Is it certain that WiiU will not play DVDs or BluRay? I am one of those crazy people that do kinda care about this, if only because I like to keep the number of devices I have to keep connected down to a minimum.

Hello, my name is Narcidius, and I'm a Nintendo "fanboy"

Wow, really felt good to get that off my chest! In all seriousness, though, the description fits me better than I'd like to admit. I'm still angry with myself for owning an Xbox 360 (it's ok, Wii, it's just gaming, baby, it doesn't mean anything to me... you know you're the only one I'll ever love).

I spent my childhood being mocked by SEGA fans, and arguing furiously for the superiority of the play experience on Ninty systems. I loved my Marios (1, 2, & 3 for their own reasons), I loved my Metroid, I loved my, er, Duck Hunt... yeah, good times... as well as all the killer 3rd party stuff (go Mega Man, go Contra!). The SNES came out and I rejoiced, sinking countless hours into Mario, FZero, Secret of Mana, Mega Man X, Star Fox, Donkey Kong Country, and finally the pinnacle of all gaming goodness, Super Metroid!

I spent my early teens being mocked by PlayStation fans, and arguing furiously for the superiority of the play experience on the Ninty systems. No system reveal will ever compare to the pure wonder that attended Mario64, in all it's polygon-y goodness. My free time (and a little bit of my non-free time) was lost in the oblivion of Star Fox, GoldenEye, Mario Kart, and Smash Bros. I shook my fist in fury at the betrayal that was Final Fantasy VII, and stubbornly refused myself the experience due to wounded pride.

I spent my college years mumbling under my breath about the Xbox, and how Halo really wasn't as great as everyone said it was... though I admit that I played it and had fun. What can I say, I was growing up. The Gamecube didn't really do it for me, I'm sorry to say, and other than Smash Bros. and the very late Twilight Princess, was kind of a disappointment. I was starting to appreciate games for games' sake. At some point, though, SEGA went under; and though I was actually kind of sad to see it go, I have to admit that I still had a good, long, cathartic laugh for all the trash talk I had to endure as a kid...

Finally, I entered the workforce and bought myself a shiny new Wii. The graphics really, really sucked. I felt a little betrayed, along with all the other gamers who grew up with the big N and defended it for so long. But I didn't mind that at all as long as I was spending hours hosting WiiSports parties, Mario Kart parties, some nostalgic Smash Bros. parties, and even Mario.. Party... parties. There were some good solo player offerings (I'm looking at you, kind of updated Twilight Princess, stellar Mario Galaxy and very awesome Metroid Prime 3), but as I was now a grown-up with, er, grown-up needs, I also wanted me some big, spectacular, gritty, epic, thematically complex, engaging narratives with deep gameplay and aesthetic wow-factor. So, being a mature adult who was now past all that petty loyalism for loyalism's sake, I broke down and bought an Xbox 360... and immediately began to loathe myself for how much I enjoyed it. I know, I know... I admit I have a problem. Recovery takes a while.

Anyway, that about catches us up. I still play my Wii (mostly Red Steel 2, Mario Bros. Wii with my wife, and Monster Hunter Tri with my bro), but I have to say that the 360 gets a bit more of my time these days, what with the Gears of War and the Halo:Reach and the Mass Effect. I was ELATED when the WiiU rumors started popping up, and my fanboyism is almost stoked back up to fever pitch over that, though its full effect will depend greatly on the nature of the IPs that get announced. I think Nintendo is genius, I respect them as a company, but they burned me a bit. Heck, I think they burned everyone. I'm such a fanboy, I even believe that I can detect a little bit of burn resentment in the voices of the Microsoft and Sony reps when they say all those hurtful things about the big N. Because we all know that deep down, they are remembering their carefree days of youth when the NES saved home gaming and provided a beacon of hope and inspiration to all the gamers of the world. Their swagger and their thinly-veiled insults are like cries of pain from a neglected child, who just wants their daddy to give them a little bit of love...

I think Nintendo can give us all that love with the WiiU, I really think it can... but we'll see. Sony and Microsoft have very solid systems with some genuinely FUN, deep exclusives, and I haven't seen anything nearly as impressive for the WiiU. Don't get me wrong, though, I'm still preparing my maniacal laughter for the day Sony dies... Mwa-ha-ha-h... sorry... sorry... I SAID I have a problem!

Sincerely,
Narcidius

Yeah, running UE3 in some form is not a big deal (even the iPhone can do it)... as far as the iteration announced in that video goes, that requires DirectX11 compatibility (at last report), and thus probably won't run on the WiiU, whose latest spec announcements indicate that it will only support DirectX10.1... so, there will be more assets of UE3's current build that could be utilized on the WiiU than on the current gen systems, but the system will likely not support UE3's next steps (as demonstrated in that video).

So, I love the Nintendo IPs... franchises like Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Star Fox, Pokemon, Pikmin, and the like have kept me entertained since childhood.  There's nothing wrong, however, with hoping for something new and exciting - a new world with new themes to explore and new people to meet.

Personally, I was immensely grateful when Nintendo put their support behind efforts like GoldenEye and Eternal Darkness.  These offerings were a bit more "mature" (I hate to use that word, because of its ironically juvenile implications regarding mindless violence and gratuitous sexuality) than their standard fare, and filled a niche in the market (and in my game library) that was somewhat missing.  I like some intense, scary, and downright gritty games every once in a while, and I like hard-hitting, thematically complex epics any time I can get them (gritty or otherwise).

I want to know, however... am I in the actual minority of Nintendo fans regarding the kind of game I want to play on the new system?  What kind of game are you dying to see?  And if Nintendo were to come out with a totally new Intellectual Property, what kind of game would you be dreaming for?

Boy do I look forward to something like this... The Other M Samus was a bit of a train wreck (sooooo sensitive), but there's no arguing with the Metroid style, and this is a franchise that could get a lot of mileage from the HD treatment.

As for Retro... man, I've been crossing my fingers that Miyamoto-San will toss Star Fox their way. The thought alone sends me into delirious rapture.

Not that we don't enjoy the adventure or challenge of a Zelda or Mario game, but we also enjoy games what quite literally have mature themes (death, loss, morality).

Well stated... honestly, I had Gears in mind too as the kind of franchise that is gritty/violent without being facile.  This doesn't seem like Nintendo's cup of tea, but again, I've been surprised before.  Here's hoping!

Just to confirm, Golden Sun isn't Nintendo's IP.  It belongs to Camelot.

Thanks for the clarification... rereading it, it really does seem like I was implying that it was Nintendo's IP.  Incidentally, I had a hard time thinking of examples for some of these genres, even considering good 3rd party software (like Golden Sun)... Mario RPG has a strong fan base (so I guess I could have mentioned that, to stick with the theme), but I have to admit I just don't get it.  Fire Emblem and some of the classic FF releases are the best I could think of, but I went with Golden Sun because it has a modern look and is JUST... SO... GOOD!

Also, good point about the Mother series... that was some zany fun, and I'd love another installment.

Personally, I think that the 3DS is the perfect delivery vehicle for N64 re-releases (OoT has me stoked)... but if they were to completely refurbish the game (more akin to what MS is doing for the Halo:CE anniversary), I could see an HD version blowing me away. Even more exciting to me, in many ways, would be a re-imagining of the tale, like what Eurocom did with the recent Goldeneye for Wii.

Honestly (and I know this will be unpopular) I think Nintendo needs to cool it with the Zelda franchise for a while (other than these kind of remakes)... I like Zelda as a kind of epoch franchise, giving me a new tale for a new era. I would hate to see it become a serial, faerie sitcom... I think the same thing about Metroid, for now. I say, give me (or rather, give Retro) a new Star Fox... it's been ages for that franchise, and it would be in a great position to milk that HD goodness.

Yeah, the terms "casual" and "hardcore" are very ambiguous. While I affirm the posters above who define "hardcore" as people who play games often or buy a lot of games, I think a helpful distinction in software would be between games that are complex (or "deep") experiences with a LOT to do, a lot to learn, and a lot to master, and games that are intentionally created as simple (or "shallow", but not in a pejorative sense) experiences (i.e. easy to understand, easy to play, not overwhelming in terms of scope).

The hardcore gamers that are not just whining incoherently are usually asking for DEEP experiences - for games that are difficult to master and have a lot to discover (by this definition, even Pokemon could count, and I think it does, but Monster Hunter is a better example). Lots of hardcore gamers also happen to want their games violent and gritty (for personal taste reasons), but I don't think this deserves to be included in the category as part of the definition. I love me some Resident Evil... but I've logged FAR more hours into Pokemon.

I think that Nintendo has already proven that they will have great support for casual gamers. There are the Mii apps (Chase Mii and Battle Mii) demoed at E3, as well as the inevitable WiiSportsU, Mario Party U, etc. I hear your worries, OP, but I think you can rest assured that Nintendo will not ignore you. They have a lot of new fans who want to play casually, with friends and family or just for some quick entertainment in the evening, and they will not ignore that fan base!

I think some third party devs are being a bit narrow-minded in saying the Wii U is not their kind of platform and, seemingly, planning on ignoring it, not because of what it can do, but because of Nintendo's reputation as a "family gaming" company. Silly.

Yeah, I agree with this... but are the devs really saying this?  The only devs I've heard turning up their nose at the WiiU are those in the pocket of one of the other brands (Sony or MS), and they turn up their noses at each others' systems too.

I think that the WiiU does direly need 3rd party exclusives (and good ones), but I don't think they should buy them.  They need to organically generate them.  People who don't think Nintendo can do this must have very bad memories... I don't know how anyone could forget what Rare did with GoldenEye, and I don't think it would take too much to get a studio like Mistwalker (of recent Last Story ire), Eurocom (new GoldenEye, Dead Space:Extraction), or Remedy (Alan Wake for Xbox360, who hasn't yet signed with MS for a sequel or followup and could probably be turned) to come to Nintendo with a genuinely fresh, deep experience that really turns some heads.

Also... what in the world is Silicon Knights doing these days (other than whining about Epic's tech support)?

I mean GOOD exclusives:P

LOL... yeah, the Conduit was fun for a playthrough, but High Voltage is not the studio to turn to for a bit hit.

Yeah... I wish, for silly aesthetic reasons, that there was a greater contrast to the look of the Wii. I like some curves... but then again, I think the N64 was the sexiest looking console ever released.

Ultimately, however, I don't think the look matters (as long as they give me an option of black, so it blends in with ALL THE OTHER ELECTRONICS OUT THERE).

It does have triggers.....

Er... no, they mean analog triggers with graded pull (for variable acceleration)... the ones on the current version of the controller are on/off buttons.

It seems like Animal Crossing was a halfway-house attempt at a Nintendo MMO, before the tech was really feasible for the console market. I could see a new MMO on this level - a Pokemon-like world based on collecting, trading, socializing, and "flair"-like display of your personal creations. I can't see them pulling off anything on the level of WoW... but I admit that the idea excites me. Nintendo's art style seems well suited to a WoW-like persistent-world RPG.

Well wow! What the heck have they been doing now a days! Can't be much since I have never heard if them!!!!!

LOL... I thought you were joking in your first post. Rare used to be Nintendo's Golden Boys - the go to studio for everything awesome and cutting-edge on the big N. It's really Nintendo who dumped them, not the other way around, because the big N execs said they didn't see much promise in the studio's future. Might have been a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it sure seems like they were right.

Rare has mostly been pumping out so-so Xbox Live Arcade games for the past few years. Some of their best talent left early over artistic differences, and they haven't really found their way since... one of the saddest stories for core gamers ever.

Sony/Nintendo IP trading system..yep.that's what we need. Nintendo gets to build a LBP, GOW and Resistance..Sony gets to build a Mario, Zelda and Kirby....

My brain almost crashed trying to contemplate this idea... it'll never, ever happen, but it's a fun thought experiment. I don't know that the relevant studios would exactly know what to do with the genres, though...

For example, imagine a Zelda where you can travel between different times.

Man, the number of good possibilities like this is just staggering... X-ray glasses for Bond, Thermal Scopes for FPS, time or dimensional warp sight for supernatural/sci-fi games and thrillers (like that new Amy game, where the same space keeps shifting between the real world and the parallel hell dimension)... one doesn't know where to begin.

Of course, like others have said, it REALLY all depends on the games that developers actually make. Ideas are great, but until they put some sort of wonder-developer's-kit into each of our hands and tell us to go to town making our own games, we needs some solid 3rd party interest and some green lights from major publishers.

Also, I agree that the system itself is not perfect. It would generate a LOT of confidence from the market to see some announcements made about price point, about hard-and-fast hardware specs, etc. It would also restore a lot of confidence from the die-hard fan base to see Nintendo listen to some of the criticisms about the controller (i.e. lack of analog triggers), even if they seem petty to some. A few loud and happy fanatics go a LONG way in today's guerrilla marketing scene (at least if Nintendo genuinely cares about the so-called "hardcore" market).

A gritty RPG with mature characters could really give us something fresh and less predictable.

You know, I think you're really right about this. People tend to think of RPGs as either very cartoon-y (or at least very stylized), or as RPG-lite (like Mass Effect, which really doesn't deserve the word RPG appended to its action genre category, IMO). Even something like Monster Hunter is far more action game than RPG.

I would LOVE to see a gritty, brooding RPG with tons of atmosphere and deep character development. I think it could be awesome.

What does IP stand for?

Ah, my bad... forgive the "jargon". IP stands for Intellectual Property (the easiest way I know to talk about a game concept, idea, world or set of characters that a studio has developed. IP could refer to anything from the contents of a speech to the postings on a webpage to the ideas that go into a patent... but some IP is actually protected by law, even if not protected by copyright).

Nintendo lost a lot of third party support on the N64 when it kept cartridges instead of switching to discs.

*cough* FFVII *cough*... seriously, man, the wound's still sore...

Burger Time: U - "This Time, It's Personal"

Nintendo does not need third party exclusives. Their plethora of first party content is all that they need to ensure that their console stands out.

I respect your point, but I really gotta disagree with you on this one... the 1st party content appeals to a certain type of gamer (mostly, the kind that was perfectly happy with the Wii, as well), but not to the audience of gamers currently on other systems, or about ready to go to other systems - both those that have left the Wii because they felt it ignored them, and those that never took Nintendo seriously in the first place.

The real problem is this.  With the much lower install base of a newly launched system, and the recent memory of abysmally low sales for 3rd party games on the Wii, developers will, naturally, be hesitant to make anything truly original for the WiiU.  3rd parties need either big sales numbers or big Nintendo support to justify design risks.  If all that the WiiU gets from 3rd parties is bland ports of games available on other systems, the WiiU may be looking at a repeat of the Wii situation, where 3rd party support evaporates and Nintendo is left with the only content on the system.  Cross-platform games are okay... but they don't help the system itself succeed if there's no wide install base to buy them.

This is what Nintendo needs the 3rd party exclusives for.  3rd party exclusives draw wider ranges of new people to a system - get them in the door - and that allows all cross-platform games to sell well.  If you can make a Sony fanboy break down and buy a WiiU for those two or three cool exclusives (like I bought an Xbox for Mass Effect and Gears of War), then you've got them for the cross-platforms, too.  If you don't have them, then the cross-platforms don't sell at all.

The people who are all OMG'ing for a new Animal Crossing are NOT the same ones obsessing over the latest COD zombie mode DLC.  The difference makes a big difference in a systems financial viability...

like "Disaster" with more (and more) third person action .. but not an open world game

MADWORLD and Conduit for Wiiu (no worry about NMH , but the other two?)

I'm right with you on the 3rd person action... and I don't think there's too much to worry about as far as the Conduit franchise goes. High Voltage has a great relationship with Nintendo, they like working with the company, and they're in the rare position of having a 3rd party exclusive franchise with a bit of a following on a Ninty system.

This is an interesting quotation from an interview between an IGN editor and Aonuma-San of Zelda fame:

This (the time shifting in OoT) wasn't a process that started with the objective of creating an epic story; rather, it was a process in which the gameplay elements gave birth to an epic story.

Miyamoto has said similar things throughout his career, about gameplay elements driving story creation, and it strikes me as rather similar to the approach of movie companies like Pixar: create an engaging thought experiment, and then explore it until a story emerges.

My question is this... do you think that Nintendo has succeeded in generating interesting stories by this method, as of late? Personally, I thought that Metroid:Other M was not compelling in this regard (perhaps because it abandoned the formula, but that's up for debate)... and I am hard-pressed to think of a recent big N game that captivated me to the extent that Ocarina did. But maybe I'm just getting old and losing my memory... anybody that can help refresh me?

If Nintendo wanted to make those types of games exclusive to the Wii U then they would hire a renowned studio and publish the games themselves.

I'm pretty much cool with this, too (as you pointed out with my examples) - and honestly kind of assumed that it was what the OP meant by 3rd party exclusives (i.e. games made by 3rd party studios, using those studios' own IPs, which are only available for one system).

I agree that it seems to be a raw deal for the publisher - missing out on millions of dollars of revenue by agreeing to exclusivity on one platform - but Epic Games insists that they couldn't be happier with the arrangement, as does Lionhead (of Fable fame).  

I would hope that you would be right about the draw of the new controller in pulling core gamers from other systems (and I like this tack on the issue)... but I have grave concerns about the likelihood that publishers will put such innovative functionality into their WiiU ports unless the install base is ALREADY there and demanding such unique consideration with hands full of ready cash.

As Nintendo doesn't seem really likely to pull in any 3rd party exclusives, however... I am going to hope that you are right in your estimate of the controller's power to draw new people!

I play with friends any time I can (which is less often than I like)... especially when co-op is available. On the Wii there just wasn't much available in this area, but the WiiU looks to have a strong focus on connected play. Drop-in/out co-op seems to be quickly becoming the new industry standard for major releases, and I like the trend.