Leave it to Nintendo to once again do something flat out awesome yet still manage to make me NUTS because they’ve once again forgotten about a slice of their loyal consumers. Sure, it’s absolutely GREAT that the ridiculously popular and profitable Japanese mobile hit Puzzle & Dragons is coming to the Nintendo 3DS soon as Puzzle & Dragons Z this May. And sure, it’s great that Nintendo has wisely realized that many US gamers probably don’t yet know P&D so they’ve had Puzzle & Dragons Super Mario Bros. Edition cooked up just for those gamers as part of the same package. One price, two games? Yup, lovely and double yup, all that is fantastic news. What’s NOT at all fantastic is once again, Wii U owners get stiffed out of a game (or TWO games) a lot off them would probably want to play on a TV with friends, as a standalone product or hell, as something that would connect with one or both of the 3DS games in one way or another.

To me, that kind of forethought makes for a better product, but once again, Nintendo does it halfway. Again, it’s great halfway, but halfway nonetheless…

Hell, I predicted P&D would make it to the 3DS at some point because even without the micro-transactions, the game would sell well enough at a premium price point to more than justify reworking it into a retail or digital game. Not having a Wii U version is a kick to the pants for game-starved home console owners forced to wait it out between key releases. Yeah, yeah, we have a ton of indies, Mario Party 10 on the way and some other major games dropping this year. But Nintendo seems to still be thinking the Wii U exists in some other dimension where people get home and never turn it on or worse, turn it on and not want to play some of the big hits they play while out and about. No Pokemon, Animal Crossing, decent first-party RPGs after over a year on the market and so forth and so on sometimes make me think they had no clue what to do with the Wii U other than show off that still underutilized GamePad.

Feh. Yes, I know the great Wii U games are coming (Xenoblade Chronicles X, that gorgeous new Legend of Zelda) 3DS games can be made much faster than Wii U games and yes, I know the 3DS has a few more million sales than the Wii U does. However, Nintendo isn’t doing anyone any favors when they keep forgetting that a bunch of the more popular first and third-party portable games would probably do almost as well if there were also new games made for the home system. Making those home versions different by taking advantage of the GamePad, Amiibo figures and camera plus whatever optional online functionality could be worked in would go a very long way in showing Wii U owners that the company is serious about supporting that beleaguered console into this year and beyond. Unless of course there’s a new home system coming we all don’t know about yet. Which would be a supreme and lousy surprise to pull, as the Wii U hasn’t even gotten close to being “maxed out” in terms of what it can do.

Of course, I’m probably in the minority here on griping about the lack of more decent Wii U titles even if they’re enhanced ports of mobile games. But if Nintendo doesn’t think more ahead, the Wii U will sink like a stone as a console that could have been a lot better served than it currently is.