Nintendo learned two important lessons from Wii U

Nintendo's Wii U sold roughly 13 million units during its lifetime, and that's something the Switch is expected to beat in just 18 months. Basically, the Wii U wasn't a big success, and now Business Insider has asked Bill Trinen, Nintendo of America's senior product marketing manager, and Doug Bowser, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of sales and marketing, what lessons the company learned from Wii U. It turns out there were two things especially, a low and tedious startup being one of them.

Trinen says: "If you look at the Wii U hardware system, just the system menu itself - the time that it took to boot that system up, to get into gameplay - was something that was a frustration for a lot of players early on and actually became a hindrance."

"With Switch being something that you can take with you, it made it really important that you could play it instantly. That to me is an example of a direct lesson from the Wii U era, where Nintendo said, 'That's something we're gonna zero in on and make a dramatic improvement on'."

The Switch is, as you surely know, almost ridiculously fast in that department, and Bowser adds: "It's three button clicks, and you're into the fun, so it's a really accessible menu."

Another huge problem was the lack of games, there just wasn't a whole lot to enjoy for Wii U. Bowser continues: "We had a glut [of game releases] up front, and then kind of went dry for quite some time. From a first-party perspective, at least, we were very intentional and deliberate about Switch. We launched with 'The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,' which obviously was incredibly successful, drove hardware, and brought a bunch of new people into the franchise. And then followed that with 'Mario Kart,' straight through the series of games we've released since then."

"That's been a really important lesson that we've applied that seems to have worked."

Do you think Nintendo has done a better job with Switch than Wii U?