The Wii U GamePad started with a little blue light. On the Wii, the disc slot glowed blue when a new message arrived, and that glow gave Nintendo the idea of putting a screen in the controller. Miyamoto's team first wanted a small one for game feedback and status messages, a bit like the VMU on Sega's Dreamcast. Much later in development, it grew into a full screen that could show the whole game.
Then the rumours started. In April 2011, word got out that Nintendo would unveil a Wii successor called Project Café at E3 2011, a high-definition machine that could play Wii games. The name it actually got would cause Nintendo more trouble than any codename ever had.
The tablet everyone thought was for the Wii
At E3 2011, Nintendo showed the Wii U with a stack of tech demos, including a Legend of Zelda graphics demo that had us dreaming for a week. Investors were less excited. In the two days after the unveiling, Nintendo's stock fell nearly 10%, to levels not seen since 2006.
The bigger problem was that people did not understand what they had seen. Later, Nintendo of America's Bill Trinen admitted that the marketing had focused so much on the GamePad that some consumers thought it was an accessory for the Wii they already owned. Nintendo promised that future ads and even the box would show the console and the GamePad together. Every one of us had a relative who asked if they could plug the tablet into their old Wii.
$300, white or black
The Wii U came out in North America on November 18, 2012, in Europe on November 30 and in Japan on December 8. It was the first eighth-generation console, almost a year before the PlayStation 4 arrived on November 15, 2013. The Basic set had a white console with 8 GB of storage and started at $300. The Deluxe set had a black one with 32 GB, a copy of Nintendo Land and stands for the console and controller, for $350. Japan paid ¥26,250 for the Basic set and ¥31,500 for the bigger one. Nintendo of America's first ad for it ended on the line "How U Will Play Next."
Launch day had a catch. Before you could play, the console wanted a system update that could take "an hour or more", and Nintendo warned that unplugging it halfway could damage the console. So the first thing many of us did with our shiny new Wii U was stare at a progress bar and not touch the plug.
It still sold. Nintendo sold over 400,000 in its first week in the US, and Reggie Fils-Aime said the console "is essentially sold out of retail." The UK sold over 40,000 in the first weekend, and Japan bought over 600,000 in December 2012.
A screen in your hands
The GamePad had a 6.2-inch touchscreen, weighed 491 grams and lasted 3 to 5 hours on a charge. It could work as a remote for your television, and games could be played on the GamePad alone, without the television. Nobody had to give up the big screen for the news anymore, and a lot of Wii U gaming happened in bed.
The discs were different too. Wii U discs held 25 GB and had soft, rounded edges, unlike almost any other optical disc. The console could not play DVDs or Blu-rays at all, and Iwata explained that this was mostly about patent licensing fees, plus the fact that people already owned players for them.
Nintendo Land and the invisible ghost
The game that made the GamePad make sense was Nintendo Land, a theme park of twelve minigames. The best was Luigi's Ghost Mansion, inspired by the GameCube's Luigi's Mansion. Up to four players hunted a ghost, and the ghost was the player holding the GamePad, invisible on the television screen. It was hide and seek in your living room, and the most fun anyone had with a Wii U in 2012. Nintendo Land went on to sell 5.21 million copies.
Miiverse
Switching on a Wii U dropped you into WaraWara Plaza, where crowds of strangers' Miis ran to speech bubbles to show off their messages and drawings. That was Miiverse, Nintendo's own social network, where players shared hand-written notes and drawings inside game communities. When someone you did not know gave your post a "yeah", it was Nintendo's version of a Facebook Like, and it felt amazing.
The drawings got everywhere. In Splatoon, Miiverse posts turned up as graffiti on the walls of its stages. Miiverse closed on November 8, 2017, but it refused to die. The Super Mario Bros. Movie hid a reference to a Miiverse user who kept pointing out the water graphics in Wii U games, and in June 2024 people on X started replying to posts with a picture of the old "Yeah!" button.
Waiting for the games
Then the wait began. By the end of 2012, the Wii U had sold 3.06 million, and in January 2013 Nintendo cut its forecast for the year from 5.5 million to 4 million. New Super Mario Bros. U had sold 2.01 million and Nintendo Land 2.33 million.
The most painful moment was Rayman Legends. It was supposed to be a Wii U exclusive. In February 2013, Ubisoft announced it was coming to PS3 and Xbox 360 too, and delayed the Wii U version so all three could launch together. After fan backlash, Ubisoft gave Wii U owners a second exclusive demo, and the creators said the response "definitely hurt."
The good surprise came in 2015 with Splatoon, a four-on-four shooter about squid-like creatures called Inklings. Its developers first imagined the heroes as rabbits, until colleagues pointed out that rabbits shooting ink did not make much sense. The squids sold 1.62 million copies worldwide by the end of June 2015, and its Splatfest events made you pick one of two teams and fight for it.
Satoru Iwata voluntarily halved his own salary in 2011 and again in 2014. In September 2013 the Deluxe set dropped from $349.99 to $299.99 in North America. Mario Kart 8 became the console's best-selling game at 8.46 million.
Nintendo stopped making the Wii U on January 31, 2017. With 13.56 million sold, it was Nintendo's lowest-selling home console. That's the Wii U: the console nobody understood, loved by the few who owned one, and its successor, the Nintendo Switch, was the GamePad's big idea done right.
