Wii U Catch-All

So after finally having some time to spend with the WiiU, some initial impressions:

-As others have said, the initial firmware update is dumb and shouldn't have been necessary but once it's done, whatever. When I go into the Download Management area, I see something there that indicates to me that future firmware updates will pre-download in the background. Brilliant on Nintendo's part if that's true. PS3 only does that with a paid service and Xbox doesn't do it at all.
-The Wii transfer process is horrendous and inexcusable and illustrates everything that's wrong with DRM. I blogged about that already so that's all I'll say.
-With the GamePad being as big as it is, there's no excuse for not putting a better battery in it. My 3DS XL gets a longer charge than the controller for a home system. Like what?
-The YouTube app is garbage (but so is the PS3 one it seems to be based off of) but the WiiU's implementation of Netflix and how it integrates with the GamePad is awesome.

As for games...

I've only played Nintendo Land, ZombiU and Nano Assault Neo so far. After playing a ton of Nintendo Land with my girlfriend, I think the cynical gaming press who were down on this need to step back, look at the field they've chosen to pursue and remember what fun is. This is Wii Sports evolved in all the best ways possible. There's way more mini games (though like Wii Sports, they're each lacking in content), they all use the GamePad in unique ways and they're all examples of super tight systems design. Sure it's a tech demo but it shows how great the tech is and how much dumb fun you can have with it. I was asked to get a couple of Wiis to bring to the after party of my employer's conference this week. I'm totally bringing my Wii U (with a note on it begging people to be careful with it) and Nintendo Land. I might even buy a couple of Motion+ add-ons for my old Wii Remotes. When I hear Patrick Klepek talk about how he brought his Wii U home for Christmas and people who previously loved Wii Sports didn't touch it because they found it too intimidating, it makes me realise just how utterly dumbed down the mainstream public is demanding things get and why the most popular mobile games are all ultra-simplistic. If something requires any more than 30 seconds to not only learn but get good at, the average person these days can't seem to be bothered to even try. If the game involves more than flinging a Wii Remote forward or stabbing at a touch screen, it's not worth trying. That's a sad commentary on the attention span of most people these days.

I'm a huge fan of Shin'En and own every shmup they've made from the GBA, DS, 3DS and now the WiiU. This game's a tad light on content for $10 but as usual, Shin'En does what they do very well. This is a fun twin stick shmup with unique mechanics that has that 90s "demo scene" feel around it, especially in the music. It starts easy but gets crazy hard by the 3rd area. If you like the genre as I do, it's a no brainer.

I managed to snag ZombiU cheap on a Boxing Week sale and I put about 2 hours into it. I'm honestly surprised reviews on this are as polarising as they are. I hate horror games and generally dislike extremely hard games (both of which this is) but I'm loving it so far! This is a prime example of what the GamePad is capable of with a hard core title. Some people think the comparisons to Dark Souls don't make a lot of sense but I disagree. You can clearly see a lot of its influence here and that's a good thing. It's scary, it's tense and it's very immersive. My chief complaint is that there aren't more melee weapons and that there's really only one move with the cricket bat (though it's a very satisfying move indeed). The game's also pretty ugly but with the rest of the experience such as it is, I don't care at all. I had about 700 uPlay points saved up from other games that I'd never touched and I bought all the silly little add-ons for this just because. My girlfriend's not into games at all and would probably find the multiplayer mode too difficult compared to Nintendo Land but I'm going to get her to try it with me. I fully intend to finish this, though I imagine it will take me quite a while since I can't play scary stuff in long sessions.

Overall, I'm really liking the system and I can see buckets of potential here. I just don't know if the general public's willing to embrace this the way Nintendo needs. It's a great idea but mainstream expectations for games both in terms of quality and especially price have fallen so low that I'm not sure this can hit big. I hope it at least finds a hard core following that can still keep Nintendo in the black. I so want to see third parties embrace this system with game ideas that are tailored around what it does. At least on the downloadable side, I think Nintendo has a shot since they seem to have changed their terms to make this the most indie friendly console around. I'll happily buy a bunch of stuff on the eShop if they make the DRM not beyond stupid.

Who was down on Nintendo Land? Most reviews I've seen were quite positive about it.

Is there a list of friend codes somewhere? I need to add mine, and also get some friends on my list!

Rallick wrote:

Is there a list of friend codes somewhere? I need to add mine, and also get some friends on my list!

There's a WiiU box in account settings now, that's where I got the list from:

shoptroll wrote:

Who was down on Nintendo Land? Most reviews I've seen were quite positive about it.

It was probably more podcasts than written stuff but a lot of ones I listened to said "Yeah it's cool but it's no Wii Sports." Many called it too complicated and that it's not going to sell systems and that most people will get bored with it after a few minutes. Giant Bomb also seemed to be pretty down on it in post-review discussions but they often are and seem to be down on anything Nintendo lately. Patrick in particular was lamenting how because people get intimidated by "all the buttons" when they pick up the GamePad, that it doesn't have mass appeal. But then again, it seems everyone he knows from back home where he did this experiments owns iPads, isn't into games and can't be bothered to put any effort into something that requires more than simple screen gestures. I suppose that like Wii Sports, this isn't really designed to appeal to the hard core or the press that represents them so maybe their opinion doesn't matter that much in this case.

I like the split-screen aspect in COD where one can have his very own display.

Don't forget to pick up at least 1 pro controller.

So I finally did some house cleaning on my desktop and freed up a 2TB external hard drive in the process. This led me to plug the drive into the WiiU to see what specifically goes on when USB external storage is connected. Here's what I found out:

-As soon as the console sees the drive, it prompts you to format it for use with the Wii U. This process can be accomplished via a single button press on the same screen, and with my 2TB drive, it took seconds.
-The option to reformat connected USB storage devices is also available from the settings menu.
-A word of caution: with USB storage connected, the Wii U seems to set it as the default location for where to store downloaded content. There's no prompt to switch to internal storage at download time. If you plan on taking your WiiU to other places and don't want to carry your hard drive, you'll want to be sure that your USB storage is disconnected prior to purchasing content you want on the system proper.

An additional observation: if you need to re-download a previous purchase again, going to the eShop entry for that content doesn't give you the option to do so at the top level. For whatever reason, Nintendo hides this under the "details" section, which then displays a bright blue "Download Again" button. I could see this being frustrating for some users, and would like to see the button moved up to the main entry for each game/app for the sake of clarity.

In other news, Kotaku's got a piece up referencing Nintendo's vague plans for getting Virtual Console on the Wii U side of things. The gist is that it's definitely planned, but there's no public-facing roadmap for this, as should by now be expected in a world where Iwata tells the press he's not worried about lukewarm sales and the like. While I'm not a big fan of Kotaku, the piece in question resonates with my own frustration over the relative lack of Wii U eShop activity since launch. I'd say some more about that, but following some "it's January in the games industry!" knee-jerking elsewhere, I want to formulate those thoughts a bit more clearly. For now, I'll just say my gut doesn't like the notion of such limited activity nearly two months into the lifecycle of a poorly marketed flagship console - I'll be a lot happier when we start seeing new stuff on a regular basis and the 3DS eShop envy subsides.

Good to know about the hard drive quirks. I've got a 1/2 TB drive I use for backups which I was eventually planning on repurposing to a WiiU drive should the need arise. I'm guessing there's no prompt because engineering found it confused a focus group or something.

In a more cynical view, Jason Schreier got on his megaphone to have an whine. Again

The gist is that it's definitely planned, but there's no public-facing roadmap for this, as should by now be expected in a world where Iwata tells the press he's not worried about lukewarm sales and the like. While I'm not a big fan of Kotaku, the piece in question resonates with my own frustration over the relative lack of Wii U eShop activity since launch. I'd say some more about that, but following some "it's January in the games industry!" knee-jerking elsewhere, I want to formulate those thoughts a bit more clearly. For now, I'll just say my gut doesn't like the notion of such limited activity nearly two months into the lifecycle of a poorly marketed flagship console - I'll be a lot happier when we start seeing new stuff on a regular basis and the 3DS eShop envy subsides.

I'm not worried about the WiiU right now. To me, this is Nintendo operating as usual. They always play their cards close to their chest, and they're an old monolithic company that still doesn't move very fast, and still doesn't have much of an online strategy in 2013. To put things in perspective: it took the Wii 16 months before the WiiWare service launched, and the 3DS didn't have any downloadable software for the first 5 months of its availability.

We're six weeks in, that's not a lot of time from an engineering standpoint. Especially when we're talking about things like a native Virtual Console which probably needs a large amount of QA time to make sure they don't break compatibility with the over 400 titles available in each region.

Indie games will come in time, and I honestly don't know what people were expecting post-launch. Aside from what they had already lined up (probably as a test pilot to ensure their certification processes worked) it's going to take time for existing titles and currently in development titles to be ported, and there also needs to be time set aside for contracts and the like. Plus, I think a number of indie developers were skeptical of the WiiU download service primarily because of the way they handled the WiiWare service, and I think many of them have been turned off from consoles in general as Steam/PC and mobile are a lot more lucrative and easier to work with than the console makers.

If we don't have updates by GDC or E3, then I'll start worrying.

Pretty much what shoptroll said. In their never ending quest for clicks, the gaming press conveniently forgets history and the fact that Nintendo systems always tend to start slow and build up over time. The Wii was an exception to this but it become a fashion phenomena that even Nintendo didn't see coming and I don't think anyone in their management is crazy enough to believe that's going to happen again. Apple's taken over that fashion trend for right now and the default reaction seems to be to call anything that doesn't sell as well at launch as one of their things a failure. That the Wii U won't sell as well as the Wii doesn't mean it's a failure but a lot of people will want to call it that. As has been said elsewhere, if they don't have some big announcements soon or if sales drop off a cliff over the next few months, then there might be some cause to worry about the Wii U's long-term viability. For now however, it's too early to tell.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

The Wii was an exception to this but it become a fashion phenomena that even Nintendo didn't see coming and I don't think anyone in their management is crazy enough to believe that's going to happen again.

Even though it was the exception due to Wii Sports (arguably, the system's "killer app"), the system really didn't ramp out of the "launch window" of ports and shovelware until April-June of 2007, judging by this list on Wikipedia.

shoptroll wrote:
Parallax Abstraction wrote:

The Wii was an exception to this but it become a fashion phenomena that even Nintendo didn't see coming and I don't think anyone in their management is crazy enough to believe that's going to happen again.

Even though it was the exception due to Wii Sports (arguably, the system's "killer app"), the system really didn't ramp out of the "launch window" of ports and shovelware until April-June of 2007, judging by this list on Wikipedia.

Yep. I bought a Wii at launch and beyond Twilight Princess which I got with it, I don't think I bought another game for the system for several months.

It amazes me that most of the "sources" I've seen in stories calling the Wii U a failure are anecdotal evidence of people seeing them on store shelves instead of being sold out everywhere. A few years ago, Nintendo was heavily criticised for not producing enough Wiis to satisfy demand. Now there's a few in stock in some places (personally, I have seen a single Basic set available at a drug store here, EB Games and Best Buy are consistently sold out) and apparently that means demand is soft. I can go into a store right now and get an iPad Mini or an iPhone 5 but those are most certainly not failures. Unfortunately, controversy drives clicks and calling things failures as soon as possible is a good way to create that.

PXA wrote:

For now however, it's too early to tell.

Recent history tells me anything short of fall 2015 is too early to judge. The PS3 had been called a failure for the first three years of its life and the install base is now on par with the 360. The Wii U is in a different situation of course, but I think in these situations we are all guilty of setting deadlines and making declarations because we just want things to talk about. This stuff happens in all sectors, sports, politics, economics, you name it.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

Yep. I bought a Wii at launch and beyond Twilight Princess which I got with it, I don't think I bought another game for the system for several months.

Twilight Princess wasn't even a native Wii game. They just added widescreen, flipped the game across the vertical, and mapped waggle to button inputs. I don't think I would've bought a Wii game until Mario Galaxy if they had only released the Gamecube version of Twilight Princess.

Blind_Evil wrote:

The PS3 had been called a failure for the first three years of its life and the install base is now on par with the 360.

Not to mention the fact that perception of the 360 is trending downward due to the increased presence of ads on the dashboard and the continued toxic culture of Live voice chat.

shoptroll wrote:

the continued toxic culture of Live voice chat.

On this one point, let's be honest here: whomever has the highest population on their system engaged in voicechat is going to have the most toxic "culture". The few games on the PS3 I've played online, voicechat there is almost as bad as on Live multiplayer games.

The difference though is that on the 360, I could figure out how to mute anyone not on my friends list. I haven't figured out how to do that on the PS3 yet.

Farscry wrote:

On this one point, let's be honest here: whomever has the highest population on their system engaged in voicechat is going to have the most toxic "culture". The few games on the PS3 I've played online, voicechat there is almost as bad as on Live multiplayer games.

I believe that, but you hear complaints about voice chat brought up a lot more for the 360 than the PS3 which was part of my point about "perception".

"The Wii U is a flop" isn't something I buy into, and you won't find me suggesting it above for that reason. I'm just frustrated by seeing new stuff out every week for the 3DS eShop while there's no outward-facing indication of when we might approach a similar point with the Wii U. It's not that I'm worried, it's more that I'm puzzled by how Nintendo can behave...well, like Nintendo in regard to such a significant and especially revenue-oriented part of its main console's online ecosystem. We're not only well past the point where there are expectations set by the other console companies and their offerings, but Nintendo is doing it on their other current platform! Even "here's a three minute video of a cool feature you'll see in the next six months!", offered through the eShop or another part of the system's online functionality (other than the web browser) would go a long way, not just in satiating my impatience, but much more importantly, reminding those people who aren't reading gaming news etc. that this really neat system has X Y and Z online components and that it's going to continue to grow and that this is a thing Nintendo is interested in you knowing about, because it's going to be a big part of the platform's life cycle. Nintendo even makes some content like this every now and then, so why not pump it through the console where everyone gets a chance to see it?

That said, I actually liked the fact that the Kotaku piece was written from the perspective of someone who really likes the platform, rather than a plain old games criticism doomsayer who favors phrases like "dead in the water" for dramatic purposes. Probably another reason I got riled up enough to link it: I feel similarly.

shoptroll wrote:
Farscry wrote:

On this one point, let's be honest here: whomever has the highest population on their system engaged in voicechat is going to have the most toxic "culture". The few games on the PS3 I've played online, voicechat there is almost as bad as on Live multiplayer games.

I believe that, but you hear complaints about voice chat brought up a lot more for the 360 than the PS3 which was part of my point about "perception".

Ahh, ok, now I get what you mean.

So I'm going to try a little experiment tonight. My employer's annual 2 day conference is happening and last year, they setup a couple of Wiis for the party at the end of it all for the people who wanted to relax a bit more and not dance and whatnot. They asked me to spearhead that again so I got a Wii but I'm also bringing my Wii U and Nintendo Land. Really curious to see how inebriated colleagues take to it. Unfortunately, I only have two extra Wii Remotes and neither are Motion Plus (couldn't convince people to let me expense a couple) so that limits out a couple of the games but the majority are still there. Nintendo Land is definitely not as pick up and play friendly as Wii Sports but I think the games are much more fun with a group so I really want to see how they take to it. These are total non-gamers and very representative of the mainstream that Nintendo would like to tap again.

Can't wait to hear what happens, PXA. Nothing like field testing the casual threshold, particularly when it's variability can potentially make a good argument about why the casual/hardcore dichotomy is flawed. (I'd like to add "...and there may be better ways of examining interest" but I have none to suggest off the top of my head.)

There's now a demo of Zombii U in the eShop.

ianunderhill wrote:

stuff...

I see a new icon!

How many were being made from the donation drive? So far I've also noticed Tanglebones and the thread for TigerBill.

Not to mention the fact that perception of the 360 is trending downward due to the increased presence of ads on the dashboard and the continued toxic culture of Live voice chat.

Where are the indications that its trending downward? Holiday Season seemed fairly robust for the 360

TheGameguru wrote:
Not to mention the fact that perception of the 360 is trending downward due to the increased presence of ads on the dashboard and the continued toxic culture of Live voice chat.

Where are the indications that its trending downward? Holiday Season seemed fairly robust for the 360

Wasn't talking sales wise, but it seems like there's growing discontent with the system lately. No real source on that though.

shoptroll wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:
Not to mention the fact that perception of the 360 is trending downward due to the increased presence of ads on the dashboard and the continued toxic culture of Live voice chat.

Where are the indications that its trending downward? Holiday Season seemed fairly robust for the 360

Wasn't talking sales wise, but it seems like there's growing discontent with the system lately. No real source on that though.

oh.. Angry Internet Men... right.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

There's now a demo of Zombii U in the eShop.

Go get this is you have the slightest interest! I hate super hard games and scary games and despite this being both, I love it.

I'll second that - if I'd have picked up the WiiU prior to choosing my top 10 games of the year, zombiU would have been a serious contender.

So what is the next game that people should get? Rayman: Legends? I have ZombiiU, and while it's a fantastic game it's only one title for a system that cost quite a bit.

Monster Hunter Tri U looks good, but I already have the original one on the Wii - should I pre-order the "enhanced" one (and sell my Wii one), or just avoid it altogether?

Rayman: Legends is a day one buy for me. Rayman: Origins is one of my favourite games of this generation and my girlfriend and I can't wait to co-op Legends.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

Rayman: Legends is a day one buy for me. Rayman: Origins is one of my favourite games of this generation and my girlfriend and I can't wait to co-op Legends.

Absobloodylutely. Really looking forward to this one.

Vrikk wrote:

So what is the next game that people should get? Rayman: Legends? I have ZombiiU, and while it's a fantastic game it's only one title for a system that cost quite a bit.

Monster Hunter Tri U looks good, but I already have the original one on the Wii - should I pre-order the "enhanced" one (and sell my Wii one), or just avoid it altogether?

Rayman Legends is definitely worth getting.

Of course I'm going to say get Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, but how much did you play Tri? If you're looking to get back into it, this is the definitive version to get. There will be a nice little community of GWJ'ers to hunt with online as well, once it comes out.