The Cult of Shunning the Wii U

I was looking over an article talking about top-selling Switch games today, and came across a staggering statistic that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has sold a whopping 37 million units on the system. That's pretty insane for a game that wasn't even technically a new release when it came to the Switch, but what really caught my eye was when I glanced over to the comments section and found someone saying this:

"The success of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe just shows how much they missed the mark with the Wii U."

Now it's not really important who said this so I won't bother citing their name or anything, but I just find this framing interesting because it touches on an issue that I see recurring often with many fandoms.

To me this statistic says more about irrational biases against the Wii U rather than the console itself actually being a bad system. After all, it's not like the game plays drastically different on Switch (in fact I'd argue the Wii U version is actually better for a few key reasons). It's the games that should always sell the system, not the other way around. That's why I never bought a PS Vita. Great piece of hardware, but it had virtually no games, so looking back on the system as a whole, I could hardly call it "good" because no matter how shiny and slick the hardware is, without the games, it's just a glorified paperweight.

Yet with the Wii U people just had this cult-like collective hatred against the console no matter how many bangers it put out, and MK8 is demonstration of that. Breath of the Wild could have been a Wii U exclusive and all people would do is just complain "Why is this game on Wii U?" instead of "Wow this makes the Wii U a must-have system" like they would normally say for any other console. I saw this happen specifically with the release of Xenoblade Chronicles X. People were genuinely angry that the game wasn't a multi-platform title because they didn't want to buy a Wii U just to be able to play it. The cult narrative has dictated that the Wii U is poop no matter what it does.

It's a behavior I've found quite puzzling and very particular to the Wii U's case, as the console has continued to supply port after port to the Switch with glowing fanfare, so clearly people liked the games on the system; they just didn't like the system itself; even if fundamentally the gameplay experience was almost exactly the same. I don't have an explanation for it, but it's just a fascinating phenomenon I've observed. Fandoms can have really strange group-think tendencies sometimes where once a narrative gets established about something, no matter how much reality suggests otherwise, it doesn't matter. The narrative has been set in stone.

I get that the Switch is definitely more attractive from a hardware perspective. It certainly has more utility and use-cases than the Wii U ever did with its ability to serve as both a handheld and a dedicated home console, and I prefer it as a better system myself. But I refuse to believe that this feature alone is so vastly important to one's gaming experience that it's the only reason the Switch triumphed where its predecessor failed.

You could argue maybe it's the Wii U's poorly-received gamepad that factored into the sales as well, but if that's the case then why was the N64 more successful? You can't tell me a Nintendo 64 controller feels better to play on than a Wii U gamepad. That thing was an unwieldy mess. At least the Wii U's button layout was pretty straightforward and logical. Its only real fault was just how big it was. And besides, most games had multiple control options including the Pro controller or Wii remote.

People just wanted to hate the Wii U. That's the vibe I always get whenever it is discussed, and it doesn't make sense knowing that these same people play the Wii U's games on their Switch with nothing but praise for them. It's funny to see how the story we weave around these devices can shape their failure or success far more than the actual quality of the product.