As I sprint down London’s Oxford Street, past a queue snaking down the puddle-soaked road, I spot a familiar face smiling back at me. “Sorry I’m late,” I splutter, muttering something about the trains. The year is 2012, and on this particularly grim November evening, my (then) girlfriend and I are huddled in the cold for the Wii U’s midnight launch. This, I thought, is the games console that will change everything.
Looking back 10 years later, I’m not sure what is more surprising: that my girlfriend of three months was willing to queue in the cold for five hours outside a HMV, or that I genuinely believed the Wii U would be a hit. Needless to say, it really was not. Shifting just 13.65m units in its lifetime – compare that to the original Wii’s 100m – the Wii U was a failure of gargantuan proportions that tanked Nintendo’s share price.
