Most Recent: Wii U

Ever since the launch of the PS4 and Xbox One, game journalists have pushed out editorial after editorial asking, “What can be done about the Wii U?” Brenna Hillier of VG247 says “Nintendo needs to reach beyond its catalogue to save [the] Wii U.” VideoGamer asked, “Is this the end for the Wii U?” And Gamenesia ran with a fanboy-baiting title pointing to the fact that the Wii U was outsold by the Vita in Japan, despite the release of a new Mario game. Yet looking at the sales figures in the same article, we can see that the margin the Vita outsold it by was a massive 42 units. Not only that, but the article fails to mention that the 3DS XL sold more than the Vita, the Wii U, and the original 3DS combined. The most ridiculous figure in that list is that the Xbox 360 sold 342 units in one week. The original Wii beat that with 457 sales.

But I digress. Hillier’s article is filled with vast generalisations quoting “the Twitterati.” Worse, she stuffs words in Nintendo’s mouth by using inverted commas as if the company has somehow uttered them, or, at the very least, thought them (“We’re Nintendo, and we do what Nintendo does.”).

Reading this article made me angry for a number of reasons. One, she is absolutely right – yet she has written this piece with a pessimistic crudeness – “Nintendo knows it bollocksed the Wii U marketing” – that also reeks of a self-aggrandising attitude toward the product itself. “It’s no longer fashionable to believe in the Wii U,” smirks the subheader.

And that made me even angrier, because this is where she is dead wrong. Why? Because it’s never been fashionable to believe in the Wii U. Ever since it was released, it has been a target for fanboy journalistic hooligans who would take shots at the console like Melissa Bachman would a sleeping lion. (more…)