Introduction
Throughout my life, I have always played Nintendo video games. I grew up with the Wii and have always enjoyed Nintendo’s video games. Recently, I have been playing the Nintendo Switch, and I love it. The Switch came out in 2017 and it is still one of the most popular Nintendo consoles to date. However, before the Nintendo Switch, there was the Wii U. The Wii U came out in 2012 and was released after the Wii and before the Switch. The Wii U is sandwiched directly between the two most popular Nintendo consoles, at yet, the Wii U was one of the most under performing Nintendo consoles. Most people disregarded it, and considering how popular the Switch is, it is amazing how unimpressive the Wii U was in terms of popularity and sales.
For this analysis, I will be looking at Amazon reviews for the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Wii U to see what Amazon users are saying about them. I am very curious to see if anything comes up in the reviews about how the Wii U was so disregarded and why the Switch was so loved.
I will be scraping reviews from North American Amazon users for both the Switch and the Wii U. I am performing a web scrape from Amazon because the reviews are from people who have bought the product and, knowing Amazon, are more likely to be honest. I will collect reviews from the first 3 pages of reviews for each console.
For the Switch and the Wii U, I collected the following variables for each console: • product_name - The product’s name
• reviewer_rating - the rating given to the game from the Amazon user
• review_content - the review given to the product by the user
• page_id - link to the review
Basic Statistics
Before we get into the deeper analysis, here are some basic statistics from the web scrape. This includes the average rating given to the console (value between 1-5), the max rating given to the console, the minimum rating given to the console, and the standard deviation for each console.
| product_name | Average Rating | Max Rating | Min Rating | Standard Deviation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nintendo Switch – OLED Model w/ Neon Red & Neon Blue Joy-Con | 4.8 | 5 | 4 | 0.4068381 |
| Nintendo Wii U Console - 32GB Black Deluxe Set | 4.5 | 5 | 2 | 0.9377155 |
From the reviews retrieved from Amazon, the users gave the Nintendo Switch an average rating of 4.8 out of 5, and gave the Wii U a 4.5 out of 5. Both consoles had a max rating of 5, but the Switch had a minimum rating of 4 while the Wii U had a minimum rating of 2.
The standard deviation is the measure of how dispersed the data is in relation to the mean. If the value is low that means the data is clustered around the mean. If the value is high, that means the data is more spread out. The standard deviation for the Switch is low at 0.4, while the standard deviation for the Wii U is high at 0.9. This means the rating for the Wii U is more spread out around the mean (4.5), while the rating for the Switch is closer to the mean (most values are around 4.8).
Bing Analysis
Next for this analysis is the sentiment analysis. Here, were are looking at the positive and negative words used in the reviews for the Switch and the Wii U. This visual is going to show us what the positive and negative words used with the reviews are, and also shows us how often they occur.
The x axis represents the count for the number of times the word was used, the y axis shows what the words are, and the colors shows is the words are positive or negative. Blue means it is positive, and red means it is negative. For this graph I used the Bing Lexicon.
Based
on the sentiment analysis, the Switch has less negative words used
overall. While the Wii U has a larger amount of negative words. Overall,
people had more emotions related to the Wii U than to the Switch. The
top positive words for the Switch were recommend, joy, and love and the
top negative word was overpriced, which makes sense since the Switch is
a very expensive console. For the Wii U, the top positive words were
support, fun, and joy and the top negative word was issues. Issues could
refer to a number of things, such as technical issues, visual issues,
sound issues, or just game issues. The word can also be taken out of
context, such as a review could have said, “there were no issues.”
In general, the Switch is a better model because it had more positive words then negative. The negative words it did have included words such as overpriced and slow, which makes sense based on the common complaints about the Switch. Reviewers had a lot more emotions about the Wii U, and had more negative things to say about it then the Switch. The negative words for the Wii U include issues, dead, broken, complaints, and confusing.
Positivity Score for Each Console based on Rating
Now I want to look at the the positivity score for each console. The positivity score is calculated by subtracting the negative words from the total number of positive words.
In this visual, the x axis represents the rating, the y-axis is the positivity score, and the colors represent the console. Red is for the Switch, and blue is for the Wii U.
Based on the graph, the Switch has a higher positivity score over all.
Since the ratings are primarily between 4 and 5 for the switch, the
positivity score is more likely to be higher. In the 4 rating, the
Switch has a significantly higher positivity score than the Wii U. In
the 5 rating, it has the same score as the Wii U. The Wii U, while it
has the same score as the Switch in the 5 rating, it has a significantly
less positive score in the 4 rating. Based on the graph, the Wii U also
has a very small positivity score under the 2 rating.
This visual suggests that overall, the Switch has a higher positivity rate than the Wii U, which correlates with what we found in the descriptive analysis. In comparison to other consoles, the Wii U is not as popular.
NRC Analysis
For the next analysis, I will be looking at the sentiment score for each product based on the number of emotional words within the reviews.
The x axis is the emotional sentiment, or the list of emotions found within the reviews, the y axis shows the total number of words, and the colors represent the console. Blue is for the Wii U, and red is for the Switch. Here I used the NRC Lexicon
The
emotional words found from the reviews that are listed on the x axis,
are as follows: anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, joy, negative,
positive, sadness, surprise, and trust. Similar to the Sentiment
analysis with the total negative and positive words, more emotions were
shared in the Wii U reviews than the Switch. For ever single emotion,
the Wii U had a larger amount of emotional words than the Switch. In
both consoles, the emotion for positive was the highest values, but Wii
U had the overall highest value at positive.
For the Wii U and the Switch, the top 3 emotions were positive, trust, and anticipation. However, overall, the Wii U had the most emotions compared to the Switch.
Conclusion
Based on the Amazon reviews, the Wii U had an average of a 4.5 out of 5 rating from Amazon users. Based on the Amazon rating reviews, many people found this console to be above average, at yet it was one of their least popular consoles.
Now, this difference in comparison could be for a number of reasons. For starters, I only scraped 3 reviews for each console, so maybe if I had scraped more I would have gotten a different result. It’s also possible the Wii U console wasn’t that bad, but maybe the games for the Wii U just sucked. But at the same time, the negative words associated with the Wii U were very bad, especially in comparison to the Switch. The negative words were used for the Wii U included issues, complaints, cheap, confusing, and lack, all of which are not great words to describe a video game console. The negative words used to describe the Wii U were nothing like what the Switch got, and could still indicate why the Wii U was significantly less popular.