Cynical about the chances of Nintendo's Wii U? Worried it might not succeed, or that its weird screen thing will fail to make the Wii's lightning strike twice? Well, meaty executive Reggie Fils-Aime disagrees with you! Bet you never saw that coming.
"The Wii U has to deliver a differentiated experience that can only be brought to bear through the use of these two screens," he said. "If all we do is a beautiful game in HD, it's been done before. We have to take advantage of the second screen, we need to take advantage of the connectivity that the system will offer.
"We believe that we will yet again disrupt the market the same way we did with DS and Wii."
The DS and Wii certainly disrupted things, with the Wii especially catching its rivals off guard at the beginning of this generation. Can Nintendo make good on the follow-through, though? And will the third parties be on board for anything other than the HD? Market disruption is all well and good, but not when it disrupts things so much that developers don't know what to do with it.
Nintendo: Making mobile games 'flies in the face of what we believe in' [Games Blog via CVG]
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Contest:
8:40 AM on 11.18.2011 | 
Wait....a Nintendo system like PS360 with Nintendo exclusives? I'd want that..
Its been 6 years. Time for a design upgrade maybe?
Third-party support won't be great either. Developers aren't going to go out of their way to support a system with such a tiny install base off the bat, be it with exclusive features or exclusive games. It'll be mostly multi-platform fare, until it then gets leapfrogged by the new PlayStation and Xbox, at which point third-party support will dry up as every developer and publisher moves forward and once again leaves Nintendo in the past. Only, this time, they won't even have the cheap price tag to save them.
dual screens? looks like nintendo is trying to do something thats already been done. so basically the wii-u is already obsolete.
Mario will milk--er, make great use of it, as will other Nintendo exclusives. I have no doubt of that, since they will be designed around that functionality. The question is, will multiplatform games really be able to make use of the Wii U controller without a lot of time and effort? Will whatever the Wii U brings to the table be able to entice people to buy yet another console? Will people 'skip' the Wii U with all the 720/PS4 rumors floating around?
Personally, I never buy a console at launch. I wait for the library to build, and for at least one price cut. For me, that will likely put the Wii U up against the next Sony/Microsoft offering. I'm not sure they can win that battle.
But I feel like when these big companies forecast or otherwise bank on their success, it most often smack them in the face. :/
Still, if third parties only develop HD games, is that bad? It's what they're good at on 360 and PS3, so why stop it on Nintendo's console? Let them be boring while Nintendo innovates.
Reggie is a moron. They should fire him.
I just doubt 3rd party publishers are going to use it correctly.
"Oh wow, that looks really cool, we should get one"
The WiiU will make millions of non-gamers think:-
"Oh, the new version of that thing we never ever use, naw"
I'll bring the A1 sauce.
Nintendo's biggest enemy here is the perception that it doesn't care about delivering an online experience comparable to the other brands. They have to overcome that, because they can't count on the casual crowd buying another console anytime soon.
ggggggggggggggggggggggggdjfkdgfAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
okay, point being that they cannot stay that pricey that long. I think.
I want the Wii-U to be good and to be a success, but Nintendo have gotten sloppy and arrogant. I don't believe they can have a compelling online experience/digital store, and I don't believe Nintendo will have enough 3rd party games/3rd party exclusives that will compel people to jump ship from Sony and Microsoft. They have a lot to prove to their core fan base and also to the people that left Nintendo for brighter pastures which had no software droughts.
Still, personally I hate these stupid gimmicks they try to cram into their systems which almost rarely enhance the experience outside of simply complicating it. 3D has barely done anything for the 3DS outside of drain it's battery life, and while motion controls have been done well for a few games specifically designed for them, for the most part they're simply "there" for the hell of it. We get a cheap piece of hardware that third parties have to reinvent the third wheel to develop a decent game for, and then we're given the same crappy online set up with FCs...Hell, the few good third party games we got for Wii like Xenoblade and Last Story aren't even being released here. Essentially what you're paying for is Nintendo exclusives, and those alone are not worth over $250 anymore.
Although Nintendo consoles have always been questionable (I like them, but many people have valid complaints) they've always excelled at portables, and this system is playing off of that strength. I think things are going to well, and that Microsoft will release their own X-Pad accessory controller, and sony will have some sort of PS4 tablet interaction with Sony tablets.
@Pokota
At first I was disappointed that the new controller wasn't multitouch too, but after I looked into I found out that single touch is better for gaming because it's more precise, even you're using your finger on a single touch. After going back and forth with my DS and tablets/phones I can say the difference is really noticeable.
Multitouch makes tablets and phones significantly easier to navigate, and making a button-less single-touch electronic nowadays seems archaic. Multi-touch isn't really necessary for gaming if the controller has buttons, the only DS software that suffered from being single-touch was music making software because you couldn't press down more than one key at once. Before the Korg DS synthesizer came out I hadn't even noticed that the DS couldn't detect more then one input at a time, and out of my heavy library of DS games I don't feel like any other genre of game suffered.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the Nintendo games will be as good as they usually are. It just seems like four steps backward.
Good luck Nintendo. If you're really gonna release this console, you're going to need it.
A sequel to Other M would be nice too though.
"Can't this one play the new games?"
"Next Gen-Console Cycle, what does that mean?"
"What?! I'm not buying another one of these, I hardly use this one."
Yeah...that's the problem when you dabble with-in the "Causal Market", you'll get either hot or cold, and they won't stick around for long. So, can I assume that after THIS ad campaign fails with the Causal and non-gamer grandmothers, Nintendo will go back to naming their consoles with some BALLS?
But not having multi-touch is still a limiter. Granted, it might not have an impact on most games, but the consumer will never know when a developer has had a great idea for a game that just won't work on the Wii U but will on a phone. That seems kind of wrong somehow. Ultimately, though, you're probably right in that it's not a big deal.
However, it just feels like one more reason why the Wii U might be a skippable console, at least for me. Will it be a significant upgrade to the PS3/360 right now? Will it have the horses to run with the PS4/720 in the future? The Wii U has a lot to prove, I think, if it really wants to be more than a brief stop on the road before Sony and Microsoft begin the next generation.
As a non-fan of Mario and platformers in general, Nintendo is going to have to convince me that the Wii U will be an investment that not only tops what I have now, but is strong enough that I'll still be pleased with it several years past launch.
The new controller is more traditional than the Wii Remote, and the fact that it's compatible with the Wii Remote means that developers have another chance to do something interesting with them, now that Skyward Sword has shown us how to do it.
Also, since I don't have an HD TV, and my parents aren't likely to buy one as long as this one still works, the screen on the controller will let me experience HD (with the games that let you play them just on the controler, that is).
Just as'long as it has good games, I'll probably buy it after the first price-drop.
Other than the games, the only thing I want is for people to confirm how good online is going to be.
@DeadnBuried
"I doubt it. The Wii took off mostly because it was much cheaper than it's competition. The Wii U sure as shit won't be..."
Depends on whether we're talking about the PS3 and 360 or their successors. If the former, yeah, I can't see the WiiU being cheaper than $300 at launch, but I suspect it's going to be priced at $350. However, supposing the PS4 and Xbox 720(?) launch at the same price, Nintendo has a chance to drop the price to $300.
1) Price it at $250. The 720/PS4 will most likely be well over $400, this puts you in a Wii situation and you have the added advantage of likely being on the shelf a year before the competition arrives.
2) Make the launch line-up killer. Get every hot 3rd party title you can coming out next winter a Wii U version, and have the Wii U version be significantly better than the 360/PS3 counterparts.
3) Sell everyone on the controller on day 1 with a full fledged game, not a tech demo. It took 3DS about 8 months to do this(Mario 3D land) and took Wii 5 years(Skyward Sword), and I don't think we need that again. Show people how it's done on day 1 with a big franchise.
4) Launch it with an original IP. See above, this could be the game that proves everyone wrong about Wii U.
5) Bring gamers faith back with Nintendo(this is speaking for NoA). Give the Wii a solid last year on the market that you never gave the Gamecube. Bring over Xenoblade and Last Story. Hell dig deeper, bring over Captain Rainbow. Keep pumping out top notch 3DS titles. Show everyone Nintendo isn't a company to fuck with and prove all the criticism wrong. I know you can do it.
6) Make the online good. Do some forward thinking things. Really push digital distribution, make your online network solid. Make it a hub for indie games, do whatever you can to getthose on your side. I know I'd love to play these retro-inspired games that are available on PSN and XBLA on that simple Wiimote only control layout, and Wii U can do that. Pick up some of these smaller independant teams, can you imagine what companies like Team Meat could do with the Zelda franchise or something?
7) More innovation in series. People are getting sick of the same old games. I want to see more expirementation in your franchises again. You need to reinvent the wheel again, like you used to do every other generation. I have no doubt you can blow me away.
Other than that, I am greatly anticipating Wii U and seeing the whole thing in motion. Nintendo will always be my favorite developer of all time, I practically grew up with nintendo, as many other gamers did as well. Wii U is a big risk with a big chance of success and big chance of failure, but I have faith in Nintendo. They're right, we don't need 3 systems that all pretty much do the same thing, innovation is key to their success.
I agree with the fact that people are really ignoring the popularity of mobile and tablet gaming. I've seen more non-gamers enter casual gaming through their cellphones than the Wii and DS ever converted.
The problem lies with what exactly Nintendo plans to do with this technology and how 3rd parties will embrace this technology. I have no doubts that games developed for the Wii U from the ground up have huge potential. But if 3rd parties are lazy, and all they do is ports, whats the point.
I wonder exactly how far can the tablet be from the system, and its independence from the system. Also, what is Nintendo's plan for digital content. Those factors I feel could make or break this console.
Personally I don't think Nintendo is going to win over the dedicated PS3 and 360 owner. Nintendo is more of an alternative to the competition. I think they're best chance is convincing Wii owners to upgrade, and convincing some past Nintendo fans who switched to PS3 or 360 to reconsider a Nintendo console. I don't think it's going to be a significant upgrade over the current gen, I think it's going to be more of a different take, and viewing things from different angles. If someone was really satisfied with the PS3/360, and doesn't care much for touch controls, and Nintendo games the Wii U will probably do little for them.