By the eighth gen, the console market had settled into just having its current big three players, meaning you wouldn’t expect there to be a lot of room left for variation with the consoles that do well and the ones that don’t, but…
Well, Nintendo and Microsoft fucked up just enough to bring us here. So let’s get into it.
The Wii U is Nintendo’s worst selling console of all time and widely considered to be one of the worst consoles in general. While it has a lot of merits to its name - Nintendo was trying some interesting things with the dual screen setup, the network functionality appears very interesting (particularly with hindsight), and it’s actually the nexus of the Switch idea Nintendo would utilize to such great effect literally in the exact same gen just four years later - it was a miserable console, abandoned by third parties and propped up by a panicking Nintendo who threw a lot of shit at it to keep it going. In spite of this, it managed a surprisingly stacked lineup of great exclusives, which gave it a respectable legacy but more importantly allowed Nintendo the leverage to launch the Switch with a ready made lineup of great games when the time came. The Wii U was not a good console, but its lineup and its successor both allow it a modicum of dignity.
The Xbox One had the easiest layup in history. The Xbox 360 had finally split the high end console market from Sony neatly in half. Microsoft and Xbox weren’t at the top yet but they had carved out half the market for themselves and had every chance to continue that momentum. Enter Xbox One. Underpowered and overpriced, the Xbox One is arguably responsible for every major issue Xbox suffers from to this day. While the system was salvaged over time thanks to some savvy revisions and the introduction of services like Game Pass, the initial and long term damage was done. In terms of games, the Xbox One actually did very well, getting pretty much every major third party multiplatform game of the era, plus several exclusives (at least initially), and a flurry of initial first party exclusives too. By the end, Xbox would be sharing all its games with PC permanently going forward, meaning no more exclusives, meaning the Xbox One’s overall legacy is a lineup of great games that can also be played on other systems - in other words, there’s nothing to buy an Xbox One for.
It’s actually astonishing that the same generation that gave us the PlayStation 4 and the Switch also gave us these two, but I mean, here we are. Of these two, which one do you think is the better one and why?
Well, Nintendo and Microsoft fucked up just enough to bring us here. So let’s get into it.
The Wii U is Nintendo’s worst selling console of all time and widely considered to be one of the worst consoles in general. While it has a lot of merits to its name - Nintendo was trying some interesting things with the dual screen setup, the network functionality appears very interesting (particularly with hindsight), and it’s actually the nexus of the Switch idea Nintendo would utilize to such great effect literally in the exact same gen just four years later - it was a miserable console, abandoned by third parties and propped up by a panicking Nintendo who threw a lot of shit at it to keep it going. In spite of this, it managed a surprisingly stacked lineup of great exclusives, which gave it a respectable legacy but more importantly allowed Nintendo the leverage to launch the Switch with a ready made lineup of great games when the time came. The Wii U was not a good console, but its lineup and its successor both allow it a modicum of dignity.
The Xbox One had the easiest layup in history. The Xbox 360 had finally split the high end console market from Sony neatly in half. Microsoft and Xbox weren’t at the top yet but they had carved out half the market for themselves and had every chance to continue that momentum. Enter Xbox One. Underpowered and overpriced, the Xbox One is arguably responsible for every major issue Xbox suffers from to this day. While the system was salvaged over time thanks to some savvy revisions and the introduction of services like Game Pass, the initial and long term damage was done. In terms of games, the Xbox One actually did very well, getting pretty much every major third party multiplatform game of the era, plus several exclusives (at least initially), and a flurry of initial first party exclusives too. By the end, Xbox would be sharing all its games with PC permanently going forward, meaning no more exclusives, meaning the Xbox One’s overall legacy is a lineup of great games that can also be played on other systems - in other words, there’s nothing to buy an Xbox One for.
It’s actually astonishing that the same generation that gave us the PlayStation 4 and the Switch also gave us these two, but I mean, here we are. Of these two, which one do you think is the better one and why?
