The Wii U had a ton of potential - I bought one a few months after it came out, and I was excited that Nintendo was planning to try to get back into the top-line gaming that it had ceded to Microsoft and Sony during the Gamecube and Wii era.
It did not succeed at this.
The Wii U has some fantastic games. I think its version of Smash Bros. might be the best yet (though I'd bet most people still consider Melee to be the pinnacle.) The problem is that there really just aren't that many games for it.
As someone who's approaching 30 pretty soon, it's also true that my taste in games has shifted over time. I'm more interested in complex stories and mechanics, and of course novelty. I love Mario games, but I'll admit that Super Mario 3D World and New Super Mario Bros. U kind of melt together in my mind even though they're not even in the same number of dimensions.
But given that I invested in the Wii U, I do feel like I got burned.
For one thing, a general rule with Nintendo is that you can expect one and a half Zelda games per generation. Two for the NES, one for the SNES, two for the N64, and then practically one and a half for the Gamecube (Wind Waker and Twilight Princess) and again for the Wii (Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword.) Now, the new Zelda game will not be launching until the NX does, which means that you can be certain it will come out on the NX, likely with a Wii U version, meaning the Wii U only gets, effectively, half a Zelda.
There's also the fact that it will have been only four years since the Wii U came out, with very little produced during the time.
It's a real shame, because I felt that the return to traditional controls might have meant more 3rd-party titles. But this is the big problem for Nintendo:
I grew up primarily with the SNES and N64 era, and at that time, Nintendo was a place for 3rd-party studios to show off their stuff. Now, however, for technical and also business-politics reasons, Nintendo is treated more like the American Politics version of a third party - people forget they exist.
What keeps me buying Nintendo consoles has been their 1st party games, but maybe it's me or maybe it's Nintendo, but I don't really see that many exciting things coming out from them these days.
The Wii U didn't have a Metroid game, it will only just barely have a Zelda game.
I'm assuming the strategy here is to cut their losses, hoping that the NX will be at least on a technical level on par with the PS4 and the Xbox One, but I'm going to be a lot more cautious about buying this new console than I was with the Wii U, given how recently I did so.
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