Retail people how much Wii U confusion do you deal with?

So, right now I work at Wal-mart. Yeah, I know its a far cry from being a worthwhile job but its sort of paying the bills for the moment. Anywho, I usually work in grocery but a lady today stopped me and asked if I knew anything about the WiiU console.

Being that Vidya games are a pretty large hobby of mine I jumped in and tried to help her. She was pissed because her daughter couldn't play the game she downloaded. So, next I went down a line of questions to try to actually figure out what the issue was. After several questions I arrived at the most face palm inducing thing.

She was attempting to use the WiiU tablet as a portable game system and did not understand why her daughter couldn't play it when they were on car trips and not at home. She was utterly convinced that this was the entire purpose of the tablet.

I just wanted to see anyone else who works in retail if there is really this much confusion about this thing. It really seems crazy to me that people would be this confused about what this thing is ESPECIALLY when the base model is running your $300+ taxes

Hell, even as someone who is damn deep into the game industry their press conference last year confused the shit out of me.

I'm not surprised at all that people don't fully understand what the WiiU actually is.

I completely understand why she would've been confused.. Nintendo has done an absolutely horrendous job at explaining to people exactly what the Wii U is.

I'm a Nintendo guy first and foremost and even I was a little confused about that thing until I took it upon myself and looked the information up.

Nintendo really needs to work on their marketing for the Wii U.

I think the only Wii U's we've sold at my work have been to staff members.

I have a long history of customer service and I can tell you one thing for sure. People,as a general rule, are incredibly stupid. I allmost got fired from k mart because I told a lady that they did not make mario party for the Xbox 360. Even after I tried to convince my manager of this fact his response was , "they make those games for everything." I got written up for not helping the customer fully.

Another time a customer wanted to trade in a copy of halo for the wii version because he heard the wii had better graphics than the Xbox. After trying to explain to him that wasn't possible he told me in a huff that he would just buy it for the ps3 somewhere else.

The point is, fuck that lady. I don't care if you are spending a dollar or three hundred dollars, know what it is you are buying.too long, didnt read. Yes I agree nintendo could do a better job of differentiating it from the wii.

I spent 20 minutes in a Gamestop the other day eavesdropping on an associate and a customer going back and forth over why the customer couldn't just buy the tablet for his Wii. He couldn't understand why it was an entirely new console instead of just an add-on to the Wii. Yeah, Nintendo isn't doing a great job of explaining what the Wii U is to the average consumer.

"Why can't I play candy crush on this Nintendo tablet!"

Has the person(s) who thought of calling it the WiiU instead of the Wii2 or the Nintendo Entertainment System (One) been found in a river yet?

This made me laugh too. Hehe

I just found out on monday that my daughter, who has played WOW, Spore, a lot of Sims 3, loves the Zelda games on DS, get's a kick out of our Wii and played through Fable III on 360 has no idea that the Wii U was a new console. She thought it was a tablet that you buy for the Wii, now this isn't what I'd call a casual player, she certainly spends no shortage of time reading about tech on the net. If Nintendo can't easily demonstrate what their new console is to her I can't even imagine what your average Wii-sporter must think it is.

I don't know man, the only easy way I can think to explain it to a layman is to say it's just like a DS that uses your TV as the top screen.

Its not their fault. The way Nintendo presents the product is that you are free to use the Wii U tablet controller wherever but it is never really mentioned it needs to stay in range of the base unit.

I don't think its only consumers that are confused, my mom asked an employee at their local eletronic store what this new Wii U thing was. He said it was an upgraded Wii, so she was kinda surprised when I told her it was a completely new console.

@kpaadet said:

Well he's not exactly wrong.