Wii U – what’s stopping you?

A reader wonders whether reports of the Wii U’s resurrection have been exaggerated, and asks what’s stopping you from buying one?

So the feeling lately is that the Wii U is on the up. The release of Mario Kart 8 and upcoming titles like Super Smash Bros., coupled with the great showing at E3, etc. have definitely lifted the struggling console. Or have they?

Wii U sales are up around the 7 million mark now, but we have to bear in mind that only 1 million or so of those have come this last year. Compare that to even the Xbone at 5 million [in total, this year it’s been around 2 million so far, compared to around 1.5 million for the Wii U – GC] and it looks pretty bleak.



The fact is that Nintendo’s position is not so good. Try to buy a Wii U in your local supermarket and you might find it’s a struggle. Only the biggest 60 Tesco Extra stores (out of over 1,000 large stores) stock Wii U games and consoles now, and even then it’s shared space with the 3DS. Asda is even less, although they do stock the odd game in more stores.


In fact the only place you can really buy a Wii U now is the likes of GAME, and even here there is so little space dedicated that if you blinked you could miss it. You really can’t blame the game studios for deserting the format. Why put the effort into porting a game across (Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are now both x86 along with the PC) when you know that it won’t get any coverage and therefore won’t sell in the required numbers?

It’s a true shame. I still believe that of the big three the Nintendo is the best package. £200 (if you shop around) gets you a lot of great features:

Full backwards compatibility with Wii games, which if you didn’t really bother with the original Wii (we all bought it but did you actually play it!?) there is some great stuff you have missed. Not only that but they are sooo cheap to buy.

You can still use your Wii Fit board – yes you’ve got one! We all bought that too! Buy hey it’s a great way to justify to the wife or girlfriend why you need a Wii U as well as another console.

The GamePad is excellent. Yes it is underused, but when it is used well like in ZombiU, Deus Ex and Lego City Undercover you can’t help but wonder why the others don’t have it.

Off-TV play. Absolute godsend! Don’t like what’s on the TV? Great! It’s another excuse to play games. I’m still sitting next to you dear!

Games that are totally different. Sick of brown shooters? Try playing some fun games. Nintendo is full of them both to buy and as digital downloads through the store.

You can get out of the 1080p/60fps debate. At launch all you heard was it’s not fast enough (despite being faster than the PlayStation 3/Xbox 360), the GamePad screen is low resolution. Have you actually tried playing one? I for one have never once felt it needs to be better (and I am a member of the PC master race! For me graphics and frame rates are important). GC reviews of the latest games will tell you the same. The graphics are excellent. Zelda at E3! Say no more.

A no-frills Xbox One will set you back £350 at the moment and a PlayStation 4 more like £400. There are less games to play on either and I’m pretty bored of hearing about how bad the new release schedule is looking. So why not give the Wii U a go? The bigger question is what’s stopping you?

By reader Andy s

The reader’s feature does not necessary represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.

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