5. Poor marketing

The Wii U, having sold barely more than 10 million units to date, has clearly been a disappointment for Nintendo when compared to its predecessor the Wii. After all, that console sold more than 100 million units in its lifetime, and games like Mario Kart are amongst the best-selling on all platforms to date. And with the Wii U, it is clear that Nintendo wanted to create a console that would combine the best of its two most successful systems to date, the Wii and the Nintendo DS, the handheld console that was a smash hit for the Japanese company.

For this, Nintendo tried to innovate with the Wii U’s gamepad but caused confusion amongst its fans, as when the Wii U was presented to the public and people saw the controller with the touchscreen it wasn’t clear to many whether Nintendo was presenting a new handheld device or the Wii’s successor. Or maybe it wasn’t as much Nintendo’s poor marketing as the fact that the public did not want a console that simply was too similar to the best-selling Wii… But here’s hoping that things will be different when Nintendo’s new NX hits the market in 2016.