Why Wii U will be brilliant - and ultimately fail

Gamers. We’re a fickle bunch. One minute, we want to waggle a white stick and pretend it’s a tennis racquet, the next we’re jumping in front of a camera pretending we can dance before tossing birds at pigs on the bog.

Five years ago, Nintendo hit the big time with the Wii, a console which offered everyone from toddler to grandma the chance to pick up and play something – cheap, cheerful, simplicity. It made hot cake sales look positively glacial. You don’t need me to reiterate how it became the best-selling Nintendo home console of all time.

Here we are in 2012, and Nintendo is readying the follow-up – a beefy, hi-def box with a massive, complicated-looking tablet instead of a Wii Remote – and no daft sports mini-games in sight.

Wii U looks brilliant. It’s got amazing 1080p graphics (you know, the kind PS3 and Xbox had five years ago) and a tablet with all the modern gaming buttons, two sticks and a massive screen in the middle.

Yes, it’s odd, but it looks like it will truly add something to gaming. 

At E3 we saw how we can blow up explosives on the touch screen in Batman. In Call of Duty, no doubt we’ll be able to view maps and manage weapons on the fly. In FIFA, we’ll see a pitch overview during the game to track players, and be able to quickly make subs and manage the squad without letting your opponent see what you’re doing.

It’s got motion sensors, so in Mario Kart U, we’ll already have the wheel right in our hands.

The best part? It’s WAG-friendly. We’ve all been there: half-way through an epic boss fight, or a MW3 deathmatch that we’re actually winning, and suddenly up pops the wife and/or girlfriend to moan that ‘Eastenders is about to start. Are you gonna switch your game off?’. For Wii U, it’s not a problem. Switch the action to the controller screen, pop in some headphones and just keep playing.

All of this is superb stuff, and Nintendo’s really been hard at work to innovate again. The problem, though, is that nobody really wants it.

Wii went supernova because it instantly struck a chord with people. You see the remote, and you’re curious. You see Wii Sports Tennis – or if you’re a female aged 20-40, Wii Fit, and instantly see the appeal. You pick up, play, and enjoy. It’s so simple.

Not so for Wii U. The console comes as standard with the big lug of a tablet controller as well as a Wii Remote and nunchuk. Then, there’s the Pro controller you can buy (effectively a PS3/Xbox controller clone), the balance board, the zapper, the Mario Kart wheel, Motion Plus (if your controller is from pre-2010), all confirmed to work with Wii U. It’s a veritable sea of white plastic, and granny will drown, fast.

No longer is it pick up and play. Most games will use the tablet, but for multiplayer will insist on others using Wii Remotes. Some games – likely Zelda – will use the Wii Remote instead. Pikmin 3 lets you use both at once. Just imagine some poor kid trying to juggle the massive tablet while flailing a Wii Remote and nunchuk at the screen, and you start to see the issue.

It’s not the end of the world. People aren’t stupid. Those interested in games and technology will easily be able to fire up the right controller in the right game at the right time, and will enjoy the benefits each one brings. People like myself – and if you’re reading this, probably you – will buy it, will love it and will desperately try to shove the tablet into the hands of our brothers/mothers/grans and random strangers at parties. 

But then you’ll have to sit and explain how it all works and which remote to use and when – and that instantly kills the console as an experience for the non-techno savvy. 

What Nintendo ­­should ­have done is make a Wii 2 with cameras, just like Xbox Kinect. Make Wii Sports 2, put online play in it, and make it all controlled via the camera alone. People would go nuts for it because it combines the brand they love (Wii) with a fresh experience they are yet to be tired of (unlike Wii in 2012). Then do the same with Mario, with Zelda, with Donkey Kong – whatever it takes to keep the non-gaming crowd interested. Now Xbox Kinect is taking the Just Dance and Wii Sports crowd - and will do even more so if packed in with a cheap, friendly Xbox next generation - while Angry Birds eats 3DS sales, one smartphone at a time.

Wii U will be a great machine, and when games like New Super Mario Bros. U, Zelda HD and even HD minigame collection NintendoLand arrive – people will buy it.

But people bought games for the Wii because they wanted to play Wii. People will buy Wii U because they need it to play the games  - just like 3DS sales, which only reached respectable levels when Mario Kart 7 came out. 

It’s going to be a tough generation for Nintendo, by comparison. The hardcore gaming minority will enjoy Wii U – for everyone else, Mario, Zelda and Pokemon will get them through – but that’s all. Wii U is no Wii 2.