Goodtwin

Im in the same boat dude.  I am going to play the crap out of the Wii U no matter what, but at the same time I always like to have a few games that really showcase what the hardware can do.  When I saw Zelda WW was getting remastered I nearly had to change my shorts.  The WW art style held up very well throughout the years, and now it looks like its going to be absolutely gorgeous.  I just always remind myself that the Mario Galaxy team has about 20 times the processing power that they had when creating Galaxy, so its hard to imagine anything less than perfection.  Nintendo is going to have some gorgeous games at E3. 

X looks really nice, but its not PS4 level stuff.  The good thing about X is that it will be tailored around what the Wii U can do well.  To me, X looks like it takes a lot of influence from Anime, and that graphics style should hold up very well on the Wii U.  I am certainly excited to see more of this title, but people need to get past the Wii U vs PS4 debate.  PS4 is more powerful hands down, that doesnt mean it will have better games.  I can gaurantee that the Wii U will have more than enough great games to justify the purchase of the hardware. 

First... who cares about the PS4. It's like getting excited about buying a 3 year old computer. My money is on the Xbox 720 if anything. At least Microsoft tries to innovate.

 

Second... Let's go through some of the "Wii U" saving games you mentioned:

 

Yoshi's Yarn - Oh wow Nintendo, another Yoshi platformer. Haven't seen that before

Wind Waker HD - Oh wow Nintendo, bringing a gamecube game to the HD world! Way to innovate.

A new 3D Mario Game! - Is this 1996?

Mario Kart U - Do I even need to say anything?

Smash Bros 4 - Stop it with the sequels... PLEASE

 

The same old tired franchises being used OVER and OVER again which are basically cliché’s of themselves.

 

If this is your idea of Nintendo's saving grace... then you are in for a rude awakening.

Seriously, Nintendo's most popular IP's see one or two games per generation.  The most popular games for PS3 and 360 are Call of Duty and Assassins Creed, they come out yearly.  There has been more Call of Duty games this generation than all 3D Mario games combined going back to the N64 days.  Does Nintendo need to expand and develop new IP's?  Yes, of course they do, but you dont abandon your most successful IP's to do it.  Nintendo needs to work more closely with a wider variety of developers to develop more games. 

Nintendo also needs to giving some old popular IP's new life.  Games like 1080 and Wave Race would be perfect games to partner with third parties to create.  Those are fairly straightforward games that dont need to be bogging down Nintendo's internal teams to create, but simply supervising a third party on the development would be more than sufficient. 

Not really... Good maybe. Epic would be GTA5 coming to Wii U, metroid prime 4 coming running on cry engine 3 plus cry tech announcing they are making an exclusive shooter for Nintendo fans on Wii U, ubisoft announcing beyond good and evil 2 Wii U exclusive, and saga announcing shenmue 3 Wii U exclusive.... The. You have an epic Nintendo E3.

If GTA is what you consider the pinacle of gaming, then go buy a PS3 or or 360 if you havent already.  Its obvious that those products offering is more in line with your taste in games.

I will be interested to see if the rumors about Retro developing a Wii U specific game engine for others to license are true or not.  If Retro shows off something at E3 that is really amazing, and then they announce that the game engine will be available to Wii U developers, that could be huge.  The issue with the UE4 not coming to Wii U is that if a developer is creating a game for PS4/720 and uses the engine, they wont bring it to Wii U. 

Nintendo has always been successful based on its unique exclusive content, and instead of trying to make their "weaknesses" stronger, make your strengths even stronger.  They arent going to improve their third party multi plat situation enough to really make a big difference, but they can work to increase the number of quality exclusives on Wii U.  Not just with internal development projects, but by working with more and more independent third party developers, like they have done with Platinum games with Wonderful 101 and Baynonetta.  Embrace being the "alternative" and not the "me too" console.  Two is company but three is a crowd.  We dont need three consoles offering the same exact thing.  Embrace being different, and if you offering enough quality content, there will be plenty of consumers who will be willing ot buy your product. 

They still call out the CPU core clocks as a limiting factor, which is as disingenuous as it is ignorant of how the CPU operates.  Halfway decent article, but they still claim that other consoles pull ahead in areas, which anyone who's played the game on both X360 and Wii U can tell you is not the case.

Eurogamer is very skeptical when it comes to Wii U.  Its nothing new.  I dont think they are completely biased, but I do think that some of the bad stigma that has been placed onto the Wii U makes it into their articles.  The haters arent going to stop hating even if Retro shows up with something at E3 that blows everything we have seen on 360 and PS3 out of the water.  Some people want to dislike Nintendo products before they even play them.  The CPU arguement is becoming a joke.  Need for Speed Nitro on Wii was a 60fps game.  The load on the CPU isnt "that" much greater with NFS:MW on Wii U.  If the CPU is hitting 100%, its because the code isnt properly optimized.  This is a racer with a limited number of vehicles on the street, it shouldnt be taxing the CPU.  Keep in mind that Criterion never even mentioned the CPU in their interview.  They said they were having  issues getting their game to run well on the GPU, but after Nintendo got them updated dev kits and tools, they were "quickly" able to get the game running full speed.  I have become more and more concinved that the GPU and CPU have as much in common with off the shelf parts as the CPU and GPU in the Gamecube and Wii had with off the shelf parts, and thats practically nill.  Takeda from Nintendo even mentioned how the hardware labors on the memory, and if the developer isnt optimizing properly for the edram and cpu cache, then their performance is likely to suffer. 

I just watched the comparison videos, and they drastically improved the look of th game at night.  The lighting on the Wii U version is far more impressive than the texture upgrades the game got.  It does look like the framerate is a little less stable than the 360/PS3 versions, but in gameplay it rarely drops more than a couple of frames.  I am a framertate whore, but your not going ot notice a couple of frames.  When it drops to 22 fps, then yea, your going ot notice that, but that looks like a very rare occasion. 

Give Criterion credit.  They were able to essentially create the definitive version in about 3 months.  They finished the 360/PS3 build, went on vacation for the holidays, and then came back and hammered out the Wii U version in 3 months.  Keep in mind that Criterion has been optimizing games for the 360/PS3 for over 6 years.  Remember what 360/PS3 games looked like at launch?  If the pinacle of 360/PS3 performance is the starting point for Wii U, thats not to bad at all. 

The Wii U GPU likely has a fixed function tesselation unit built into the GPU, but unlike the 360 GPU (yes, the 360 GPU had a tesselation unit) it wont be such a resource hog.  Even if the Wii U GPU was a "DX11" GPU, it was going to be such a low end DX11 GPU that it wouldnt be able to support very many of those effects at once anyway.  The difference between a $80 DX11 GPU and a $300 DX11 GPU is huge.  Just because something supports DX11, doesnt mean it can push all those features at once.   

Yup, it's definitely a "kid friendly" version of GTA but that being said, it isn't just for Kids. It's simply a game for all ages.

 

I'm 31 and our daughter is 4 and we both love it for totally different reasons.

 

The other night we had friends over and we all played together (4 year old and 4 30+ year olds) and we all had a blast.

Exactly, this is a game with tons of humor that will appeal to adults.  Its a game for anyone and everyone.  Its not going to challenge older gamers, but its a fantastic world to explore.  Its kind of refreshing playing a game that doesnt increase you blood pressure and is simply fun to cruise around and explore.  Missions have all been fun so far.  The story is fun, its not deep, but it doesnt really need to be.  This is a Lego game that appeals to everyone in a Mario sort of way.  I dont know if this is the best Wii U game out right now, but its definately in my top 3 no question. 

Nintendo should just eliminate the Basic model later this year, and lower the price of the Deluxe to $299.  There is cost savings by not having two different models, and then retailers only need to stock one model, and its obviously the more popular model.  The 32 GB of space is pretty good for digital games.  People who want to download full retail games can buy a 500 GB hard drive for $60, and in another year or so, that will probably be true for 1 TB hard drives.