I feel like they've never said this before. At least in comparison of themselves. The Wii was going to be a revolution in its own right, not in comparison to past succeses. Feels like some Sony 2006 level hubris is about to go down.

I applaud Nintendo for trying something different. If they just wanted to do HD games then we'd have another 360/PS3 system with Nintendo exclusives.

Wait....a Nintendo system like PS360 with Nintendo exclusives? I'd want that..

I have no doubt it will be a great system but am i the only one tired of the whole Wii/Mii aesthetic?

Its been 6 years. Time for a design upgrade maybe?

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, and as a result it's not going to do anywhere near as well in regards to casual gamers. It won't do well with the hardcore crowd either because we all already have established libraries and online contact lists with our current systems. Plus, I think it's fairly obvious that the Wii U is going to have Nintendo's usual piss-poor online capabilities, so nobody's going to pay up just to play the two or three Nintendo exclusives each year.

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.

Yeah Reggie, soccer moms are gunna be all over this just like the Wii. Wait no they won't. However, I'm sure the system will do fine, it just stands no chance of matching the Wii's sales. That bar has been set far too high.

doesnt the ps3 and vita do what nintendo is trying to do with the wii-u?
dual screens? looks like nintendo is trying to do something thats already been done. so basically the wii-u is already obsolete.

In terms of 'core' 3rd party games, there really are a lot of good possibilities, particularly with multiplayer games where you can't easily pause and go to a menu or a map. However, Nintendo has a lot to prove with their multiplayer experience. Single player games it won't matter so much, since there are times when you will WANT to pause to use the menu or study a map.

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.

I mean, the thing'll be cheap. They're not doing multitouch on the screen, so that tech's gotta be dime-a-dozen at this point. And its got potential to do some interesting stuff. Its maybe not as infectious as the Wii's group gaming focus, but the ideas could spark a thing. I'm on board for a Wii U on principal and faith in Nintendo doing cool things.

But I feel like when these big companies forecast or otherwise bank on their success, it most often smack them in the face. :/

Didn't they say the 3DS was supposed to do the same thing? a shame the launch wasn't what they expected.. Hopefully nintendo learned from it so they won't repeat the same thing again for the WiiU

Reggie doesn't actually say the Wii U will disrupt the market, just that is has to. That's completely different. It doesn't seem like even Nintendo thinks they can pull this off.

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.

NINTENDO games in HD=Instabuy.

Reggie is a moron. They should fire him.

It probably will, they just need to price it correctly. I'm sure they will this time, after what happend with the 3DS. All said and done, the 3DS is starting to pick up and it will probably be the last great handheld unless the portable market doesn't get much bigger.

I'm not worried about Nintendo banking on it

I just doubt 3rd party publishers are going to use it correctly.

I've given up on Nintendo at this point. The Wii and DS were a phenomenon, and now it seems like they're trying to mash the two together in hopes that they can recreate past success. Maybe they can change my mind when we see some actual games for the thing, but knowing Nintendo, the games that I really want won't come out for at least a year.

Nintendo's success with the Wii came from media-perpetuated news, creating a fad-fire. Everyone was buying a Wii regardless of their interest in games, and that's how the system became ubiquitous. The Wii U has a new hardware feature/gimmick, and reaching that level of success depends on at least one major factor; are the majority of people who bought the Wii as a fad to play bowling willing to buy another fad? Considering how many millions of people buy CoD annually, that probably won't be a problem.

Nintendo have successfully merged the DS and the Wii. Creating some vile creature with the little atrophied dinosaur arms, a passion for fucking vegetables and licking empty glass bottles.

I've learn to never underestimate Nintendo, they're unpredictable as hell.

Hopefully it wont. It's not that I want a company that I grew up with and loved to bankrupt and die, but, I want Killer7 on XBLA.

@KingSigy - Uh.. " We believe that we will yet again disrupt the market the same way we did with DS and Wii."

Maybe, just maybe they have learned a bunch in the past 3 years about how the industry has dramatically changed with the introduction of digital content and the relativity of prices between the AppStore and DSiWare.

Reggie needs to be fired, on a grill

the Wii made MILLIONS of non-gamers think:-

"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"

@Telephis

I'll bring the A1 sauce.

@Monodi I said the exact same thing when they released the eShop earlier this year. Obviously, they haven't.

You know, it makes me kind of sad that this looks to be a cheap, low-level piece of hardware. Had this been done right, with a real multi-touch screen on the controller and high-level components, then this had the potential to be awesome. Well, I mean, it still might be awesome, but not as awesome as it could be.

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.

I think they are a day late and a dollar short with the Wii U, and are going in a direction that will be hard and confusing to embrace for their new casual audience and not too little too late for core consumers not already a Nintendo fan. Who are they really selling this to?

@Noaxzi

ggggggggggggggggggggggggdjfkdgfAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

okay, point being that they cannot stay that pricey that long. I think.

Hmmm, I'll believe it when I see it. Both the Wii and DS were so unusual and innovative for the time that there really wasn't anything out there like them which is partly what drove their success. But in terms of the Wii-U pad, it's like a giant DS or an i-pad, so it's more of a known quantity. Also most people perceive that it's going to be leap frogged by the PS4 or Xbox 720 in terms of graphical fidelity and power when they come out, meaning once again Nintendo will have the lowest powered system rather than being on par with the other consoles power-wise.

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.

Well, there is one thing that could save the Wii U, but Nintendo won't do it. Partner with Valve, become a Nintendo/Steam Box. Right down to even supporting use of a keyboard and mouse. But that's nothing more than a fevered dream. It makes too much sense from Nintendo's standpoint to happen.

If it isn't considerably cheaper, no one will buy it. Really, that's one of the biggest reasons the 3DS bombed at launch(besides the terrible launch lineup), and hopefully Nintendo has learned from that mistake.

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.

Nintendo will have to really impress me before I will buy one. Who am I kidding? I'll buy it when it's first Mario or Zelda game comes out.

I don't believe the man responsible for making sure jack shit was released on the Wii this year knows anything about what will and what won't sell.

I know Nintendo makes their money on hardware so they feel the need to innovate in that area; but personally I'm cool with a tv and a controller that I hold in both hands so I can lie down if I want. Innovation in software on the other hand, hells yes.

Nintendo is sadly all about gimmicks these days, and each new piece of hardware has to be centered around one. Motion control! 3D! Tablets! They are lucky they have a hardcore nostalgic following that will buy whatever devices plays the umpteenth Mario, Kirby and Zelda games.

As a Nintendo geek I have pure faith in this platform, but I understand the great hesitation from many gamers. But my impression is that Nintendo is working with third parties like EA on the online experience and that the controller, unlike the Vita/PS3 setup, is dedicated to that dual screen action and probably provides more features for it. It's also cheaper than the Vita/PS3 setup. We also have third parties supporting it already with multiplatform and exclusives. Nintendo stated that they learned from the 3DS and said they know they have to price better, open with a big Nintendo title (Pikmin 3 is going to look beautiful on that console) and a bunch of other stuff. Though I'm not inclined to believe Reggie as every sentence out of his mouth is spruced up with unnecessary wording, Iwata and the staff in Japan are people I can trust to learn from past mistakes. So when it comes to all this doubt about Nintendo I ask, why can't they learn from their successes and failures and grow as a company? Why can't a new system which we know so little about and is still a year away from launch not sell as well as the Wii? I'm not saying it will, but it's possible.

I think things will be better. Having a separate touch screen can make games like Skyrim and Darksiders with heavy menu use feel more streamlined. Ocarina 3D felt so much more fluid because you didn't have to exit to a menu while playing, it also makes the main screen less cluttered. People have made great use of the DS, and this is essentially a giant DS so I have no worries for creativity. Tablets are gaining alot of popularity right now so this might be more popular then we think, and right now tablet to TV connectivity has yet to be heavily explored.

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.

I'm really not that interested in this. They should be making a better wiimote rather than slinking back into dual-analog territory. The technology will let them share some gameplay with the 3DS, but I doubt that's a groundbreaking feature.

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.

I saw the 3DS as a disaster long before it came out. I'm seeing this as a disaster as well with no need to believe otherwise.

Good luck Nintendo. If you're really gonna release this console, you're going to need it.

I don't like the idea of "we have to accommodate this goofy gimmick we came up with" instead of "we are going to make great games."

I don't care if I'm the only one who buys one. As long as I can play Skyward Sword in HD.

A sequel to Other M would be nice too though.

BOLD statement but you have to have faith in your own product or no one else will.

I have great faith in Nintendo. Even if the WiiU is not a great success intially, I'm getting one, as long as backwards compatabiliry is an option. Cannot wait for the new Tekken game, and Nintendo's first party offerings, whatever they are.

"A differentiated experience", Really?

So, Nintendo is hoping lightning will strike twice again. Mmmm…well…? Gamers will buy it, but the causal audience probably won't. Reggie saying "we're bringing a new experience", won't change that. Causal and non-gamers don't buy games. They just don't. People who already own a Nintendo Wii, will say -- "We already have this one, what's wrong with this one?"

"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?

@Scissors
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.

I'll wait until the "re-unveiling" to decide whether I want it or not, but it's definitely got my attention.
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.

How nintendo can get a nice early lead on Sony and Microsoft with Wii U.


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.

@Scissors
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.

I say they should unhook from the Wii name on this one, make it compatible with 4 U controllers, and make wiimotes optional, for waggle kids.

@ Pokota

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.