Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.
Yesterday’s Nintendo sales numbers reinforced a conclusion that many of us had already arrived at: Nintendo is basically finished for this generation. Despite a huge marketing push that including everything from Happy Meals to a Mercedes, Mario Kart 8 failed to reinvigorate the flailing game system in the last quarter. And if Mario Kart couldn’t re-energize the Wii U, there’s probably nothing that will.
And let’s be honest: it’s all the GamePad’s fault.
The truth is that the GamePad is just a huge turnoff. Wii was successful because, even though it was something of a gimmick, motion control was something intuitive and different from the competing consoles. Also, Wii Sports was phenomenally fun to show off at parties. But the Wii U? It boasts a stupid peripheral in the GamePad that you need to apologize for when showing off at parties.
I’ll admit, Mario Kart 8 tempted me to buy my own Wii U. Some of my fondest gaming memories involve sitting around my college apartment playing Mario Kart 64 late into the night, and Mario Kart Wii was practically my son’s introduction to video games when he was in kindergarten. But the idea of having to use that big, heavy, unwieldy thing to control the game just turns me off. I’ve used my kids’ Wii U enough to know that I’d rather just load up Mario Kart Wii for one more playthrough.
Is there even a single game outside of Nintendoland and ZombiU that has implemented the GamePad in any interesting or meaningful way? I can’t think of one. Heck, Bungie did more with the Destiny Companion app on my iPhone during the beta than most games on Wii U do with the GamePad — including Mario Kart 8! Even Nintendo couldn’t bother to be more inspired than to put a big, pointless horn button in the middle of the screen.
It’s hard to argue that making the GamePad a core peripheral was anything but an incredibly stupid idea. What’s not clear is how long it’s going to take Nintendo to admit it. It took Microsoft less than a year to realize the mistake in bundling a useless peripheral that no one wanted into their console. Nintendo is creeping up on two years of Wii U and they’re still insisting that the GamePad needs to be there.
I’m not sure what it would take for Nintendo to program the GamePad out of its Wii U OS, but I hope there’s a programing team somewhere in Japan trying to figure it out. And preferably not the team that designed the GamePad.
Here’s what Nintendo needs to do: issue a massive software update that removes the Gamepad as a core peripheral, then bundle the 32GB Wii U with Mario Kart 8 and drop $100 off the sale price. That’s how they turn this thing around. Nothing will make the Wii U a success at this point, but with the right strategy and a willingness to admit that they were wrong, they can still save face and maybe break even this generation.
And then, for the love of Mario, come up with something better next time.
