Dear Nintendo; I love you. I hate you.

Ok, Nintendo. It's time we had a bit of a talk. I love you. You're like my childhood sweetheart and some steamy adult romance all rolled up into one. Now that things have officially gotten weird, let me take a step back and tell me that this latest generation has really made me question the nature of our relationship. I'm not quite to the point of saying "we need to see other people just yet." Compared to the other guys, you're like a knight in shining armor. But lately I've really begun to question your actions.

Firstly, let me preface by saying that the mistakes you're making aren't bad mistakes to be making. You're still being true to you. The mistakes that you're making are all potholes along the right road. Your nearest competitors may be doing sweet wheelies and breaking all sorts of land speed records, but they're going to wrong damn way. I'll keep defending you, probably to my dying breath, but there are some things that I just can't stay quiet about.

Allow me to ditch the tortured metaphors and speak plainly: the way you've been handling the Wii U is absolutely atrocious. It's no secret that you've doubted the efficacy of the thing for years. Low sale numbers seem to have convinced you that your most recent weapon in the console wars is a dud, but that's a conclusion reached on a false premise. The truth is, you haven't given us any reason to love the Wii U. Or, more importantly, you didn't give us any reason to love the Wii U when the thing first came out. Maybe you were sitting high on the hog after basically winning the console war early last generation. Sure things fell through for you in the end, but by then you were basically swimming in cash so no one could call you a failure. Maybe that put you in an attitude of complacency. Maybe you thought the Wii U would coast through on name recognition alone. When that didn't happen, you seem to have thought that we didn't want the system at all. But in truth, what we wanted was more of the system.

Let's get one thing straight: The Wii U has some of the greatest games you have ever made as a company. The latest Smash is an absolute triumph in the series. Mario Kart 8 is the most fun any of us have had in a Mario Kart game for generations. Splatoon? Those silly little kidsquids deserve a place standing proudly next to Mario, Samus and Link. What you have created in Splatoon is a game that will stand the test of time as one of the greats in the catalog. Even some of the "lesser" releases were triumphs. Wonderful 101 was a quirky and unique entry that could have made some nice filler. Pikmin 3 was a great entry into the series and while I never personally played it, ZombiU really added a different sort of flavor to the stew.

But when all's said and done, the Wii U still lacks a solid core of games, and while the catalog is slowly getting to where it needs to be, customers are still wary because of your rocky beginning. Sure, the system launched with Mario 3D world, a return to colorful form for the pudgy plumber, but it really didn't break  the mold.  The aforementioned ZombiU was certainly interesting and Pikmin 3 was a nice addition...but that was kind of it. Let's get one thing straight here, Nintendo systems sell on Nintendo games. Sure, you had a few third party titles, but people don't buy a Nintendo system to play Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed. They come for Mario. They come for Link and Samus and, to a lesser extent, Pitt. They come for the colorful character that you have delivered so well for years and years and years.

None of that character was front and center at the Wii U's launch.

This put a bad taste in everyone's mouth and even long-time followers of your product were wary to buy onto a system that launched with such a miserable library. Sure we had a few things showing up as glimmers in your eye. We knew there would be a new Smash...eventually. And Mario Kart 8 was starting to show its stuff. And of course we knew there would eventually be a Zelda and a Metroid and a parade of new Mario Titles. But you expected people to shell out $400 for promises. And in the current gaming market with promises being twisted, bent, and broken left and right, you can forgive us for not exactly being ready to jump onto the bandwagon because you told us that the rickety old wagon would be replaced with a luxury model sedan somewhere down the road.

Sorry, had to get one more in.

The Wii sold on promises too, of course. Zelda: Twilight Princess was a launch title, giving those of us who didn't buy into his cutesy cell-shaded appearance in Windwaker (f***ing deviants) a return to his more realistic appearance with a new dark and gritty appearance that seemed to win a lot of people over. But there wasn't much else on display...except the Wii itself. And that was a huge selling point. The Wii was the first real motion control console and it sold itself with Wii Play, Wii Sports, and a bunch of other quirky, gimmicky titles that appealed to a market that wasn't yet sick of gimmicks.

Let me repeat that: a market that wasn't yet sick of gimmicks.

Unfortunately, you kind of ran that cart off the road with the sheer number of gimmicks the Wii bought into. I don't fault you for it. You did a lot of great things in the Wii generation. You gave us a truly great Mario game in Galaxy, several interesting Zelda games, a conclusion to the Metroid Prime trilogy, a truly great Smash title that expanded the roster in ways we never thought possible, and the novelty of having Sonic finally join the Nintendo roster, which felt less like two rivals shaking hands but the fuzzy blue hedgehog finding a new home after his last one burned to the ground.

More importantly, the Wii's novelty at launch dominated the competition by a factor of ten (I don't know if that's true, I just like how it sounds) and that capital gave you some wiggle room and, more importantly still, confidence in the console's future. It was easy to back this prize pony because it looked like people wanted it. The Wii U didn't have the benefit of a strong launch. I get the feeling that you were trying to get a jump on the competition by launching a year early, but let me be clear here: you were not ready. The game's library was not ready to support a system that would not have the benefit of fresh innovation like the Wii did. The gamepad was cool (I still really like it, to be honest), but it wasn't enough to carry the Wii U to glory like the innovation of motion control was when it absolutely crushed the casual market 'neath its mighty tread. Add to that a lot of confusion behind the Wii U's name ("is it the same thing as the Wii? Can I just buy Wii U games without the new system? Do I need all this crap to play the game?") and you did not have a strong enough showing to merit the year jump on the competition. Far better to wait a year, put all your effort into finishing AT LEAST Mario Kart 8 and, at best, Smash Brothers (the latter arguably one of the biggest anticipations of your latest generation). That would have given people a library of games that included games they could run through and enjoy once (Mario 3D World, New Mario Bros U, Pikmin 3) and a couple games that people would literally be playing for years (Mario Kart 8 and Smash Brothers). Let me be straight with you here, those two games would have carried your launch in a way that no other game in your library did because people know they can play those games for months, if not years, long enough to carry them through the production time for other anticipated titles.

And let's look at those anticipated titles. People expect things every generation from you. Good or bad, we always know that we'll get at least a couple Mario titles, one or maybe two Zelda titles, a new Metroid titles, Kirby, some spinoffs, etc. Let's look at what we got from your big names: a new Mario that, admittedly, was a fairly good entry into the series; one weird not-Zelda game that, while great, was not a main entry into the series; a promise of a Zelda game that we've only seen one brief cinematic for before it was delayed to 2016...four years after the Wii U's release; a new Star Fox game, nice but certainly not a grand expectation from your fanbase; Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, a Kirby game that, like Hyrule Warriors, was good but not really a true Kirby game; and...not much else. No proper Metroid title to wipe the bad taste of Other M from our collective mouths (all that game's criticism was just that, criticism of that game. We still love the series, damnit), no sign of a Pokemon game (admittedly unnecessary but come on, a new console Pokemon game would be huge on the Wii U), a bunch of weird spin-offs for Zelda and Animal Crossing (Amiibo Festival was the biggest slap in the face of E3), etc, etc. Innovation is great, don't get me wrong. I love that you "went there" with Hyrule Warriors, but why would you give us that before a proper Zelda title? And shunting the new Zelda game off may have been necessary but it doesn't give us a lot of confidence when we already know you're going to reveal your new console next year.

And that brings me to my biggest point: the Nintendo NX (whatever you want to call it, that's what I'll refer to it as here). Early in the Wii U's life, people were...talking. Sales were low. Confidence was low. Your stock prices were low. And then you went and did the worst thing you could have done: you started talking about a new console. A scant few years after the Wii U was launched, you showed us you had absolutely no confidence in the console and said "yup, we're planning for the NX."

Ok, I get that companies are thinking years and years ahead at all times. But there is absolutely nothing worse than buying a $400 machine and then, after years of games drought, hearing that the company is already planning for the next $400 machine. And there's nothing that makes people warier about buying a $400 machine than hearing that the company is already planning for the next $400 machine. That is the absolute worst thing you could have let slip. All other things being equal, if we hadn't heard about the NX last year, things would look a whole lot better for the Wii U now. But right now, we don't even know if the new Zelda game will even be for the Wii U. Sure you say it will now, but with everything else we've had to endure from the rest of your colleagues and even a bit from yourself (I've pointedly avoided talking about the Amiibo fiasco), we can't even trust that.

And now we've heard that Metroid, one of the mainstays of any Nintendo console, won't get a proper entry on the Wii U at all.

This tells me that low sales early in the console's life stole any confidence you had in the console itself, that you feel like you have to go back to the drawing board and design some new gimmick to sell some new console. This is a slap in the face to those of us who adopted the Wii U with faith that you, one of the oldest hands at the video game trade, would deliver despite all evidence to the contrary. But it's looking like that faith was misplaced. You refused to back the Wii U after your mistakes made the thing a bit of a flop...despite the fact that it wasn't the machine but your lack of games that made it that way. The Wii U has some great, timeless entries already. But now that you're looking at the "next big thing," we can't reasonably expect anything else from it. It really feels like this console generation is over for you and even if it ends up being roughly the same eight-or-so year turnaround that the Wii had, it hardly had any of the illustrious joy that that machine's life brought to us...all because it lived under this cloud of unconfidence.

I really wish you had never let slip that you were working on the NX. We can all assume you are, but to say it outright was a knife in the back. I bought a Wii U and I love the thing. I love the few games it has...but I really had hoped to get more out of it. Maybe you did too, but giving up was never the answer.

I hope that when you do release the NX, you make the controversial announcement that it will not be HD. I feel like the longer production times do not suit your unique style of game delivery. We expect more quantity from you, Nintendo, because your quality is almost always assured. And honestly, I'm sick of this push for better and better graphics anyways. It pushes up the cost of game production and lengthens the production time. And I know you catch a lot of flack for constantly rehashing the same games over and over again, but I hope you return to form with Mario and Zelda and Metroid a lot sooner than you have with this generation. "Give the fans what they want" might be a dirty phrase to some, but I think Nintendo fans know that seeing "Metroid 16: The Return of Samus" isn't the same as getting the next Call of Duty or Modern Warfare, that you always find a way to deliver a quality title in a familiar wrapper.

In short: trust in yourself and do what you do. Don't let the peer pressure from the rest of the industry and the people that aren't your fans anyways change how you do your thing.