One of the many criticisms leveled at Nintendo in the past few months has been the continued use of the Wii name in the Wii U. Since the original NES, Nintendo has always gone to great lengths to differentiate names between its consoles, but the Wii and Wii U similarities have lead to confusion for most consumers. In a statement to investors, Iwata said:
“We have not been able to solidly communicate the product value of Wii U to our consumers yet, which has been a grand challenge for us.Some have the misunderstanding that Wii U is just Wii with a pad for games, and others even consider Wii U GamePad as a peripheral device connectable to Wii. We feel deeply responsible for not having tried hard enough to have consumers understand the product.”
This statement acknowledges that Nintendo realizes re-using the Wii brand name was a failure on their part, but there’s not much than can be done now aside from making sure people know that the Wii U is an entirely new console and not just a peripheral that can be attached to the Wii.
