Nintendo faces some challenges marketing the Wii U to the casual crowd and the common man. The console is easy to explain to gamers and Nintendo fans — they pretty much knows what the Wii U is and whether they like or not.
But when it comes to the average gamer, it’s easy to see them confused. Is the Wii U a tablet, for example? Many in the gaming media — including us here at Wii U Daily — have called it the “Wii U tablet controller” for a long time. But according to Nintendo, the GamePad isn’t a tablet, it’s a much more than that, and it’s its own “unique thing”, as Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime puts it.
Fils-Aime calls the GamePad a unique two-screen experience, a “video game controller with a built-in screen”, and that it can “do things that a regular tablet can’t”. The GamePad features regular analog sticks, a variety of buttons, built in accelerometer and gyroscope, and the NFC chip (which unfortunately isn’t used in any Wii U games yet).
Reggie isn’t the only one who’s trying to disassociate the GamePad with tablets. Nintendo representative Kit Ellis also didn’t compare the Wii U GamePad with a regular tablet. He said that it was its own “unique thing”. It makes sense for Nintendo to distance themselves from the “tablet” word, since it might cause a confusion with casual gamers who might think that the Wii U is a tablet add-on for the original Wii.
As many have pointed out, and rightfully so, Nintendo does face some challenges marketing the Wii U to the general public. While there’s no doubt that core gamers get it (the Wii U is already sold out of pre-orders), it might take some more time (and lots of advertising dollars from Nintendo), to make sure the public understands what the Wii U is.
