Reggie Fils-Aime Claims The Switch Avoids the Wii U's "Two Big Problems"

We’ve been doing so much Nintendo news as of late I felt the need to preface this article with two other decidedly non-Nintendo ones, just to balance the scales a bit. But, hey, the Switch was just revealed, and all eyes are on the big N, which is certainly a change of pace for the ‘special kid’ in gaming’s triforce.

We’ve already heard how the Nintendo Switch is supposed to break Nintendo’s ‘lack of supply’ habit (it isn’t), but now Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aime has returned to assure people that the Switch won’t fail the way the Wii U has. And boy, did it fail: the Wii U only sold 13 million units, which is a fraction of the Wii’s 100 million units sold. But Reggie is sure that they can avoid that, as Nintendo has learned the two main reasons the Wii U failed.

And you will be unsurprised to hear them both.

First, he claims that they failed to communicate clearly the ‘novelty’ of the tablet-like controller, and its ability to supply unique gameplay experiences. The second reason, which you don’t need to be a marketing major to understand, is that the Wii U simply didn’t have a reliable flow of intriguing games.

"Nintendo Switch is a home console you can play anywhere, with anyone. Clear. Compelling. We see the reaction by consumers whether it's measured in Twitter trending topics or views of videos on YouTube or just the frequency with which I get called by old high school buddies that I haven't heard from in 30 years who are asking me how to get their hands on Nintendo Switch. We have communicated the proposition clearly and it is compelling."

As for the second point: it seems as if they’ll be deliberately spacing out their content to help keep gamer’s attention.

"Wii U will go down as having fantastic content--the issue was as you look at the reality of exactly when the games were launched, there were large gaps in between,"

Two thoughts on this, if you’ll indulge me: for one, I’m not sure there actually were that many innovative ways to use the tablet-like controller. Many games that came out for the Switch simply worked better with a standard controller, and even Nintendo’s efforts to take advantage of the system  (Like, I don't know, Star Fox Zero) were questionable at best. And secondly, Reggie’s not wrong about the spacing of the games, but by that same token, by intentionally leaving a gap in release dates, now the Switch has the opposite problem of not having a compelling launch library.

But I can promise you, we’ll talk more about that later this week. For now, let’s just muse on his opinions for a bit and see what else we might learn.