History of video games/Platforms/Wii U

Development
The Wii U was proceeded by the very successful Nintendo Wii.

One gamepad prototype was essentially a screen with two wiimotes attached to it.

Concerns were raised over potential forced child labor in the production of Wii U systems in 2012.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata sketched the idea for Amiibo while riding a bullet train (Shinkansen) to Tokyo in the later part of 2013.

Launch
"I actually am baffled by it, I don’t think it’s going to be a big success."

Pricing
The typical MSRP of games raised to $59.99, up from $49.99 for Wii games.

At launch in 2012 the 8GB Basic Wii U cost $299.99 and the 32GB Deluxe Wii U cost $349.99.

Stagnation
By January 2013 the Wii U had notably poor market performance in the United States, having only sold between 50,000 and 59,000 consoles. Nintendo reported much lower sales of the Wii U then expected in 2014, leading to financial worries.

In 2015, Nintendo Amiibo sales were very high.

In 2015, Nintendo withdrew from the Brazilian market.

Legacy
Production of the Wii U ended in January of 2017. 13.56 million Wii U consoles and 103.21 million Wii U games were sold over the course of the system.

The Wii U was succeeded by the Nintendo Switch, and eventually many Wii U exclusives were ported to that console.

In 2020 some sought out older Wii U consoles due to shortages of the Nintendo Switch during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Compute
The Wii U is powered by a three core 32-bit IBM Power-PC 750 CPU clocked at 1.243125 gigahertz and produced on a 45 nanometer SOI process. This is complemented by an AMD Radeon GPU clocked at 549.999755 megahertz, which is similar to the AMD RV770 GPU series (HD 4000) and built on a 40 nanometer process supporting up to 1080p output. The GPU has 320 stream processors, 16 texture mapping units, and eight render output units. Both processors have access to 4 gigabytes of shared DDR3-1600 RAM with up to 12.8 gigabytes a second of bandwidth. Though the hardware was underpowered for its time, careful consideration to memory hierarchy and interrelation between components eased many performance bottlenecks.

The basic Wii U has eight gigabytes of solid state storage, and the premium Wii U has 32 gigabytes of solid state storage.

Just as the Wii was often said to be twice as powerful as the GameCube, the Wii U is said to be roughly thrice as powerful as the Wii. Some also compare the power of the Wii U to that of the Xbox 360. While not necessarily true, these can be useful generalizations.

Console Hardware
As the wireless gamepad is a critical part of the Wii U, the system sports a relatively feature rich radio suite. The Wii U supports 2.4 gigahertz Wi-Fi b/g/n. The Wii U has an additional Wi-Fi N controller to Miracast to the GamePad.

The Wii U has an optical disk reader which uses 25 gigabyte capacity disks with rounded edges and has read speeds of up to 22 megabytes a second. These are essentially non-standard Blu-Ray disks, and as with previous disc based Nintendo consoles, the drive is incapable of reading standard Blu Ray and DVD media to avoid patent issues.

The Wii U has four USB ports, one of which can be used with an external storage drive or thumb drive for extra space. The Wii U can use SDHC cards up to 32 gigabytes of cpacity.

GamePad
The GamePad has a 6.2" LCD with a resolution of 854 by 480 pixels and a resistive touch screen that does not support multi-touch.

The GamePad has an NFC radio built in to use Amiibo.

The GamePad has an IR remote to control television sets.

The Wii U could technically support two gamepads, though this was not pursued in practice.

Other accessories
The Wii U can use a USB keyboard, though this feature was not available at launch.

Software
The Wii U runs its own specialized operating system.

Third Party Support
Some third party developers, such as Team Ninja, noted the relative ease of development for the system, comparing it to consoles from the previous generation, such as the Xbox 360. Other third party developers, such as Bethesda, noted that Nintendo did not approach them early enough for them to offer viable support for the Wii U.

Manuals
In the beginning, Wii U games had paper manuals, with Wii U games shifting to digital manuals around 2014.

Special Editions
Special editions and versions of the console.
 * Starlight Gaming Station - Kiosk for hospital use.

2012

 * New Super Mario Bros. U
 * Nintendo Land
 * Rabbids Land
 * ZombiU

2013
2013 was promoted by Nintendo as the Year of Luigi as the 30th anniversary of his first appearance.
 * Wii Fit U
 * Wii Party U
 * Wii Sports Club
 * Dr. Luigi
 * New Super Luigi U
 * Game & Wario
 * Super Mario 3D World
 * The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD
 * Pikmin 3
 * The Wonderful 101

Sonic Lost World
The Wii U version of this game featured exclusive DLC featuring crossovers with the Zelda and Yoshi game franchises.

Read more about Sonic Lost World on Wikipedia.

2014

 * Mario Kart 8
 * Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
 * Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water
 * Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
 * Hyrule Warriors
 * Bayonetta 2
 * Meme Run
 * Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric
 * The Letter

2015

 * Splatoon - The first game in the innovative Splatoon series
 * Xenoblade Chronicles X
 * Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival
 * Mario Party 10
 * Kirby and the Rainbow Curse
 * Affordable Space Adventures
 * Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE
 * Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash
 * Super Mario Maker
 * Yoshi's Woolly World

2016

 * Star Fox Zero
 * Star Fox Guard
 * Paper Mario: Color Splash
 * The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD
 * Pokkén Tournament

2017

 * The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

External Resources

 * Archived version of the official website in 2012
 * Archived version of the official website in 2013
 * Archived version of the official website in 2014
 * Archived version of the official website in 2015
 * Archived version of the official website in 2016
 * Archived version of the official website in 2017
 * Archived version of the official website in 2018
 * Video Game Console Library - Wii U page.