If exclusives sell consoles why did the Wii U flop?

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@KungfuKitten but it did play a part. The difference between wii u droughts and Xbox/ps droughts istheg stopped on the latter two consoles. Where's Wii u continued in between big releases. A lot of third party devs jumped ship even Ubisoft. Which left Nintendo to mostly support it by themselves

Because exclusive games are only part of the whole package of a console... shocking I know (especially to cows).

Exclusive are necessary - but not sufficient - to make a successful console.

If you can show a console that had no exclusives and dominated despite that, you could make the argument better.

@brah4ever: Simply put, yes, it had many exclusives, but basically zero 3rd party support. However when 2 consoles both have equal third party support, then quite often yes, exclusives are console sellers.

The games weren't good enough :P

@brah4ever: The Wii U had too many long droughts.

There are far more factors involved than simply releasing good exclusives.

you know... there is some truth to this.-----

aside from mario 3d world, new super mario bros U, smash bros and splatoon, what did wiiU have? hell even 3D world was just a "port" of 3Dland on 3DS!
and new super mario bros U? looked almost identical to new super mario bros wii!

bayonetta 2? a niche game.

toad treasure tracker? almost indie quality

pikmin 3? niche game

wonderful 101? niche game

monster hunter 3 ultimate? a port and also niche

twilight princessHD/windwakerHD? 2 ports from the gamecube

yoshi wolly world? niche

kirby rainbow curse? horrible stylus game

xenoblade X- maybe the worst of the 3 xenoblades and also niche JRPG

hyrule warriors - good game but many people hate mosu games( a bit niche)

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I'd argue the wiiU had mostly niche games and ports!

as for 3rd party?

monster hunter i mentioned...exclusive

madden/fifa/nba 2k13 (all horrible multiplat ports)

mass effect 3 (late and super overpriced multiplat)

assassins creed 3 &4 ( decent multiplat but played better elsewhere)

call of duty black ops2 and ghosts (multiplat pretty good with motion controls)

rayman legends (multiplat decent)

Im just trolling but someone got triggered ...

Toad Treasure Tracker "indie" quality? The graphics of that games blows the graphics found in almost every indie title released in the last few years.

Super Mario 3D World a "port" of the 3DS' Super Mario 3D Land? I think that 3D World is what 3D Land be like if the spirit of the latter is developed for a home console system.

2012 - wtf is this

2013 - wtf is this, until 3D World

2014 - Wii U at it's peak

2015 - slowly declining after Splatoon

2016 - back to 2012

2017 - Switch

I cannot name one single exclusive on WiiU that would make me excited. The best games on it were remasters of old classics, such as Xenoblade and Wind Waker..

So, genuinely poor exclusives doomed the otherwise decent console.

@henrythefifth: xenoblade has no remasters tho..

i said "almost" indie quality. definitely better but not full 60$ game imo. its a 40$ game.

3D world took most of its insparation from 3dland and added multiplayer. if you have no friends it loses most of its appeal.

i am just saying its true there were not enough must have games on wiiU to warrant 300$ especially when they had to put up with that tablet and having to buy their own external harddrive.

this is all in hindsight of course. at the time i didnt understand why no one bought it.

1) shit marketing

2) shit name that only confused casuals who thought it was a Wii peripheral

3) shit controller IMHO

I don't buy the confusing marketing bit. The system lacked quality exclusives for nearly a year, Nintendo had thought making a more competent system than Wii would bring third parties on board but by then the Xbox 360 and PS3 already had established bases and their next gen systems were in the works, by the time Nintendo finally started getting good exclusives they had to contend with PS4 and XB1 release. Nintendo's exclusives did signal a commitment on their part toward quality exclusives which I think was a big turn-around for them in their public image which was needed before launching Switch, even if it didn't turn things around for the Wii U. I feel right now MS is having to do same thing with XB1 before they can release next system, even if it doesn't change their fortunes this gen.

Yeah, good games are what matter, full stop. In the real world gamers don't care that their games are exclusive or multiplat, they just want a box that can play most or all of what they're into. That CAN include exclusives, but often not.

Do you think anyone outside System Wars (and similar pits) cares when an exclusive is "lost"? Or that any normal gamer ranks an exclusive like Saint's Row or Resistance over multiplats like GTAV and Battlefield?

I watched the initial reveal live and am more of a gaming geek than 99.9% of people, and I still didn't know what the hell it was. Wasn't sure if new console, Wii "Pro" upgrade, untethered tablet device, or what. Really badly done.

Beyond the reveal, any games shop I was in had Wii and WiiU lumped together in the same section, and the emphasis on the controller, after all the Wii peripherals + stuff like Guitar Hero and Kinect, most folks seemed to think it was just another Wii add on.

They sorted THAT aspect for the Switch, at least!

@KBFloYd: You've pretty much summed it up. The Wii, Wii U and Switch tend to get downgraded 3rd party titles. for instance, any fifa gamer will play it on Xbox or PS4, nobody would pay full price for a dumbed down Switch version. Console wise, Nintendo will struggle to be 'heads & shoulders' above Playstation and Microsoft until they fix it.

yea. i guess they figured portability on switch would sell 3rd party over ps4/xbox. It worked a little. this is the 2nd year switch gets fifa and nba 2k. but still not close to ps4 xbox sales.

they need to have equal or better looking 3rd party multiplats. but for that nintendo needs to get on the graphics train again. I don't know if they even want to try anymore.

I disagree with this. Nintendo's appeal is that you can socialize and play with people. Look at Mario Kart, NSMB, Mario Party, Just Dance, etc. The problem was the game pad and marketing. The marketing showed a kid by himself playing the game pad while his friend watched television. That made the kid seem antisocial and like the loner off alone, when the Wii was all about being social and fun with friends. The Switch is doing better because of how the hardware looks, less droughts, and the way it markets the console.

I will keep saying this until I am blue in the face because people are just too stupid to get it.

It's the overall library that matters.

Exclusives only come into play when you have two consoles of a similar library that share the multiplatform games. But if you don't get those, if exclusives are all you have, you are missing a lot. So no, exclusives aren't the only thing that matters. This is not rocket science.

The Wii u was a very expensive beta for the switch. The switch is what the Wii u should have been from the start.

Bad design with outdated tech and a lack of third party. If it came out in like 2010 they would of had more success but a year before the PS4... The switch is different because the tech is good for what it does also the design and look of it is spot on.

This question has been asked many times before

1. Exclusives alone dont sell consoles. A good balance between exclusives and multiplats does. Why? Because you can play almost them all.

2. Have you never considered that maybe, just maybe, the exclusives WiiU offered just werent interesting enough to the vast majority of the market? I know right, hard to imagine that maybe, just maybe, Nintendo exclusives arent everyones cup of tea

If exclusives don't sell consoles, why, despite the garbage WiiU was, it sold 15 million units?

Maybe this is karma for Nintendo since they backstabbed Sony back in the 90s. Playstation and Xbox took a large portion of 3rd party titles. Since then, Nintendo is playing catch up.

But yeah, Nintendo needs to get back on the graphics train because I can't see the Nintendo Switch get ground-breaking 3rd party titles. If Square remake FF6 exclusively for the Nintendo Switch, this would boost the Switch a lot.

Because Nintendo doesn't diversify their catalog enough. Nobody wants to play the same cartoon franchises generation after generation after generation.

@brah4ever: typically the most popular console is the "brah gamer console". The mainstream casuals are what propelled it to the lead.

Which is why Nintendo exited the home console market, they are portable systems only now which everyone else abandoned.

The gamepad was an expensive piece of kit that kept the price of the machine past the £250 range for way longer than it should.

Exclusives alone don't sell a console. You need a combination of exclusives and third-party.

Wait, what is a Wii U? I already have a Wii...

That’s why

Yes the marketing for the WiiU was bad. But it was on market for almost 5 years. I remember commercials for MK8, Mario 3D world etc and it still didn't sell.

I don't blame 2013 reveal and Mattrick for the entirety of X1's low sales this gen. First impressions are a big thing but there was a lot of other screw ups in the MS camp along the 5 years.

WiiU cant just hide behind "People didn't know what it was" for its entire time on market. All a person had to do was ask a fvckin employee at Gamestop, lets be real.

The truth is somewhere in the middle. Are exclusives an important thing for a platform? Sure. Can they sell a platform to some people? Sure. But just look at each platforms top selling games most years and its a multiplat. (maybe not Nintendo LOL) By and large the avg consumer buys about 3 games a year, doesn't know an exclusive from a timed one and just buys what he hears is the popular choice because we are the minority.

^ ^ This.

Yep for sure, most gamers I know will have a dozen or so games over the entire lifespan of their system, and they'll generally be the standard GTA, COD, Fifa/PES, Need For Speed, maybe a Star Wars or Elder Scrolls title in there.

They'll probably have an exclusive like Halo or God Of War in there too, but it's just another good game, not a massive megaton system seller to them.

Now people are saying exclusives don't matter? I am confused which one is it??

LOL

True.

Some people are apparently incapable of logically understanding how exclusives can matter and other things can also matter. It is a really hard concept for them. I wonder how they survive the day-to-day life without using logic.

Lemmings don't use a lot of logic, after all, they bought an xbox one.

The name Wii u was the biggest mistake.

@stuff238: Let me guess. You've never even played a Nintendo system, right?

@KBFloYd: Just because a game might be unpopular or niche doesn't directly translate into it being "bad" or "not worth buying a system over."

Exclusives only matter as a tie-breaker element, if you have two consoles that are relatively equal on everything else (price, power, 3rd parties, etc). If you are picking between relative equals, then better exclusives can tip the scales.

Wii-U was badly out of date, ill conceived, over-priced, and had zero 3rd party support. It would have needed a steady stream of god-like exclusives to overcome that. Unfortunately for Wii-U, it's exclusive lineup were relatively mediocre as well.