2016 FOR
ROBIN WILDE
A
fter being dropped
with
expectations
at the edge of space,
and spending two years
plummeting to earth with
three of its engines burning, 2015 was the year
the Wii U finally bottomed out.
Sales weren’t quite as
atrocious as they might
have been, finally overtaking the Dreamcast
and seeing a solid first
party lineup start to drive
out the base.
It’s a well-established
truth that if you throw
Nintendo fans Mario or
Zelda they’ll turn out in
droves to throw money
in your face, so having both a Twilight Princess HD re-release and
a completely new and
shiny Wii U Zelda is
smart business.
It’s not a realistic prospect for the Wii U to
overtake the Xbox One
or PS4 in total sales. The
console is too niche, too
underpowered, and offers too little return on
investment for third party
developers. It relies too
heavily on first party
games and suffers the
old Nintendo problem
of amazing hardware
with incomprehensible
instructions.
But that need not mean
the Wii U cannot still be
a success. The Nintendo
64 was soundly thrashed
in sales by the PlayStation, but is still remembered lovingly for some
awesome games and
hardware innova [ۜ˂