Wii U Catch All

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Well, Wii U for now. Nintendo's thinking about changing the name.

A bunch of new information came out in Nintendo's investor's meeting yesterday and there's been a report about the graphical powers being greater than the anticipated underclocked Radeon 4850's used around E3 last year.

What's new is:
Nintendo Network (link to info directly taken from english version of investors meeting info posted to nintendo.co.jp) - Each user on the console will be allowed to have their own account.
This at least sets up possibilities for things like the established norms of achievements and friends lists everyone else has. Nintendo hasn't confirmed either.

DLC and full game downloads: The mention was still of space restrictions of SD cards, which is discouraging for any hopes for a HDD. Do not expect one, ever.

The decision must be made by taking into consideration such factors as the relationship with the wholesalers and retailers, and the best way to be embraced by consumers, as well as the environment surrounding the market and consumers, such as the required memory capacity on consumers’ SD memory cards

More functionality in the controller than previously known including near-field communication technology. And some devs saying there's even more to come.

It has been reconfirmed for worldwide availability in time for the holiday season. For Nintendo's sake, I hope my prediction that they'll be releasing in NA on November 18th, 2012 is wrong and they launch earlier.

Also, the rumors and power debate seen elsewhere:

rumors[/url]]...the Xbox 720's raw graphics processing power is expected to be six times that of the Xbox 360 and will yield 20-percent greater performance than Nintendo's forthcoming console, the Wii U.

While that's all good sounding news, I know it's Nintendo and when it comes to their online and such, they're not going to wow anyone. So I fully expect their online implementation to be barely adequate at best, and I'm one of their biggest fans around here. Things like voice chat through headsets included with the system are likely to not happen, and this makes me sad. And if there is a mic included, it will likely be on the touch pad controller, making it a pain for any game that doesn't use it in online play.

I'm still looking forward to seeing what E3 brings and the system launch.

I'm thinking of placing the launch line-up here when we know what it is.

I can't wait for E3 where they will reveal the system, the games and the online. And if the Xbox 720 rumors are true (that it's not going to be that much more powerful), the WiiU could be the PS2 of next gen, where third party developers make the WiiU version the baseline and then just port to 720/PS4/PC. Man, you know Retro and EAD Tokyo have some crazy stuff cooking right now. Nintendo games in HD

I jumped on the Wii bandwagon right away and I've owned every Nintendo console so far. I've grown skeptical and really want some new games. They've reiterated just about every Nintendo IP on the Wii and I'm burned out.

mrwynd wrote:

I jumped on the Wii bandwagon right away and I've owned every Nintendo console so far. I've grown skeptical and really want some new games. They've reiterated just about every Nintendo IP on the Wii and I'm burned out.

It's not that. You've just grown older.

I'm super excited for E3. Now granted, I won't get to see any of it until I get home from work. But my supervisors will watch live in the warehouse. So I'll at least hear all the great stuff. And certainly preparing when we have to work on it in our warehouse.

mrwynd wrote:

I jumped on the Wii bandwagon right away and I've owned every Nintendo console so far. I've grown skeptical and really want some new games. They've reiterated just about every Nintendo IP on the Wii and I'm burned out.

Out of curiosity, what kind of games would you like to see them work in?

BNice wrote:

the WiiU could be the PS2 of next gen

In one respect, it's doing what the healthiest system of each of the 3 last gens has done. Get to market first with a mostly comparable specc'ed system to the real competition. Of course, they still need to execute.

There were still a number of skipped Nintendo IP's on the Wii, though.

F-Zero
Pilotwings
Pikmin (not counting new play control re-release)
Star Fox
Wave Race
Earthbound
Custom Robo

And then they decided most of their new IP's weren't good enough for NA / any market.

mrtomaytohead wrote:
BNice wrote:

the WiiU could be the PS2 of next gen

In one respect, it's doing what the healthiest system of each of the 3 last gens has done. Get to market first with a mostly comparable specc'ed system to the real competition.

Eh? If by last three you mean SNES, N64, and Gamecube era, it's gone quite the opposite, no?

SNES was the champ in that time, N64 came out late with wildly different controller and no disc media.

PS2 was beat to market by the Dreamcast after PS1 dominated that generation.

PS3 came a year after the 360.

Wii U is coming out first.

Blind_Evil wrote:

PS2 was beat to market by the Dreamcast after PS1 dominated that generation.

Sega's MegaDrive/Genesis launched well before the SNES too. Two year lead in fact!

I was kind of hoping this might be available for demo at PAX East, but I guess they'll probably wait until E3 for that sort of thing

With this as any console, it's all about the games. If they come out with quality games in their standard franchises (paricularly Mario) then I'll likely pick up this console. New IP would be great but I'm not actually sick of the old standbys, especially with the excellent showing by such old-IP titles as Skyward Sword and Galaxy 1 & 2.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Wii U is coming out first.

It's funny, I don't even consider the Wii U the start of a new generation. I see it more like the Dreamcast where it's slotted between, straddling the old and what's to come.

Anyway, the thing about this system that boggles my mind is that they're still talking about SD cards. That seems so 2005. Though I'd rather have them than proprietary memory cards like Sony's overpriced stuff for the Vita.

Blind_Evil wrote:
mrtomaytohead wrote:
BNice wrote:

the WiiU could be the PS2 of next gen

In one respect, it's doing what the healthiest system of each of the 3 last gens has done. Get to market first with a mostly comparable specc'ed system to the real competition.

Eh? If by last three you mean SNES, N64, and Gamecube era, it's gone quite the opposite, no?

SNES was the champ in that time, N64 came out with wildly different controller and no disc media.

PS2 was beat to market by the Dreamcast after PS1 dominated that generation.

PS3 came a year after the 360.

Wii U is coming out first.

I meant PSOne, PS2, 360. I don't count the Dreamcast or Saturn. SEGA's only console that stayed in the races and didn't get canned less than half-way through the cycle or stay with any level of competitiveness was the Genesis. N64 came out last and was a relative flop despite having games I actually wanted to play outside of RPG's, like the PSOne. The PS2 dominated. And really, the 360 is why I chose the word healthy because the Wii is all but dead and the PS3 has just not performed to 360's staying power in NA but then you have Japan where you can't give away the 360. Oddly, yes, the PS3 has worldwide sales parity with the 360. And the 360 is the one current system I don't own. The 360 just gets more love from developers, and it's Wii me-to peripheral hasn't disappeared into thin air.

There's no question the SNES was the best 16-bit console, of course.

I didnt realize this wasnt shipping with a HD? Why is Nintendo clinging to this SD card approach.. seems odd..

TheGameguru wrote:

I didnt realize this wasnt shipping with a HD? Why is Nintendo clinging to this SD card approach.. seems odd..

As always, costs. This is why I'm still betting on sub-$300.

I just put a 32gb microSD card in my mp3 player for $30. I have a hard time imagining that Nintendo couldn't put something relatively substantial in the Wii U for cheaper than that.

Who says they won't do that? Nintendo ships a 2 gig SD card with every 3DS. They'll probably ship something similar for the WiiU.

cube wrote:

Who says they won't do that? Nintendo ships a 2 gig SD card with every 3DS. They'll probably ship something similar for the WiiU.

I meant internally as a hard drive.

yeah even 64GB won't cut it if Nintendo is positioning this system to compete with the Xbox 720-PS4. Mandatory installs are going to be 100% certain as Blu-Ray's are not going to feed data that much faster than they do now.. that bottleneck aint keeping up with Texture Size and Compression technology.

Isn't the Wii U using some proprietary disc and not Bluray?

garion333 wrote:

Isn't the Wii U using some proprietary disc and not Bluray?

Oh that's a good point. It's probably using a much faster optical tech then...

Hopefully this means they really are going to make it easier for online stuff (only quoted one paragraph from pages of text):

Iwata[/url]]Additionally, in connection with the flow from watching the "Nintendo Direct" presentation to trying the demo versions I mentioned, it was a new discovery for us that so many people watched the presentation via the Nintendo eShop. If we can construct a seamless flow in guiding consumers to watch the Nintendo Direct presentation on their Nintendo 3DS and then voluntarily try 3D trailers and demo versions (that were introduced in "Nintendo Direct"), this is a fairly powerful and efficient system. One of our reflections on why we could not bring our network business up to the level we had anticipated is that each step consumers had to take was not simple enough. It is said that with each extra step, the number of consumers drops by one-tenth. Our challenge is how to improve such steps one by one.

There's also mention of the fact that they're focusing on other specialties and the network capabilities instead of HD since that's already the norm.

On the other hand, as far as graphics capabilities are concerned, there are already other hardware systems with similar functions. Therefore, we have designed the Wii U to be recognized as being different from any other hardware system. Although I cannot elaborate on its network functions today, as we are preparing for the launch of the Wii U, we are taking into consideration its network-related capabilities.

Of course, I feel like Nintendo's been down this road of saying the right thing when we know nothing about a system before. So I'll be happy if things work in ways we as lifelong video game players expect, but not too let down when the most likely do not. I'm just glad to know they're looking at what they've done and realizing things need to be different.

Pikmin makes way more sense on the WiiU. Mario ... eh.

I hope they stay as far out of the online crap as possible. It will be really nice to have a new nintendo system though. Seems like they gave up on the wii and just keep pumping out games for that gameboy 3 thing.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

I wish I had put that in my bold predictions as I've been thinking for a while that they'd launch with both of those games.

Don't worry, I've got your back on this one

garion333 wrote:

Pikmin makes way more sense on the WiiU. Mario ... eh.

Mario makes sense because it's a system seller and time for another console Mario that's hopefully a 3D Mario, but will likely be NSMB style. I didn't mean to say that it made sense with the Wii U controller.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

will likely be NSMB style

I think this is pretty likely since one of the tech demos was NSMB Mii at E3 last year.

EDIT: Reading comprehension fail

Pikmin is actually the game that sold me a Gamecube after I realised that there really wasn't going to be anything else coming out for my Dreamcast unless I wanted to pay extortionate prices for Japan-only SHMUPS, and I needed a new system to see me through the cycle.

I... don't like where this is headed.

Well crap.

Kotaku[/url]]Nintendo has responded. "In a recent interview, Mr. Miyamoto confirmed that a new Super Mario Bros. game for the Wii U system will be shown at this year's E3 Expo. This is based on the Mario experience that was demonstrated at last year's E3 Expo. We'll have more to announce about our plans for the E3 Expo at a later date."

I honestly haven't enjoyed the NSMB games all that much. They were fun to play once, like too many other games from other companies. They've got nothing on Mario 64/Galaxy.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

They were fun to play once, like too many other games from other companies. They've got nothing on Mario 64/Galaxy.

I think the difference is that collecting the star coins isn't nearly as compelling as collecting stars/shines because the levels are static. 3D Mario does this wonderful thing where the level layouts and paths change depending on the star you're getting. So while you're in the same "level" you're seeing new things for each task.

That said, I know I've gone for repeat playthroughs of Mario 1, 3, and World, but I still haven't hit any of the "New" series for a second pass...

mrtomaytohead wrote:

Looks like we're getting Mario and Pikmin at E3.

That's cool and all, and it'd be nice if they actually came out with Pikmin 3, but where's my Paper Mario? That article mentions Luigi's Mansion 2 but seriously Paper Mario.

I think the difference is that collecting the star coins isn't nearly as compelling as collecting stars/shines because the levels are static. 3D Mario does this wonderful thing where the level layouts and paths change depending on the star you're getting. So while you're in the same "level" you're seeing new things for each task.

I think it's more than just that. The Galaxy games are completely epic, with that fantastic orchestrated music, the imaginative level design -- everything about them screams polish and talent.

The NMSB games are fun, but they're like a lot of other games that are just fun.

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