At the time of its release, the manner on how it they’d marketed that was confusing as they showcased the Wii U gamepad as if its a portable console (its not) since its rather the main controller for the Wii U console. I was in high school when the console was first revealed, my reaction to that was “WTF?” as I thought the gamepad was portable, as the ads often flex that it can be (or the way they showed it came off as that).
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Because it didn’t sell well.
Usually the thing that’s mentioned as a big marketing mistake is the name.
If you were already looking into it you’d probably know it was a new console. But to casual gaming enthusiasts (and those were a huge part of the wii/DS success), or to people that just didn’t follow Nintendo news closely, it really wasn’t clear.
Some believed “Wii U” was just a new attachment for a wii, or just a new wii edition, rather than an actual different console with about halfway gen7-8 capabilities.
They did the exact same mistakes with the "3"DS and only survived a very rocky launch with a quick repricing and a lot more marketing. Wii U never really recovered.
The name is usually what people blame, but if that’s the case why did they succeed with NES being followed up by SNES? Or Game Boy followed by Game Boy Color and then Game Boy Advance?
Hard to fault them for following a pattern that had worked great for them in the past.
To me Super Nintendo sounds like a super version of the Nintendo, and Super is the first word.
Game Boy Color implies it is a Gemeboy with a color screen.
Game Boy Advance sounds like an advanced version of the Game Boy.
Wii U tells you nothing. It starts with Wii and then adds the nonsensical letter U, that’s all the information the name conveys.
Basically way larger audience. The big thing in gaming around 2005-ish is that everyone is a potential gamer, including people who mostly don’t care about or are not used to specific console releases.
Also I’d argue a “Super” is a clearer mark of upgrade than a single, very random letter or number (that is specifically not used like a version number like “GameMachine 4” but instead a weird portmanteau).
Also counterpoint : Nintendo of America used a lot of marketing to try and make people stop calling consoles “a Nintendo”, and part of this was the lack of distinction between NES and SNES (the other part was confusion with the competition).
