Perhaps the only way is to use component video from the other connector. It will still produce 1080p visuals, but you may notice some slight signal disparity between that and connecting via HDMI. For what you get from Wii U and given that launch titles don't look any more stellar than an Xbox 360 or PS3 game, you shouldn't be missing out with Component.

Reviews should be based on having the console and playing through whatever you review.

The original poster is quite clearly very fanboy-like, which is great (I'm a total Zelda, Halo, and Apple fanboy), but has a time and place. When you're reviewing something, you need to be as objective as possible.

The review Mr.Saturn gave is fine, if he/she truly believes that stuff, but there is no way anyone could have played through all those games by three to four days after launch of the console to know whether or not those are excellent games or not.

I think the problem with console reviews is that, for the most part, we have to review the potential of a system. As a piece of hardware, Wii U is a great concept, but not the best execution. However, it is not the best execution because the console is not the best, but because the games to utilize all its features have not been released yet.

A similar thing happened with Wii MotionPlus controls, where Skyward Sword was the first game to reaaaalllly make proper use of them. It is very much up to software developers (other than Nintendo, of course) to make use of the Wii U's capabilities to make the console itself a success.

I could see GamePad HD coming out in a year or two. It would be a great system upgrade when dual GamePad games become available later this year or in early 2014. Of course, Nintendo's console is already having trouble keeping up with the video end of things as games like Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two chug along with some major framerate issues. With that said, as developers get smarter with console resources, maybe there is untapped power in the console.

There is truth to his argument.... and yours as well.

Image quality consists of 2 main factors, Well, really just one, they are linked, so one is typically the product of the other, unless you do something silly, which i will use as an example later: resolution, which is what you are talking about, the number of pixels, and ppi, pixels per inch aka pixel size.

You can have a resolution of 4k, but if your pixels are the size of lego blocks, you are getting a lousy picture.

The pixels in the gamepad are much much smaller than those in an hdtv, so despite having less pixels, it still has a comparable image quality, particularly with supersampling (downsizing a much larger picture) giving the appearence of higher resolution.

Although, increasing the resolution within the same physical screen size ALSO increases ppi (makes pixels smaller so you can fit more) for a double whammy of image quality increase.

Which, unfortunately, is impossible for the gamepad without changing the wii u console.

I understand what you're trying to say a bit more now, but I still don't see the merit of it. The first point you made had no mention of changing screen size, which is where the miscommunication might have been.

However, saying that the Wii U is not capable of displaying a higher PPI on it's GamePad without changing the console might not be true. You'd need to change the GamePad, yes, but as I mentioned above, Nintendo hasn't told us about the technology they're using under the hood to stream video to the GamePad. Maybe there is more bandwidth available than they're using or than we know about, and a higher PPI screen - let's say something with a 1708x960 resolution on the same 6" screen instead of the 854x480 one (yes, I know that's a total stretch) - and it would be possible.

theres no reason for it to be HD dumb thread its HD down sampled to 480p+ so your getting effectivly HD anyways and the gamepads screen to pixel count is higher than a lot of HD tvs

Your argument makes no sense. HD provides higher fidelity. If you downsample HD to 480p, yes it might look better than what you would traditionally get as 480p content, but it's still not HD. Not even close. Compare an HD image downsampled to 480p and another that is 1080p or even 720p for that matter. You'll see a world of difference.

Not only is it pointless, its impossible.

The system was designed for a 480p gamepad, not just with fillrate, but in data streaming speed as well. An hd image would not only demand more from the gpu, but the data size being streamed to the gamepad would exponentially increase, and would likely not only need to take more than one report to deliver, increasing lag, but no longer be able to be interleaved decreasing distance from the system.

I wouldn't say it is impossible. Nintendo has designed their streaming protocols from the ground up. We don't know what kind of throughput they get or how much they're using right now. It's smart for them to have designed something that can have its functionality opened up so that, as developers get better with system resources, they have more bandwidth available. Now, Nintendo doesn't typically think that far ahead, I don't think, so I'm not saying it's there, but the fact is that we don't actually know what Nintendo is doing under the hood and how expandable it is.

gpu isnt the problem, resolution can be increased by simply decreasing scene complexity. The problem is that a larger resolution is still a bigger data size even AFTER its finished and rasterized.

The problem is hardware, specifically the wi-fi out, which is custom made to output a precise packet size, interleaved, at unprecedented speeds (way, WAY faster than a ps3 or 360 controller. Faster than a tv can display the image....) Simply De-interleaving the data can increase report size by 2x, (still not enough for hd) but.... will cripple signal distance to a few feet.

They would need to change the systems wifi out for an hd gamepad.

Again, we don't know if they've already accounted for that packet size in the design of the Wii U. Odds are, they haven't, but it's still possible that the packets they've been sending for the current titles are not using up all the bandwidth that their WiFi protocol is capable of.

The best platinum reward ever for me was still the Club Nintendo Japan reward from 2007's Platinum program. I got me one of these babies on eBay for about a hundred bucks and it's beautiful (and still boxed, of course):

http://www.inside-ga...4/15/28450.html

I'd love to see The Phantom Pain realized as an actual game, but I'm not sure how the footage we saw could tie into a Metal Gear Solid game. Either way, here's our rumour roundup:

http://www.eggplante.com/2012/12/11/the-phantom-pain-rumour-roundup/

Seems about right for them to make a MGSV, 4's been out for a few years now.

True, but I feel like they'll be drowning the market in Metal Gear Solid games over the next few years. We've got MGS Rising: Revengeance, MGS: Ground Zeroes, and now MGS V? That's a whole lot of Kojima.

I predict seeing a lot of dual-discs coming out in the next year or so. A game with a Wii disc that also has some sort of (very basic) functionality for he GamePad. They'll be transitional games that are made to bridge the gap between Wii and Wii U. They will not be by Nintendo however. There is little reason to buy a Wii U if you can get Nintendo's latest on the Wii. Smash Bros. Wii? Nope. Wii U? Certainly.

While Sonic does support it, keep in mind that some games do not. It would be great to have virtual console games with GamePad support so you can play classics on a quasi-handheld as they were intended (titles like A Link to the Past or Pokemon Red Version) but that doesn't seem to be happening either

Wii didn't have automatic updates.
It had updates on the disc which you had to do in order to play the game which came on the same disc.

I think Ecorsbie is referring to the notification (via the blue light) that updates were available. The Wii lights up when something is ready to be downloaded and installed.

You should be able to just go through the level. Worked for me.

I understand Jakester897, but I'm saying that the person wouldn't need to buy a 3DS to play the game if Nintendo follows tradition with their Game Boy attachments.

There's also the possibility that any games you buy on eShop become cross-compatible with the Wii U, just like Sony and their Vita Cross-Play, Cross-Buy functionality.

It would be streaming the game from the 3DS, so you'd still need a 3DS to play them.

No, the idea would be that the 3DS Player would be an attachment for the Wii U that you would insert your 3DS game card into, just like the Super Game Boy and Game Boy Player peripherals for SNES and GameCube, respectively. No streaming required.

Why not? Why does Microsoft keep putting out new 360s? Cuz people still buy them. I was at Walmart lookin at the Wii U games and a lady was planning on buying a Wii for her nephew. Just because it's old doesn't mean nobody will buy it, as long as its on the shelf people will buy it. They might just be waiting until it reaches their price range.

You're right, some people will still buy a 3DS, but most of the market will be gone. Unless of course there is a price drop, which isn't out of the question. A $129 3DS is a very enticing proposition.

I actually wrote about all of this in an article almost a year ago, where I theorized that perhaps the door in the Wii U would have a 3DS slot built-in. Take a look:

http://www.eggplante.com/2012/02/06/wii-u-3ds/

I'm thinking 3DS functionality could happen with wireless streaming, as Jakester mentioned. Of course, it would require a Wii U and wouldn't just be a TV out function for the 3DS. Then again, Nintendo might decide to be nice and give us a sort of player attachment. In all likelihood, they could sell the player at a huge margin. A player for $49.99 would easily cost under $5 to make given that all the software and processing power is in the Wii U itself. The player would simply be a 3DS cart card reader. And we all know how cheap it is to make an SDcard reader.

It might sound like it would replace someone getting a 3DS, but think about most of the market for a 3DS Player attachment for Wii U: hardcore gamers. Not hardcore in the sense that they're only playing shooters or 300-hour RPGs, but hardcore in the sense that they're gamers, and proud of it. People who buy an attachment to play 3DS games likely already have a stack of 3DS games next to their 3DS.

Of course, don't forget that this peripheral, if it ever comes out, would likely not be out for at least a year and a half, by which point the 3DS will have been out for more than 3 years. Someone who hasn't bought a 3DS at that point certainly isn't going to buy one now, but if they buy a 3DS Player for Wii U, Nintendo might actually have found an additional market!

a 50 GB game...my ISP won't allow that XD

There will undoubtedly be games that will not be available on the eShop. I don't foresee massive titles such as Pikmin 3, the next Zelda, Smash Bros., etc. as downloads.

I did notice something interesting in the wiiu game boxes it has clips for a extra plastic sleeve for aditional discs.

A lot of DVDs and even Xbox games are doing this now. It is cheaper to manufacture one case with the clips and manufacture the extra shelf only when needed than it is to manufacture two entirely different sets of cases. That's probably even more true for the colour of the Wii U cases being a non-standard game case.

It is not the size of the game that is really the issue for making great games, but rather the size of the world.

Smash Bros. will likely fit on a single layer disc, and probably come in around 10-20GB by my estimation. This is because they reuse a lot of graphics, and there is limited area to render. However, with a more open-world game like Zelda, there is a LOT more art required, more audio and speech, and different game mechanics.

Of course, these are estimations, but I'd go ahead and guess that the next Zelda would easily crack the 25GB capacity of the current Wii U disc.

Some great points, Desert Punk, but it's also worth noting that the Wii U will likely feel hindered by its relatively small disc capacity in a few years time. With that said, the laser in the Wii U could probably read dual-layer discs, but whether or not the discs are made is another story.

As much a Zelda fan as I am (I've go a Triforce tattoo, in fact), don't expect a major Zelda title (portable not included) before 2015 at the earliest. Between Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, there was a five year gap. Also, realize that Smash Bros. is on the way, likely a new Mario, etc.

I actually have it on official word from Nintendo that they are actually working on a new Zelda game, as I talked to Nintendo of Canada's Matt Ryan a few weeks ago:

http://www.eggplante...an-talks-wii-u/

Regardless of whether you get a Wii U or not, there are far too many variables when deciding on the next Xbox, PlayStation 4, or both.

Both consoles will likely have brand-new features that we can't fathom at this point, or a revolutionary new entertainment paradigm. Perhaps the PS4 will actually focus more on being a gaming console second, as the Xbox 360 has become in one sense.

There are a lot of theories as to how the consoles will play out in the next little while, but until E3 2013, we likely won't hear anything. Don't forget, the sooner Microsoft and Sony release information about their next console, the sooner they jeopardize sales of their current generation. Would you be in the market to buy a 360 if the next console is said to put it to shame and have better games? Probably not.