Why the Nintendo Wii U Won't Fail

To say that the online reception to the Wii U was not as Nintendo hoped would be an understatement. The hit their stocks took after E3 was evidence enough, but comments from various people in and out of the industry tend to be more negative. There's even talk of it being the last Nintendo console, leading to the company leaving the hardware business à la SEGA. However, such fears are virtually unfounded. The Wii U is extremely unlikely to fail, because actual failure is something Nintendo has always avoided.

It's true that post-Nintendo 64, the company has faced drastic ups and downs. Ever since they decided to go with cartridges and alienated Sony (as well as most of their third-party support), Nintendo hasn't enjoyed the dominance it enjoyed with the NES and (despite SEGA's best efforts) the Super Nintendo. They've also made several mistakes along the way, including the headache-causing Virtual Boy, the Japan-exclusive N64 Disk Drive, and the Game Boy Advance e-Reader peripheral to name a few. Luckily, with these failures also came successes, and both were only possible because of Nintendo's ability to innovate.

The Nintendo 64 may have lagged behind the Sony PlayStation, but it also featured several critically and commercially successful games, like Super Mario 64, Super Smash Bros., and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. During the same era, Nintendo also published Pokémon, unleashing an international phenomenon that continues to this date.

(Continued on the Next Page...)