I keep seeing people dunk on the Wii U like it was garbage just because it sold poorly, but honestly, the Wii U walked so the Switch could run.
Yeah, it was a financial flop, I’m not arguing that. But looking back, it wasn't a bad product, it was just an idea that arrived five years too early. The GamePad literally pioneered the whole concept of "Off TV Play" and hybrid gaming. The Switch is basically just a perfected version of what the Wii U was trying to do.
Plus, Nintendo was actually accountable back then. When the Wii U OS was sluggish at launch, they didn’t just ignore it, they released the 3.0.0 U update and actually filmed a side by side video to prove they fixed the load times. You rarely see that level of transparency from them now. And the library was stacked, Smash, Mario Kart 8, Splatoon, Xenoblade X, Pokkén. People act like it had no games, but most of the Switch's early years were just porting Wii U games that people missed.
The biggest downgrade with "modern" Nintendo, though, is backward compatibility. It’s actually trash compared to what other companies are doing.
Look at Microsoft, they are doing backward compatibility the best right now. On the Series X, I can still play my old Xbox 360 games whether I have the disc or own them digitally. I don't need a membership just to open a game I already bought. Even crazier, the online support is still active for a lot of them (you might still need the 9.99 Game Pass Core to access online for the Xbox games, but still the backwards compatibility is better than Nintendo and Sony). Me and my friends still hop on Grand Theft Auto 4 and all the old Call of Duty games like Black Ops 2, Black Ops 1, MW2, and MW3. The servers are up and we can just play.
Meanwhile, Nintendo has locked their legacy content behind the NSO "subscription jail." You can't even buy these games individually anymore. You’re just renting them, and if you stop paying, you lose your saves and access. It’s anti consumer as hell.
We’re missing so much, too. Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl were full priced remakes that ignored all the best content from Platinum, like the Battle Frontier. And where are the GBA classics? We have a GBA app on Switch, so why can’t I play Emerald or FireRed?
The Wii U failed financially, but at least it had soul. Modern Nintendo feels like they know they’re "too big to fail" now, so they can get away with charging us rent for games we should be able to just buy.
by Storm_Raijin