If you want more successful results in terms of room size, I'd recommend making this one day of the week for a couple hours. Sounds silly, but this way everyone knows when to play.

Whether Nintendo made an adapter for the GC controllers or not, the fact of the matter is that wireless controllers are frowned in tournaments because of interferences caused by wireless devices including cell phones and other consoles that have wireless controllers. From my stand point It was smart of Nintendo to have GC adapters as I'm interested in competitive Smash. 

 

EDIT: I just remembered the Wii U Pro controller, but I'm not entirely sure how it works as I don't have a Wii U. 

All communication with the Pro controller is wireless. The competitive Smash scene is viewing this announcement as a godsend because of that.

US yes, Wii U's in Europe can't.

...oh. My bad.

button batteries last decades

For devices with low power consumption, sure. A GCN controller could drain one in a heartbeat -- especially the haptic feedback. 

If this picture is correct (and every source I can find backs this up), the port does indeed supply power.

It's annoying. I bought a component cable for Wii so that it could produce 480p and there is a difference, don't get why Wii U can't do 480p in Wii mode using HDMI.

It can, it just requires going into the Wii U settings and changing the resolution each time you want to play a Wii game. It would also require setting it back to HD to play Wii U games in HD. Not really any less annoying, but the option is there.

Then why do they have batteries?

What? Only the wireless controllers have batteries. Unless there's some weird 3rd party controller I haven't heard of...

Source: Used my controllers for over a decade, never changed a battery for 'em.

I'll probably be picking this up, with my 2 brothers both preferring GCN controllers. I'll have to experiment between the pro controller and this, though.

looks dumb and why does it require 2 usb ports?

One port probably doesn't meet the power requirement for 4 controllers.

If I remember correctly, any drive rated for USB 2.0 or older should work just fine. It's only the relatively new 3.0 drives that need a y-cable.

Edit: Don't quote me on that until I find a source.

Edit 2:

From http://www.nintendo....nal-usb-storage :

1. Can bus-powered hard disc drives be used with Wii U?

    

    

   • Some bus-powered hard disc drives draw more current than the USB 2.0 specification and might not run stably, so we cannot guarantee that such devices will run properly on Wii U without the use of a supplemental power cable called a y-cable that draws power from two USB ports. For best results, we recommend using a hard drive with its own power supply that connects to the Wii U system via the USB port on the console.

So yeah. If it's officially certified as USB 2.0, you're fine. If it's 3.0/don't know, you're okay so long as you purchase a y-cable.

Very cool. And these figurines will also be able to be used for other titles too? I heard that is the case. Imagine transferring custom move sets to a figurine and taking it to your friends house. Kind of cool. 

 

This will be something I will not only collect but make good use of.

I could easily see this... Especially since they were so secretive to how the custom move sets worked in the Direct, maybe they're holding out until NFP is officially unveiled to talk about it.

Jeez, I almost feel like a criminal  . Anyways, for whatever reason it never really occurred to me that I should post in the forum as well, I always just came here to see what other people think of the Wii U and find current news for it. See you around!

Close, but no cigar.

I am saying both are necessary, and without one or the other progress in general would come to a screeching halt, and individuals capable of doing both, in a time practical manner, are both exceedingly rare and exceptionally talented, which is why most companies tend to stick to one or the other at a time.

Its part of a general process. Mathmematical/computational theory often invents routines and effects decades before they can ever hope to be realized by available technology (phong invented normal mapping in the 70's) High end render machines eventually make it work in a non runtime environment (think cg ads, commercials, movies, pixar) Demo groups create demo reels using optimized/approximated effects in runtime, but not in a way thats really practical for use in real time games. Game engine companies find the right time/way to make effects, or optimized modified versions an option to feasibly be used in pc games. Console developers find the right time to run approximated/optimized versions on the closed console systems.

This process takes years upon years of constant work to make it through a cycle.

The pc engine companies are stating the very obvious facts that the underpowered generation of consoles, mixed with the fact controlling shareholders are forcing them to pander to said underpowered machines, is going to slow this process considerably.

Chrop is saying EVERYONE needs to be 'optimizing' ALL THE TIME, not doing ANYTHING ELSE, and anyone who doesnt is stupid and wrong and cant figure out its just as simple as that. Completely slapping the face of every engineer who spends six seven, eight years slowly weeding out bottle necks, fixing problems that arise from the problems they fixed, that then gave rise to other unforseen problems that need to be fixed... that will give rise to even MORE problems (true program optimization as actually virtually impossible)

Because they havent 'optimized' all the things that havent been created yet in the first six months of the systems life why are they so stupid dont they know they just need to optimize its just as simple as that.

Huh. Didn't realize how arrogant Chrop was about how easily/quickly optimization can be done. Also didn't see how much he doesn't understand the whole process.

@Chrop: I'll use your own examples to show you what you're not seeing here:

the PS4 came out to make more powerful games, 6 months later they're filling all 6-7GB of ram... How are you not seeing the problem here?!?

The same thing happened last gen. How do we know this?

I'm putting this much more simply than how it actually works to save time, but the point is the same: Those games lagged because the PS3 ran out of resources. They were capping the hardware already. Same as we have right now.

But what about The Last of Us? You said it yourself:

We got it after the PS3 was out for 6.5 years. All that optimization magically happen exclusively during TLOU's developent period; they used libraries and techniques that had gradually been perfected and optimized for the PS3 since 2006.

My point here is, optimization starts the moment the first dev kit comes out, and continues until the next console is released, where the cycle begins anew. Yes, they're going to be capping out the consoles' resources early on; if they had resources to spare, why would they need to optimize in the first place?

EDIT: Forgot to add, we're still in the first stages of those new consoles, and if we look at last gen, what did we have at the start?

Unoptimized, visually unimpressive, laggy games. So give it time. Optimization will happen.

Hi all. If you're smart enough to know what section of the forum you're in, you'll know I'm a new member here. However, I've frequented this site for what I believe is about 2 years now. My decision to make this account now was rather spontaneous, but it feels nice to finally interact with all of you and not be the creepy stalker I have been. Since I know more about you guys then you know about me, here's a little about myself:

I've been playing games since before I could remember, and it's my favorite way to relax after school (yup, not an adult yet). I like a rather large variety of games, from Xenoblade to Mario Kart to Pikmin. I've had a Wii U since last August (right before the price drop, ugh) and I enjoy it quite a bit. As an unemployed teenager, my game library for the console is small, only including Nintendo Land, Pikmin 3, and Super Mario 3D World. I'll be buying Mario Kart 8 on launch though, and am greatly anticipating X.

That's all that really comes to mind, and I gotta go now anyway, so if you have any other questions, ask away.

I don't think you could ask for a more perfect welcome, stalker

Lol, thanks.

No, you weren't supposed to reveal yourself. What are you doing?

starting my plan for world domination Giving you all a false sense of security by causing you to think that I have nothing to hide.

I'll make an introduction thread before I derail this any further.

You two are arguing entirely different subjects. Chrop is talking about how devs should optimize software to use less power instead of just leaving their code unoptimized and blaming the hardware, while 3Dude is saying that pioneering new, unoptimized, 'wasteful' software is just as important a step towards better looking games as later optimizing said software is.

At least, you WERE talking about this, somehow you managed to get on respect.

...a little weird that this is my first post after lurking around this site for about 2 years, but whatever.