Very little has been said of the Nintendo Wii U since its release on November 30th last year. Despite its front-and-centre promotion in shops around the country, its lack of game releases – and its strange placement between two generations of consoles ahead of the much more powerful Sony PlayStation 4 – has made it seemingly hard to sell. Nintendo have tried to remedy that with a carefully-planned leaflet, though it has been immediately criticised.

Picked up by gaming sites Kotaku and Cubed3, the latest printed release was named “absurd”. The advert reads “Why Wii U?”, before providing an extensive list of the things that Wii U consoles can deliver ahead of its predecessor, the almost-ubiquitous Wii.

The leaflet itself was revealed in a tweet by GTTV host Geoff Keighley, who followed up the image of the print-out’s questionable approach with a second tweet that explained how visitors to PAX East could tear the flyers away and take them home, “like phone-pole ads for a neighbourhood dog walker, just in case you forget all the things the Wii won’t do”.

It hasn’t gone down well with the gaming community. Aside from listing the fact that only the Wii U can “use the Wii U gamepad” and “use Wii U accessories” – something frankly unsurprising – it also only addresses the Wii’s similar achievements with a small dot instead of the extravagant ticks that it offers the Wii U.

However, one thing was missing from the round-up that Kotaku was keen to point out. “At least we can be sure Nintendo is definitely aware of the issue,” it said, “but strangely, it seems like they left ‘GameCube game compatibility’ off that list. Now why would they do that?”