You know, most of us immerse ourselves in video games and information about video games on a daily basis. We visit sites like PixlBit, watch Youtube videos, and, if you're like me, get involved in more forum strife than a healthy heart should be subjected to. But one thing that has really irked me lately is the derisive attitude being leveled toward the Wii U.
Though this is an editorial and I am quite prone to outbursts of gaming passion, I'm not going to talk about the Wii U's specs. I'm not going to talk about Nintendo's marketing strategies or failure to lure in the "core" once again. I'm only going to talk about the blatant disregard leveled at the Wii U by most interenet-going gamers; everything else is for another day and another discussion.
Youtube comments and website forums abound with "Sony vs. Microsoft" debates and technical specification comparisons that are eerily similar to masculine mating boasts- "The PS4 will be able to turn [insert number here] teraFLOPS, while Microsoft's console..." But oddly vacant from these discussions are any mentioning of the Wii U, a system that has been out since November of 2012 and a system that did remarkably well during its launch window given all of the obstacles stacked against it: the economy, the rise of other gaming alternative such as phones and tablets, the increasing accessibility and affordability of PC gaming, and the bad taste left in many "core" gamers' mouths after the family-friendly Wii. Despite all of these barriers to even luke-warm hardware sales in its first two months, the Wii U sold 3.5 million units and managed to rank #3 in home console sales for units sold during its immediate launch, behind only the crazily successful Wii and the behemoth Playstation 2.
So why aren't we hearing more about the Wii U? Despite its launch achievement, the Wii U has been left out in the cold as far as attention goes, even before the PS4 reveal. Most Youtubers I view can hardly be bothered to even mention the system when they discuss the other "next-gen" consoles. The Wii U's gamepad "gimmick" (thus called mostly by those who haven't spent any real time with it) is almost completely forgotten, while days ago the PS4 announcement touted Vita off-TV play and gamers went wild as if they've never heard of such wizardry before. Nintendo's new social network, Miiverse, lives on in the shadows of the ad-riddled Xbox Live, a system that doesn't even allow users to so freely interact without friend requests or microphones (and $50).
Worse than the cold shoulder, though, are the ill-informed, offensive comments leveled at a perfectly wonderful and genuinely innovative console. Accusations of "gimmicky," "child's toy," and "last-gen" are only a few of the most common examples of vile being spewed by internet goers across many forums. Nintendo's lower-than-expected sales are all the fuel needed by some to forecast the total self-destruction of Nintendo as an entity, and even the gaming press seems all too willing to snub the console with flamebait article titles playing to the "fanboy" war.
I've had just about enough. Enough to even change my after-work internet crawl to avoid most gaming websites altogether. As a gamer with a love of the hobby regardless of system, this behavior saddens me.
If only the internet could be more like Miiverse- if you don't own the console or game you are mindlessly berating, your profile does not contain the symbol denoting you've actually played the game, and your comment can automatically be filtered out by other users. Alas, I suppose the internet is a bastion of the personal opinion, if nothing else, and certainly a place where those with the loudest and most frequent typing "voice" will be heard above all others.
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