Did the Wii U tarnish Nintendo's legacy?

When I was a young lad, Nintendo was king. While times have changed, Nintendo managed to keep its legacy by developing high quality, and at times, revolutionary games. With the Wii U, nothing really special came out of Nintendo this gen. Instead of innovating, they stood back and starting copying other system's ideas. There is now a generation of gamers who never really had a great Nintendo console. What do you think, SW? Are the glory days of Nintendo gone?

Nintendo still develop high quality games.

and now we wait...

I'll go with the Wii for that. Thank God their handhelds were on point.

@SolidGame_basic: PlayStation is a Nintendo killer. Nintendo is a hand held company now. They failed in the home console market. They just dont have the types of gamers that PlayStation has. They can have the handheld market, while PlayStation dominates the living room. Nintendos biggest fail and success is keeping the competitive gamer away and making a safe haven for the casual gamer.

And that's their legacy.

In my opinion the glory days were waning during the n64 and then almost disappeared during the gamecube era minus a couple games.

Snes had every kind of game you could want. N64 seriously limited what was offered and it just kind of went downhill from there.

Zelda will save gaming, again.

The Wii brand in general did that.

They started taking a back seat in gaming after the N64 and more so with GameCube, the Wii was a short lived comeback and now they're back to even worse than GameCube sales, they're like in Dreamcast territory.

Nintendo was king when they had the original trinity of video game consoles. The NES, The Gameboy, and Super NES. So from 1983-1996 Nintendo ruled. But when the Virtual boy and N64 debuted in 1995 and 1996 it was the beginning of a long decline to today's Wii U and New 3DS/New 3DSXL.

Nintendo was at their best with there first 3 video game devices and when their legacy was strongest. Now with very few games to use the New 3DS to it's fullest and the Wii U only managing 10.3 million sales in almost 3 years. Nintendo's best days are behind them. Unless Nintendo's NX can restore Nintendo's legacy. The Wii U is currently Nintendo's worst home console, While the New 3DS has almost no games to justify the upgrade.

@lamprey263: Dreamcast sold at a faster rate. It just had a shorter lifespan.

But wii/ds sold billions and Mario/Zelda higher metacritics than any PS3/4/xbox/360 game.

true, once you drop support like Sega did your days are numbered, that's why it's important Nintendo stick it out enough to show they made an earnest effort with the Wii U, problem is I'm not convinced they are, two things really eating at me with that, lack of NoA's willingness to publish Fatal Frame on disc, and possibility Nintendo will delay high profile Wii U games to the NX and do a Twilight Princess dual console release, which will royally piss me off to the point of boycotting NX if they make us miss Star Fox, Legend of Zelda, and any other number of games because of the NX

No, of course not. Did Microsoft tarnish its legacy when the 360 finished in third place? No. Or was it tarnished because of RROD? No.

Are Nintendo still making top rated quality games? Yes.

Yes, Nintendo are capable of making great games. The fact remains the SNES offered IT ALL and they now only offer a very limited segment of what is available.

Doesn't make them tarnished though, unless you claim they've been that way since N64 and beyond. Still making great games = not tarnished. Same for any company who made mistakes along the way, yet still makes great games.

XB1 and PS4 also offer a fraction of what their predecessors offered.

Nintendo's quality has diminished. They haven't had a Mario Galaxy or Metroid Prime caliber exclusive on WiiU.

Bloodborne, Witcher 3 and Metal Gear Solid V are all better and more ambitious than anything Nintendo has made this gen.

Yeah, because it's not a great system like any of their past systems.

Because that was clearly NEVER said during the GC era. Oh wait, I forgot that doesn't count because people LOVE the GC now.

As much as I love the GameCube myself, Malstrom was right.

The first PlayStation, and the PS2 were big because of the casual gamer.

Eh, a false representation.

The Playstation was big, because it started getting content that appealed to an older gamer. Nintendo's content eventually began to lose people by virtue of a lot of gaming being aimed at children. In contrast Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid, Twisted Metal and even something like FF7 was aimed at the audience that became older during the NES/Snes era and were looking at games as just a kids thing. It wasn't a casual, it was a demographic thing, everything about those games still had plenty of appeal to the would be "hardcore" gamer.

Besides majority of that library is built on jrpgs, not exactly the soccer mom genre.

The Wii U was innovative. It's the first home console with a touch-screen controller, and the first to come with remote play as standard, It's a failed innovation, but an innovation nonetheless.

You think when I refer to casual gamer, I'm talking about soccer moms. I'm not. I'm talking about the gamer, who games casually. A lot of games that people consider games that are for 'hardcore' gamers were very popular among casual gamers, even something like FF7.

Pretty much. The PS1 and PS2 were seen as "casual" consoles back then, while Sega, Nintendo and Xbox were seen as the more "hardcore" consoles. But then when the DS and Wii came along, they redefined the term "casual gamer" to mean something very different to what it meant before.

Wii with the help of WiiU did it.

Wii did

It was also selling at $50 by the end. Wii U could crack 20m without issue if they were selling for $50.

Of course not. They never suffer long-term from their mis-steps.

Tarnish is kinda strong, but it certainly didn't help their image.

It was the latest in a long line of failures but to tarnish something is the original wii did. The wii u merely didn't turn around their fortunes.

The Wii U hasn't tarnished Nintendo's legacy, Nintendo has.

Nintendo's strategy has.

Wii U is one of the many blunders of Nintendo.

Hahahah, Nintendo's legacy was tarnished way before the Wii U.

The 360 was a better all around success than Microsoft's first Xbox. Third place or not it did very well. The RROD will forever stay with MS and not in a good way. Many people associate MS with the RROD debacle regardless if the company tried to make good on it. So I'd say yes. That failure is still referenced in this generation from time to time.

Sega dropped support because they weren't going to continue in the console market.

Nah. Maybe the 'Wii' brand legacy, but who cares? It's the worst era of Nintendo ever.

@lundy86_4: Explain why did the Wii tarnished Nintendo's legacy? Because it really didn't.

While the Wii was successful sales wise....it became known as a casual console and not a "hard core" gaming console.

On the contrary, they are the only console manafacturers with more than a speck of credibility left, theyve never failed where it matters, making bulletproof hardware that plays compelling games you cant get anywhere else.

The Wii U is a gem and will go down as one of the best consoles in gaming history. Also as one of the last true consoles.

I think it was the "Wii" Brand that pretty much hurt Nintendo.

The Wii brand boosted it up for a time back when it launched because "HOLY COW MOTION CONTROLS!" That Wow factor sold them MILLIONS. The Wow factor wore off and the people started looking more and more into big budgeted games like Uncharted and Metal Gear Solid and Halo. Bowling wasn't in Gamers interest. It was interactive Movies (using it loosely) and Robust Online.

Nintendo went with "WiiU" because they thought the "Wii" branding still had power in 2012. That brand died somewhere in 2008-2010.

Not to mention that the Hardware wasn't up to snuff for most game developers and some of the big games that Nintendo wanted to be out at Launch wasn't ready for Launch because they weren't ready for HD Development. One major reason why Nintendo has been teaming up with a lot of 3rd Party developers like Platinum, Tecmo, or Namco isn't because they're strengthening their connections, but because they're so far behind in Technological Advancements in Game development.

This have changed now and hopefully Nintendo has "gotten it" with NX which is probably why they started so early on to announce the project.

As for that bit about Nintendo not being innovative with the WiiU. HAVE YOU PLAYED MARIO MAKER? SHIT IS SO CASH

I wouldn't say tarnish, but they missed the mark with wii u. At first they were trying to get casuals that had already left them for mobile and it wasn't working. Before they finally realized it was too late.

@MirkoS77:

I agree

Nintendo's legacy is in the great games and characters they've created. Look at the likes of Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, Super Mario Galaxy and Ocarina of Time to name a few. All still hold up pretty well in this modern era of gaming, because gameplay matters to Nintendo

Doubt it, they're known for good games, but they've been making questionable consoles or hardware choices for many generations now, since the N64. And outside of the Wii, the sales have been pretty consistent in the same area with their home consoles.

I would agree with that.

Mario Maker is worth owning a Wii U for, it awesome

That's completely idiotic! Nintendo HC fanboys are the worst!

Did the Wii U tarnish Nintendo's legacy?

No, Nintendo tarnished Nintendo´s legacy, the WiiU is just the pinnacle.