So then with the announcement of the Nintendo Switch's release date and the announcement that the Wii U Version of "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" will be the last Nintendo Wii U game. It is pretty safe to assume that the Wii U is dead. Which in all actuality is pretty sad considering that it was a pretty amazing system. Now yeah I know that I am going to have some raised eyebrows here, but let me make my case as to why the Wii U actually failed.

So a lot of people will first off pick on the graphics. Then they need to be reminded that for a period of time that their competitors were lacking in 60 FPS games. The Wii U had graphics that were just fine for the era we were in. True they were nothing special and it seems that these days everything has to be super special, but overall you could give them a B. They could easily do cartoon like graphics, and mostly realistic graphics and everywhere in between without looking clunky or weird. So no it is not something like the graphics which is something that is easy to blame. No the blame lies in the controllers.

Yes I said, Controllers, with an S. If there is one thing that killed the Wii U it was the fact that there was too much to do as far as game-play. I mean you had the old Wiimotes and the Pro/touchscreen controller. Between the two types of controllers you have the potential for at least four different control schemes. You have your simple control scheme, you complex control scheme, you motion controls, your motion controls with a touch screen and last but not least the touch screen itself. So in essences to fully utilize the Wii U you have to think up of tons of different game play styles to fit each individual style. This of course includes compensating for the limits or maybe lack of limits of certain schemes. Which is sad too the touch screen had so much potential.

You could always tell when a developer really wanted to do something cool with the touch screen. Wonderful 101 is an example of an excellent touch screen game. The tablet acted as a map and as a quick select for weapons. It allowed you to control the size and power of your weapons and required you to do a bit of drawing. A lot of effort went into that game. That is just an example of a really good game. I know that in Xenoblade Chronicles X I love having my make management system right there in my hands as opposed to having to constantly open and close menus. The majority of games had a system like this in place which was very useful on most any game. I know I enjoyed having a move guide right where I could see it in Injustice, and stuff like that. Of course some games did not bother. After all, Nintendo screwed them over with the requirement that the game had to be able to stream to the tablet.

I am not sure if this was a requirement but it was one great marketing tool. Thus we introduce another control scheme that may never be used but needs to be there. I think that this feature was really the death of the system. You basically take away any incentive anyone has to use the touchscreen because you might have to completely disable the whole thing. Yes this is a wonderful selling point. I remember back in the day when I had to be limited to a certain amount of time because my siblings wanted to watch TV. Those days sucked and this got around that, but still in doing so Nintendo made it so that no one had any reason to really dive into the touch screen or use the touch screen as anything other than a really convenient extra menu. Which is sad, the Wii U could have done so much more.

Well at least Nintendo has realized a lot of its mistakes with the new Switch. Keep the gimmicks as gimmicks, no touch screens, allow the system a bit of portability. Hey maybe they will even put a good battery in it. While the console market is slowly heading towards handheld and PC only platforms it is nice to see that Nintendo is trying to do more than just make a pretty picture. Let us all hope that it is enough to keep the company in the video game industry.