Funny how you treat your opinion of "adequate" or "obsolete" as being universal. People vote on what is adequate or not to them with their wallet. Some are happy with a PS2 or a DS. Others won't have consoles because they believe PCs are strictly superior. All fine.
If you think the 3DS/WiiU are not for you, okay. Personally, I don't think I'll buy any console among PS4/XBO/WiiU (3DS+PS3+PC cover all my electronic gaming needs), but it's fine for me if people enjoy their current-gen machines. You, apparently, consider a objectivally bad decision to own a 3DS or Wii U (which only the Nintendo fanboys would make).
Like I said, there's low-end and then there's obsolete - the PS2 was low-end, but was not obsolete - it was adequate for the time period it was released in. The Gamecube and the Xbox were more powerful than the PS2 and the multiplats were superior on the latter two systems, but the PS2 was a better balance between price point, specs and features plus it had a head start which allowed for an excellent library of games - the Wii U squandered its head start. The DS and the Wii are an anomaly, an exception from the general rule due to their low price point and target audience - they spread like wildfire quickly with attractive gimmicks and at that point it would be unreasonable not to support them.
The Wii U and the 3DS are obsolete, not low-end. The moment the platform poses unreasonable limitations in the way of developers, it's a problem. The Wii U suffers from game draughts specifically because you can't develop for it on the same level as on the Xbox One or the PS4, the gap between them is huge. Porting a game to the Wii U requires watering it down almost to the point that you might as well release it on the PS3/360 which ultimately have a much larger install base, but it's not always possible. We're slowly seeing developers completely moving away from the PS3 and the 360 at long last, those systems are dying and the Wii U is left in the dust with them.
Not all people vote with their wallets although they absolutely should - fanboys will invest in a system even if it's bottom of the barrel. We as consumers have to oppose inadequate hardware because it stalls progress. People buy consoles for the plug and play experience, not everyone wants to deal with a PC, console gamers prefer to just slump into their chair, pick up a controller and play - that's the advantage of the console platforms. Unfortunately, if said console is inadequate as well as poorly adopted it simply gets little support - little support leads to a smaller amount of games and a smaller library leads to lowered sales of the hardware - it's a vicious cycle.
Look at the library and the sales of the DS and compare them to the results of the 3DS if you don't think that this is a problem. It's been 4 years since the 3DS was released and it sold about 50 million units. How much did the DS sell in the same time frame - more or less? Try
96 million. This is a result of several factors - the advent of smartphones, less AAA titles, the dual screen gimmick getting old, the 3D gimmick never taking off, odd design choices
(no dual analog out of the box in the 21st century? It took a revision to add a shoddy thumbpad?) and, partially, low specs that make it hard to develop for the system. Even Nintendo themselves ran out of juice on the system - look at the framerate drops in Pokemon battles or how they were unable to render the game world in 3D Mode, and that's not even a demanding game. They actually had to add CPU cores to the New 3DS to even pull off Xenoblade, a last gen port from the weakest last gen home console. Problem? Yes. If you need a stopgap upgrade half-way through the generation, there's an issue. Don't get me started on the Wii U, we've beaten that subject to death.
I could talk and talk about this, throw around stats, but there's too many factors to make a simple reply post - there's enough material to talk about that you could make a lengthy article about this. My point is that if your system isn't competitive, it's lagging behind. If you don't make a step forwards, you'll take two steps back because the competition isn't sleeping - they're going forwards, the industry keeps on moving, the games are getting more and more advanced and you're eating the dust. Nintendo has their exclusives and they'll keep them afloat thanks to their fans, but you know what's better than Nintendo exclusives? Nintendo exclusives
and multiplatform games. Why not have both? I also like how we're arguing about whether or not the Wii U is obsolete when the PS4 and the Xbox One are already really low-end and that's what Nintendo's up against.
You just assumed I blindly praise a company. I never stated that u have to like one company or console over the other. However I did say you take it way too seriously. It's ok to be concerned with the specs of a console but I just dnt want u to lose sight of one thing:these are all just toys that are sold at toys r us and toys are meant to have fun with. As long as the Damn thing works and doesn't break on me then I'm good. I could care less Abt Shit like adequacy and status quo just give me good games.
I'm not losing sight of what's important - fun is the whole point of gaming. Unfortunately, for fun to be had on consoles you need the good games you've mentioned and since games are becoming more and more complex, you won't be getting a lot of those on a system that can't handle them. This is where adequacy steps in - you need adequate hardware in order to run the games in the first place, it's a pre-requisite. I'm not saying that a console should be overpowered or overengineered, it doesn't have to be a supercomputer - that was the mistake Sony made with the PS3 and lost a lot in the process. A console doesn't have to be high-end, what it does have to be is "good enough". Gamers only ever upgrade their systems because they're not good enough to handle games anymore, otherwise we wouldn't upgrade at all.
