GameStop CEO: ‘The Wii U was disappointing to everybody’

‘They made some bold bets’

After the insane success of the Wii, where everyone’s parents bought one because they were told to and subsequently never played it again, it made sense that the follow-up, no matter how good it could possibly be, wouldn’t surpass it. That includes the Wii U, and its utterly confusing naming and color scheme that played tricks on casual consumers even to to this day.

Speaking to alist, GameStop’s CEO Paul Raines agrees. He states that the Wii U was “disappointing to everybody, including them [Nintendo].” He goes on to say that they can still “break records” though, and that GameStop reaps the benefits every time a Pokémon event happens. He has hope for the NX though (and what retailer wouldn’t as more sales are mutually beneficial), noting “Nintendo is interesting in that they really are able to keep things as quiet as they can for a while. NX sounds exciting. We’re looking forward to it. They’re very innovative in everything that they do. I hope that they come out with something exciting and innovative.”

The NX hype is just white noise to me as we literally know nothing about this thing (plus March 2017 is really far away), but it’s refreshing to see people actually address the Wii U elephant in the room. Personally? I loved my Wii U more than the Wii, mostly because of how amazing the GamePad feels. It sucks that it never caught on and is basically doomed to a slow death, but I totally get why it happened.

GameStop CEO Discusses Nintendo NX, New Consoles And VR [alist]