Well, Nintendo has done it again. Following in the grand tradition of the DS, the Wii, and the 3DS, Nintendo has dropped something wholly unexpected on gamers during their E3 media briefing, despite the fact that everyone was expecting it. Regardless of your opinions of Nintendo’s efforts, you have to admit that with Nintendo, whatever they put out will cause a massive shitstorm in the gaming community. More than twelve hours after they revealed Project Cafe to the world, people are falling over themselves to try and make sense of what it all means, including yours truly.

Like many watching the Nintendo event, I was expecting Nintendo’s new console to be a return to the enthusiast gamer. The rumors and the mock-ups all pointed to the Big N coming back to their original audience with a high-powered system and a fancy controller that would promise nothing but hard-as-fuck Marios and Zeldas and Metroids as far as the eye can see. We were all prepped to hope that Nintendo was coming out with the GameCube HD. Hell, all the controller mock-ups we’ve been seeing for the last month all looked like monstrous Wavebirds with screens shoved into the face. Sure, motion controls would be kept around as a quaint legacy of these weird past few years, but for all intents and purposes, this was going to be the console that enthusiast gamers had wanted from Nintendo from the very beginning.



Needless to say, you could practically feel the disappointment of the entire gaming community when the new console was revealed to be awkwardly named the ‘WiiU’. In that second, Nintendo made it clear that they were not abandoning the gaming audience they had picked up these last few years. This new console would be a successor to the Wii, not the GameCube. It didn’t help when they first showed the controller, which looks like an iPad with joysticks, buttons, and a d-pad on the sides. Everything in those first minutes of the WiiU’s reveal screamed ‘casual gamer’.

… then came the montage.

If you’ve watched the video of Nintendo’s media event, you know the one I’m talking about. It looked like a typical Wii commercial. White clothing everywhere, bouncy yet calm music, a sterile living room. The WiiU controller being held in front of a TV as a slightly different way to do motion control. I admit it: I was shaking my head in disappointment. However, I kept watching because I wanted to give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt. I wanted to see where they could take this.

As the montage kept going, I started noticing something. The WiiU’s users kept switching the TV screen’s image to the controller and taking it with them. People would go about doing stuff all over the room while using Nintendo’s odd controller the way that was best for their current situation. Playing a game on it so dad could watch a baseball game on TV. Using it to play a simulated boardgame between two people on a coffee table, which is much more intimate than on a big 42” TV screen. It was very subtle, but the sheer dynamicism and adaptability of the controller started to grab my attention. It was definitely a game controller, but at the same time, it had the flexibility and portability of an iPad. People were using this thing the way I’d seen people use tablets around the home... to play console games.

That’s when my jaw dropped. Holy shit, I thought. That’s what they’re doing. Everyone has been wondering how Nintendo would compete with the iPad and smartphones... and they’re not. They’re fucking incorporating them.

It’s like the old Borg saying goes: if you can’t beat ‘em, assimilate ‘em. Then possibly beat them.



At this point, I was definitely intrigued. I was now watching my computer screen with close analytical attention instead of detached disappointment. I watched Reggie and Iwata talk about Nintendo’s motive with the new controller, but there were enough of the company’s usual buzzwords that none of it really stuck with me. It was the same platitudes I’d heard before with the Wii.

… then came another montage.

This one was a series of sound bites from a variety of third-party devs. It was a lot like the dev montage we got during the 3DS unveil this time last year, so I initially rolled my eyes. We get it Nintendo, you’re promising third-party support. Like you did for the 3DS. Which we’ve seen so much of. Dev after dev voiced their praise of the WiiU’s innovation and it was all the usual suspects... until Ken Levine popped up.

Ken Levine.

The creator of Bioshock hasn’t minced words about his dislike of motion control and looked positively pained when he announced during Sony’s media event that his new game, Bioshock Infinite, would include optional PS Move controls. It isn’t too much of a stretch to say that Sony had likely offered to subsidize a significant amount of Bioshock Infinite’s development to the point where it would have been stupid of Irrational Games to say no.

And yet, here was that same man, positively fucking glowing about the WiiU. One of the Wii’s biggest detractors was praising the promise of its direct successor. If that wasn’t enough of a shock (oh I’m so clever), it was Ken Levine’s short bite that finally made me realize what the hell Nintendo was doing with the WiiU. All he said was he loved that he could play it where he wanted, including in his bed while his wife was reading a book or sleeping next to him.

That’s when it hit. This was Nintendo’s answer to one of the gaming industry’s biggest quandaries: how the hell does gaming adapt to the fact that their original audience, kids in the late 80s and early 90s, were now grown up and starting to have lives that took away from gaming? As their lives began more dynamic and their free time got divided into small chunks instead of large blocks, how would games adapt to fit them?

This was Nintendo’s answer: making gaming flexible enough that it can fit a wide variety of lifestyles. It is literally nothing short of giving gamers a console and controller that is as diverse as they are.



Suddenly everything in the opening controller montage made sense. People taking the controller with them throughout the room. Moving the game from the TV screen to the controller screen and back again. Using it as a touch controller, as a motion controller, and as a traditional button controller. Casual games. Hardcore games. Everything in between. The WiiU seeks to do nothing less than incoporate all current paradigms of control and gameplay into one portable, dynamic device and leave it up to developers and users to decide what is best for them. No more shoe-horning of motion control and no more stringent adherence to the standard joysticks and buttons. You can have both and everything in between. As Iwata said at the very beginning of the reveal when he announced the console’s name, it is up to you.

It’s genius when you think about it. In the last five years, gamers have become a wide and diverse spectrum of people, thanks to the Wii and the iPhone. What constitutes a video game and a gaming interface is now a much more open and complex question than it was a console generation ago. Nintendo learned first-hand during the Wii’s lifecycle that restricting the choices of the gamer and the developer only serves to alienate an audience, even if it serves to bring a new one into the fold. The WiiU is their answer to this problem: make a console that is as diverse as gamers themselves.

I’m truly excited by what the WiiU can do for gaming. There is so much potential, but there is as much for success as there is for failure. Nintendo needs to be extremely careful in how this is marketed and to ensure that the games released for the WiiU are as diverse as the audience it wishes to cater to. I am by no means convinced this will work, and so little is known about this console and the games that will support it that it is really impossible to say with any confidence how it will fare. Still, I’ve been a gamer for the last 22 years since the tender age of 5, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt. I think they’re onto something here, and I really hope it works. If the WiiU really does live up to its potential, all gamers will benefit, no matter their taste or lifestyle.