14 DAY TRIAL // Nintendo's former indie liaison thinks that the company's latest console, the Wii U, is suffering partly on account of its uninspired name.
Dan Adelman has just vacated his position at Nintendo in order to pursue a career on his own, and he has a history of being quite outspoken. During his close to nine years of service as the company's primary liaison to independent developers interested in bringing their games to Nintendo platforms, he often raised a red flags at the company.
At one point, due to his comments and support of critiques of Nintendo 3DS being region-locked, the company even took away his privilege to tweet from his own account, and even proposed that someone who was drinking their Kool Aid should post in his name.
It seems that Adelman has wasted little time to express his opinions regarding the way Nintendo is running things, and during a conversation with a fan on Ask.fm, he has expressed his opinion regarding the Nintendo Wii U.
"Wii U is not selling as well as it deserves to. It has a lot to offer with great games you can't get anywhere else. The value of the GamePad hasn't been justified. But the name Wii U is abysmal. I think that cut sales in half right there," he has replied to a user asking whether he believes that Nintendo deserves the situation it is currently in.
Although the information is by no means new and everybody already knows it, it's still perplexing how the company fumbled this one. The console has a lot of great games, for people who enjoy childish and overly colorful titles, granted, but still a solid offering for a very real audience.
The Wii U deserves a better fate, and there is no doubt that its name is likely to spark some confusion among consumers that aren't big on video games, and there have been many reports of confusion regarding the Wii and Wii U consoles and their games, but Adelman's estimate of halved sales is still a pretty bold statement.
Nintendo itself acknowledged the fact that they did the name wrong, but there are many other aspects to take into account when looking at the success of such a major enterprise, and the company's marketing efforts were also not quite what was expected when the console came out in 2012, which also had a major impact on its sales.
In any case, now that he's free and no longer coerced to align to company policy or get stonewalled, it's going to be very interesting to follow Adelman's comments on the current state of the industry.