Nintendo Is Eulogizing The Wii U While 'Star Fox Zero' Is Attempting To Save It
[
source]
In the Miyamoto interview, he expands on why the gamepad failed to make an impact. It was hurt, not helped, by the rise of tablets.
“I think the assumption is we were trying to create a game machine and a tablet and really what we were trying to do was create a game system that gave you tablet-like functionality for controlling that system and give you two screens that would allow different people in the living room to play in different ways. …. Unfortunately, because tablets, at the time, were adding more and more functionality and becoming more and more prominent, this system and this approach didn’t mesh well with the period in which we released it.”
He concludes the interview continuing to talk about the system in past tense.
“I still feel it was a very novel approach—and a very interesting idea.”
The general mood from Nintendo lately has been that
the Wii U is essentially dead, even if they’d never say that outright in a press-sanitized statement.
The NX is coming, possibly as soon as a year from now, and even though their supposed new “focus” is on trying to reinvigorate Wii U owners, I’m not sure how an interview like that does anything to reassure them as it quite literally reads like a eulogy for the console.
It's interesting to read what Miyamoto was thinking when coming up with the concept behind the WiiU. It obviously wasn't very innovative and the gamepad (tablet controller) was what killed the WiiU. To go from the coolest controller (Wii motion controller) to the worst controller in one generation takes a fair amount of screwing up. I also like how they say they want to keep the NX details secret so the other companies don't copy them. It'll be interesting to see if they have anything worth copying. It might be smarter for Nintendo to forgo console sales and be just a software company. He likes to hide behind the idea that "Tablets beat the WiiU's tablet" ... but that is smoke and mirrors. The GamePad is a controller and can't function on it's own. Obviously that is a huge advantage for tablets over gamepads.
2015 sales look they will be 1/2 of 2014.
Not good.