlier this week, it was announced that the release of the new Legend of Zelda game on the Wii U was delayed, with a release in 2015 looking very unlikely. Nintendo have said that ensuring the game’s quality, rather than rushing to guarantee a 2015 release, is much more important, but it has led to a number of calls from gaming analysts that the Wii U is a dying console – a failure that has simply not captured the hearts of the public, and thus is doomed to be abandoned by Nintendo as they look to the future. Is this a fair conclusion?

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It is generally agreed that the delay of this game is good for Nintendo, as the Zelda franchise is one of the company’s most renowned properties, and releasing a compromised game solely to meet a deadline would be much more negative than this delay. However, this announcement has left the release schedule for the Wii U looking somewhat barren, although a number of excellent games are still to be released this year.

Xenoblade Chronicles X, the latest in the Xeno series, is a sci-fi role-playing game from Japan with an emphasis on exploration, following characters and their Pacific Rim-style robots as they try to establish their new home. Nintendo’s attempt at a third-person action shooter, Splatoon, has been very favourably previewed and compared to Mario. For the more traditionalist diehard Nintendo fanatic, we will also be a new Yoshi game (Yoshi’s Woolly World, which promises to be an epic yarn), a new Star Fox game and a new game enabling the player to build their own Mario levels. I say all of this before E3 too, meaning Nintendo could pull even more out of the bag. Add this to the games the console already boasts, and it is a strong line-up, even if it is lacking Link.

The Wii U was born out of a desire to cater for the core gamer, after the general consensus that the Wii was too casual. Even though it was released a year before its PlayStation and Xbox rivals, it has struggled to compete sales-wise, and thus it has suffered a withdrawal of third-party support – external developers are not developing nearly as many games for the Wii U as they are for other consoles.

Another point, somewhat more important, is that Nintendo have already announced that they are working on their next console – this has been interpreted as Nintendo’s acknowledgement that the Wii U has failed, and that they are intending to move on. They have begun to develop their next console, and so will have to split their attention between the new console and the Wii U. Critics have cited the lack of success the console has had in comparison to the Wii, but the Wii was an undisputed phenomenon with a different focus and it seems somewhat unfair to make such a contrast.

Along with the supposed fact that the Wii U does not appeal to hardcore gamers in the same way as its rivals, criticism has, somewhat inevitably, turned to its technical specs. People complain about clock-speed (something I had to look up, and still do not understand), frame rates and other things no particularly rational person would ever really care enough about to the point of frenzy, reducing games to nothing more than an exercise in aesthetic (for the record, a game can be ugly and still be fun, graphics hounds).

If we compare the console to its rivals on a numbers front alone, then it seems it is game over for the Wii U. However, as of late, it has experienced a bit of a surge in sales (and has shifted just short of 10 million units in its lifetime, which is hardly a shoddy amount anyway), no doubt due to the release of Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. These two games are massively appealing to gamers, who claim that the reports of the Wii U’s death is greatly exaggerated, journalistic nonsense focusing on sales figures and nothing else.

The topic is a cause of great debate. It is undoubtedly true that the Wii U did not do as well as Nintendo hoped it would, coming on the heels of the massive success story that was the Wii and struggling to maintain pace. Mistakes have been made, although not very many. Sure, Nintendo wanted to release this Zelda game, and having to delay it will have knocked some wind out of their sails, but is the console dead? I think that would be doing the Wii U and Nintendo a great injustice.[divider_top]

Is the Wii U dead? @boargames