Because it didn’t sell well.

Usually the thing that's mentioned as a big marketing mistake is the name.

If you were already looking into it you'd probably know it was a new console. But to casual gaming enthusiasts (and those were a huge part of the wii/DS success), or to people that just didn't follow Nintendo news closely, it really wasn't clear.

Some believed "Wii U" was just a new attachment for a wii, or just a new wii edition, rather than an actual different console with about halfway gen7-8 capabilities.

They did the exact same mistakes with the "3"DS and only survived a very rocky launch with a quick repricing and a lot more marketing. Wii U never really recovered.

I think the name was confusing, but it really only exasperated more fundamental issues. The product wasn't that appealing for most people.

The gamepad was a cool trick, but ultimately not being portable made it seem sorta pointless? I mean, that's cool that you can play it while someone else watches TV. But all the nifty ideas around asymmetric multiplayer or supplemental touchscreen controls/displays just come across as gimmicks.The gamepad was big and clunky and near permanently paired to one system (and within a few feet).

Third party support was never strong there, and the bits that were withdrew almost immediately. Nintendo themselves were struggling to put games out quickly, with the transition to HD, plus their studios' attention divided into making 3DS games.

The system was no powerhouse, so by the time other next-gen consoles released, it looked left behind. Unlike the Wii or the Switch, it didn't have an especially compelling gimmick or pricepoint to make up for that.

(I say this as a Nintendo nerd that had and loved the Wii U, just my impressions of how others perceived it.)

I think the name was bad, but I also don't think its failure is as simple as just that.

I really enjoyed the handful of games the Wii U got, but so many things went wrong.

Marketing was awful, as others have noted.

The Gamepad had a lot of limitations. Bringing the DS's second screen to a console seemed like a good idea at the time, but it just couldn't be used the same way. Human eyes cannot focus on two screens at different distances from the eyeball, so you had to shift your focus to one or the other. Multiplats couldn't be designed around it when other platforms had a single screen, so if they shoehorned in anything for the Wii U port it was obviously an afterthought.

Ironically though, I think the Gamepad's best feature ended up being its biggest double-edged sword. In order to support Off-TV Play, games had to be fully playable on a single screen again, disincentivizing developers from being too creative.

Third parties abandoned it pretty quickly. Marketshare wasn't there, specs were behind, and the gimmick wasn't worth extra work to support. Of course it was mostly a matter of marketshare, because if the system had been flying off the shelves they'd put up with the latter two caveats, but because it wasn't, they wouldn't.

There's also the fact that the rising cost of HD game development kept Nintendo from being able to adequately support both the 3DS and the Wii U at once. Once they lost third parties, Nintendo knew that they just could not keep the Wii U afloat on their own, so they had to make a decision to let it go in order to prioritize the better-selling system, then shift gears to have only a single platform for the next generation.

It's a commercial flop. Console didn't sold enough, compared to it's predecessor Wii, and the other consoles. Even the XBOX One sold 4 times than Wii U. Let this sink in. And having only a few consoles in the wild also means, less software is sold. The original XBOX sold 24 million and that is even almost twice as much as the Wii U.

• XBOX sold 24 million
• Wii sold 101.63 million
• Wii U sold 13.56 million
• XBOX One sold 58 million
• Playstation 4 sold 117.2 million

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles

Time for a new account already?

The confusing name was the biggest reason I think. I was trying to sell it to customers back then and so many just couldn't grasp the name of it and got the two consoles mixed up.

IMHO it wasnt the name. The Wii was succesful because of the motion controls. Gaming was seen as a thing for kids, ugly nerds and couch potatoes. Probably still is to a certain degree but 20 years ago gaming acceptance was in whole different spot in the normie mindset compared to today. Nintendo was able to capture the non-gaming audience because they made gaming look active. Be it physically with the Wiis motion controls or these "mind jogging" games or whatever the fuck they were called on the DS. My mother bought a Wii back then... for herself. Wii Sports and that balance board thingy was her jam. She used that thing for a decade to stay fit. The mother of a friend had a DS which was used exclusivly by her for those puzzle/math games. Normies had Wii parties where they played Wii Sport together and bragged about the sore muscles they got the next day at work.

Yeah, well and then came a new box with a shitty Ipad as the main gimmick? While the normies started to play on their phone/tablet or just moved on to do something entirely different like idk joining a book club or nordic walking. Because the Wii was never about the games for them. At the same time they couldnt catch the core gamers attention because the Wii U could barely surpass the performance of the previous gen while the Xbox One and PS4 were on the horizon.

Got one example: when I bought mine in 2015 the young guy (probably late teens/early twenties) getting it out of the cabinet for me didn’t even know what it was.

Probably because it combines two cool sounds: Wiiiuu and flop!