The Wii U goes on sale today, and its single biggest problem is not the hardware. It is that I have watched three separate people this week assume it is a tablet accessory for the old Wii. That is not a marketing hiccup. That is a catastrophe hiding inside a launch.

It is, in fact, an entirely new console, Nintendo’s first in high definition, which it is reaching roughly six years after everyone else got there. The whole thing is built around the GamePad, a controller with a six-inch touchscreen set into the middle of it. You can play on the TV, play on the pad alone, or split the experience across both, with one player on the screen and others on the couch. The idea is honestly clever. The execution of explaining that idea to a normal human being has been a complete disaster.

Start with the name. “Wii U” sounds like an upgrade you clip onto a Wii, and every piece of marketing leads with the GamePad, which looks for all the world like a peripheral. After the Wii sold more than 100 million units, Nintendo chained the new machine to that brand and accidentally convinced a chunk of the public it is the same console with a tablet bolted on. Naming is not a trivial detail when your entire previous triumph was built on a grandmother understanding the product in four seconds flat.

The hardware does not rescue the confusion. It runs a tri-core PowerPC chip and an AMD graphics part with 2GB of memory, and yes, it is finally HD, but it is roughly level with the current generation rather than ahead of it, and the 360 and PS3 are seven years old now. The timing is the cruel part. Everyone in the industry knows Sony and Microsoft are launching genuinely new machines next year, so Nintendo’s next-generation console is arriving at the exact moment it is about to look last-generation.

I am not going to pretend I can forecast the third-party situation in detail, but the early signs are ugly, because publishers got burned supporting underpowered Nintendo boxes before and they are visibly hedging this time. What I will say is that the GamePad is the most interesting controller concept since the Wii Remote, and I think it mostly works in the hands. But interesting and legible are not the same property, and Nintendo just wagered the house on the first one without buying any of the second.

The Wii happened because anyone could glance at it and get it instantly. The Wii U needs a paragraph and a diagram, and I have yet to watch a single person explain it cleanly at a party without trailing off halfway. Nintendo went from the most intuitive product in the entire industry to the most confusing one in the span of a single generation. The controller deserves a better box than the one it is bolted to, and I have a genuinely bad feeling about how this sells the moment the holiday curiosity burns off.

The Console War, in Order