 Hey everyone, today we're going to be talking about the Nintendo Switch and the Wii U, specifically why the Wii U failed and how Nintendo has learned from the mistakes of the Wii U to make the Switch so far a resounding success and to make the Switch better set up for future success post launch. Now to understand this we have to admit that the Wii U first was a failure. It really was. It failed, it flopped in so many different avenues that it's interesting to see that some people don't grasp why the Wii U was a failure. And I say this because the whole reason I'm talking about this topic is because a guy named Alex from our Facebook page, and I'll put a link down in the description below to our Facebook page, got a little perturbed on a little news post that we put up about Nintendo spent more money on advertising in March than anyone else in the game industry and essentially it just means that Nintendo spent a ton of money on advertising for the Nintendo Switch during its launch month. And Alex responded to that by saying I don't see why people who buy Nintendo are pretty loyal and they already know what kind of experience to expect so they will always buy Nintendo. They just got to say what makes the system different from the last one and they could do it on Facebook plus with all the people who think they need to make YouTube channels and everything out there they got their free advertisement right there. Oh Alex, it didn't stop there but just to address a couple points that he brings up. Putting a post on Facebook is not necessarily a great way to advertise, yes they have a few million followers on Facebook. In fact they've almost sold as many Switch units already as they have Facebook followers and Facebook's organic reach as someone who I don't know if I call myself a Facebook expert but I did build up a page from nothing to 840,000 likes and Nintendo Prime in a few short months from nothing to 55,000 likes. Facebook is very poor for advertising unless you pay to have your ads seen by more people and even then with all the little ways that Facebook lets you control your demographics it doesn't guarantee that any sales come out of those ads. So a post on Facebook isn't really, I mean it should be done but it's not, you shouldn't just stop there that's not going to make your system sell. In fact in that case why even do Nintendo Directs at all, why even have a YouTube channel and then about all the YouTube channels willing to advertise everything for free. Nintendo has massive restrictions on YouTube channels including our own. The reason, you know in this video right here you're seeing footage of Puyo Puyo Tetris or Puyo Puyo, yeah Puyo Puyo Tetris and that game is made by Sega. It does not get claimed on YouTube. It's a fantastic little game, I'm playing it on Nintendo Switch. I have a link down in the description if you would like to purchase the game. I really suggest you do, it's a lot of fun but the idea here is that if I used Breath of the Wild footage I would have to wait four days for my video to be approved by Nintendo to put ads on it. Otherwise Nintendo's either going to put ads on it themselves and take all the money from it or Nintendo would block my video and the thing is when I go to get approved if they don't like what I'm saying in the video, Nintendo can deny me anyways. So there's a lot of political play here with Nintendo compared to other companies. So again YouTube channels do it everything for free isn't necessarily true. You do have channels like GameXplain that do have partners that try to block Nintendo from being able to affect their channel but again if Nintendo really really wanted to they could do a full strike against GameXplain and that would affect the entire network. It hasn't happened yet, I don't see Nintendo doing that but Nintendo has the power. YouTube and Facebook aren't necessarily guaranteed ways to advertise especially a brand new console so again I think a lot of you out there will agree how ridiculous that statement was. But someone responded you know that because the company wants to attract new customers that's why bad advertisement is one of the reasons why the Wii U failed. And then Alex responded with the Wii U failed because of the type of people that are out there nowadays that are too lazy to understand the capabilities of hardware and software. The Wii U has the biggest library of games available over any console. It has CFW whatever that means on both sides and old countless home root apps and emulators. People are lazy nowadays that's all there is to it as for attracting new people those are the ones that make the experience not fun at all because everyone seems to feel they have this sense of entitlement and complain about every last thing like complaining like a five year old girl is suddenly cool. Those are the ones that complain about graphics and FPS those are not the things Nintendo is about but yet these people can't seem to understand that the systems they have the ones they like to suck their dicks with by the way not his words not mine don't have shit for frame rate and graphics also because if they knew anything they would know it's always held by PC gaming and you can never beat that. Because I have to say a few more things you know like he's about to turn 30 so you know he's been gaming a while has a daughter yeah yeah yeah yeah but in general it's interesting seeing this viewpoint still in today's world about why the Wii U failed essentially the Wii U failed these blaming consumers for why the Wii U failed and not Nintendo see the Wii U failed because Nintendo created a system that even they themselves didn't want to take advantage of let me explain so Nintendo released a system with that was heavily built on this idea of asymmetric gaming right they put have one person with the game pad everyone else with different controllers the person with the game pad can do different things and affect the other people with the controllers. In Nintendo Land you had the Chase Me that was an example of asymmetric play in I think it was a new Super Mario Brothers for Wii U new Super Mario Brothers U as it was officially called the person with the game pad could add little platforms which you don't really need but anyways he could it was a way to affect the world the reality is that probably the best use of it would have been like a Dungeons and Dragons kind of thing where a Dungeon Master has the game pad and can control various elements of the game that kind of game never came out to exist other ways the game powers obviously used for things like inventory management but you know as I played Breath of the Wild I started realizing that the inventory management in Breath of the Wild really isn't any less intuitive than the game pad if I have to take my eyes off the screen to manage my inventory anyways what's the difference to hit in a pause menu and then selecting what I want and then going back into the game there's not really a whole lot of difference and Nintendo kind of realized that over time and most of their games do not take advantage of any of the unique features of the game pad and the ones that do say Splatoon which I think it had a really cool feature about tapping the screen to do your Super Jumps well now that we've seen Splatoon 2 out in the wild and we've had beta testing for it with their servers online we see that how they replaced it works almost just as well as it did tapping the screen so there really isn't any functionality that the screen added that really seemed to improve games the exception to this is oddly enough not a Nintendo game ZombieU by Ubisoft actually made the game pad make sense and added suspense and horror to the game that would not be there otherwise and when they ported the game to other systems that's why the Wii U version is still the superior version because it was not the same over like overlays on the screen is not the same as what the game was originally built for so again one game did it really really well and it's a game Nintendo didn't even make so Nintendo had this idea with the Wii U game pad that they themselves never really fulfilled right that that's kind of the core concept here is that the whole concept of the Wii U did not connect with Nintendo's own developers so that's that's problem number one problem number two is that Nintendo chose a terrible name if you look at the logo of the Wii U it literally just looks like an add-on it does and then you combine that with all their advertising all their advertising has the console in the background you have the giant screen in the foreground so what happens is people see that they see the the little console in the back and they think oh Wii U that little console in the back is just a new modified Wii it's just you know just like the Wii mini and the thing in the front is the add-on that's the Wii U that's your $300 add-on and that didn't look enticing the game pad itself the screen was capacitive and really crappy it was it was very very low quality I know that I enjoyed my time with the Wii U so I'm not sitting here to bash Wii but I'm explaining why I failed so the screen was really low quality they added a TV button onto the physical controller but their Nintendo TV app never really was that good so they weren't even fully dedicated to that they didn't deliver in a way that I think people thought they should with the innovations they released a console that yes it wasn't all about the graphics wasn't all about the power it was the Nintendo's first HD console and had a lot of fantastic games no Mario Kart 8 you know again there's a reason they re-released it because it was a fantastic game in the first place so they failed in a lot of avenues with the Wii U and to say that it's because consumers are too lazy to understand the capabilities of the hardware and software Nintendo was too lazy then to understand the capabilities of their own hardware because they failed to do anything fun and unique with the hardware that struck a chord with gamers they failed to tell people or explain to people with a game that this game pad is needed that this game pad excels at what it's meant to do that the game pad is essential it's a new evolution Nintendo didn't do anything to enforce that which is why a lot of people prefer just playing the game with a pro controller now in many ways the Wii U's failures are the Nintendo Switch's successes so the switch might not have like you know the greatest console name of all time but it has a console name that makes sense when you hear a Nintendo switch you don't think about a Wii U even though it's got motion controls you don't think about a Wii U you think about a brand new product you think oh why is it called switch because it switches from handheld to TV that makes sense the Wii U's prospect didn't make sense at a consumer level one of the greatest features of the Wii U is was probably off TV play and your tether to your console you're using a low quality screen that washes off the colors your controller looks like a kid's toy I mean now the switch is out if you look back on that Wii U game pad it looks like a Fisher price toy it was just not very appealing so again these are not issues with consumers this is issues with the Wii U's design marketing name and Nintendo's failure to prove the concept of the Wii U anyways so the switch has an understandable name the switch has an appealing design it looks like a high quality tablet when you Nintendo released the tablet screen for Wii U it instantly looked like something that was 10 years old and the new screen despite being 720p and being a plastic screen instead of gorilla glass in terms of the covering of the LCD is still a pretty high quality screen people touch it they feel it it looks good it looks like today's technology the innovation of removing the Joy-Cons and sliding them back on makes sense there's nothing confusing about it and it makes sense in terms of how you would play like oh you're you plop it down and you want to play two polio Mario Kart you slide off the controls you turn them sideways and because of the Wii era we now know that sideways you do motion control driving and it just works so everything about the switch makes sense and Nintendo has been already taken advantage of it because the main idea here is the main idea of the switch isn't even removing the two can two joy cons and everything the main idea is that you could play the system on go on the go and on the TV it's a very easy to understand concept you don't need a game tailored for switch to understand that as an example breath of the wild the number one selling game on Nintendo switch is a traditional console game originally built for Wii U however it's mass appeal on the switch is extremely obvious because it plays to what the switch is most capable of doing and that's providing a triple a gaming experience on your TV and on the go and that's something that is easily conveyed by just playing games the Wii U you play it it almost feels like you're fighting against the system to get your full enjoyment out of it and that sucks it really does so again the Wii U failed for a copious amount of reasons probably even more than I already stated but the switch is instantly appealing to give you an idea I used to bring my Wii U into an elementary school that I work at and the kids will play it they thought it was cool the thoughts will tune in Mario Kart like I think those games are fun but they also thought it was clunky and I never heard any of those kids when they were done saying yeah that was fun but I now I want one I'm gonna tell my parents I want a Wii U I brought in my switch now every single day since launch to work at this elementary school and the kids can't get enough of it they've been asking their parents through the switch they want to switch switch is cool it's seen as hip it makes sense to them it's appealing to them not just the games the system itself is appealing and that's what the Wii U struggled with as you can have all the fantastic games you want in the world it could add a breath of wild at launch as an example but Wii U itself was unappealing and that's where the switch is succeeding that's why you're seeing the sales you're seeing I know people like oh it's just because of Zelda no people who bought the switch for Zelda admit they liked the switch itself how many you know over half of the consumers if not 80% of the consumers by now who bought a switch also bought Mario Kart 8 Deluxe see it's not just a Zelda system when games come out they're continuing to buy them okay I mean from in March alone there was over 5 million pieces of software sold that means that everyone who bought a switch also bought one other game besides Zelda that's insane so if you just look at the grand scope the Wii U failed because it was an idea that Nintendo didn't really believe in and the switch is succeeding because it's an idea Nintendo does believe in and it's an idea that learned off the marketing the Wii U the Nintendo switch is what the Wii U really should have been in the first place but it wasn't now we have a product that even isn't even complete we don't even have the online systems for and people still enjoy it they're still taking it with them on planes while hooking it up to their TV while taking it on trains and buses and as an example when I'm at work we don't hook up to a TV at work so we actually use tabletop mode a lot and it's surprisingly useful we were playing four-player Mario Kart 8 Deluxe yesterday on a table on that dinky screen and also was oh that wouldn't be comfortable and we're just fine it really wasn't that bad so Nintendo's on to something with the switch something that they weren't on to with the Wii U and reality is the switch is extremely easy to understand makes sense and looks appealing and they're gonna spend a lot of marketing for it because they realized ever since they unveiled this thing back in October that there is a huge market of people that are being like man this looks good and sorry it's not just Nintendo faithful Alex and other people who believe this that by Nintendo systems a lot of people that they're attracting with the switch right now are people that did not buy a Wii U did not even buy a Wii they are attracting adults that are lapsed video gamers that want a system that's more convenient to their lifestyle and the switch provides you that at home and on the go experience in such a seamless way that there's no compromises at least it doesn't feel like there's any compromises I mean yeah 1080p to 720p but on that small screen you don't notice much of a difference anyways this is Nathaniel of jazz from the center prime signing out