News
Failures of the Wii U - Educational
Cordova, TN; November 12, in the year of our Lord 2014--Family
Friendly Gaming, the industry leader in covering the family
friendly video games is taking a good look at the failures of
the Wii U. Family Friendly Gaming is planning multiple articles
in this series. The second failure of the Wii U we are looking
at is Educational Games. If you thought the sports games did bad
on the Wii U, then you will be dismayed to hear how the
educational games are doing. At least some sports games showed
up, suited up, and tried. Educational games on the Wii U have
been nearly non-existent. Where are the Sesame Street games?
Where are the Elmo games? Barney anyone? Go Diego Go? Dora the
Explorer? Characters and franchises that were on previous
systems like the Wii have not made a comeback on the Wii U.
I went around to a variety of retailers and could not find one
educational game on the Wii U. So I then went to the Nintendo
website and checked out the games they define as Edutainment.
Which was the closest thing to Educational I could find. Here
are the games they list: SDK Paint, Pixel Paint, Red Riding
Hood, Donkey Jr. Math, Ava and Avior Save the Earth, and Art
Academy Sketchpad. There is also a working title Art Academy
game in development. So we have art games, a math port from an
old system, a story book, and a recycling propaganda game. None
of those games interest my kids. Let alone kids who use video
games to learn. Can’t someone figure out how to let kids write
the alphabet on the Wii U Gamepad?
I checked the sales of a variety of educational games on the
Wii. They did decent sales over their lifespans. So there is no
intellectual reason for the games to stop being published on the
main Nintendo home console. Sure Sesame Street games were being
released on the Xbox 360. Is Nintendo really that petty? They
expect to have exclusives with everyone? Those Sesame Street
Kinect games were really good. Maybe Nintendo will read this
article and realize someone dropped the ball these last two
years. Maybe they will turn the Wii U ship around. I personally
hope they do. Because the lack of educational games means
families with young kids are passing on purchasing the Wii U.
The lack of educational games on the Wii U is another reason
Nintendo has moved from first place to their eventual projected
last place in this console generation.
God bless,
Paul Bury
Family Friendly Gaming