UK Wii U advert banned due to misleading public

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a Wii U advertisement, following a complaint that it is misleading consumers.

The UK independent regulatory body had investigated an advert that stated players were able to continue playing on the Wii U GamePad’s screen, if someone else wished to use the television.

The complainant challenged whether this was misleading, as not every game has such implemented feature, to which Nintendo defended itself by stating the advert made no mention that the console’s functionality would be available across all software.

Yet, the ASA has ruled that the advertisement must no longer be shown again within its current form.

“The ad referred to a number of features of the Wii U console and GamePad, including being able to shoot at the TV using the GamePad, switching gameplay to the GamePad if someone else wanted to use the TV and using the GamePad to zoom in on targets, enter key codes and interact with the surroundings in the game,” the regulatory body writes.

“The ASA considered that it would be clear to consumers that many of these features would not be available in all games. However, we considered that the option to switch gameplay to the GamePad controller could be available on all games, and as this was a new console consumers would not have an awareness of whether this was something specific to individual games or a general feature of the console.

“We considered that, in this context, the ad should have made clear that this feature would not be available on all games. Because it did not, we concluded the ad was misleading.”