Mukkinese

Well, no doubt Nintendo are trying to hit a sweet spot, between making the current gen consoles obsolete, thus forcing Sony and MS to bring out new machines, and having a console with enough power so that if the competition does bring out those machines anyway, the Wii U itself does not become obsolete.

With all the hysteria about console wars online right now, it is difficult to predict who will do what, but it is hard to see why Sony and MS would launch their next gen machines now. They can more easily keep in touch with the Wii U by adding more ram and, in the case of the Xbox, a higher capacity disc drive, to their current consoles.

Only time will tell, but we can be sure, whatever the competition do, the Wii U will be relevant for some time to come.

But the Dreamcast was more powerful than everything else at its time and easy to develop for, yet nobody flocked to it.

Even in the early PS2 days the Dreamcast could hold its own graphically, because the PS2 was so awkward the write for it took them years to really push it past what you could do on Dreamcast very easily.

Developers flock to the console they think consumers will buy, plain and simple.



Hang on, are you saying you think the Wii U online services are BETTER than Playstation or Xbox?  Because I highly doubt it plus its all guess work right now anyway, as we do not know what it will have at all.

However based on how much they bragged about how brilliant the 3DS would be online and how they under-delivered, I'm not holding my breath.

It depends what you mean by "better"? I know this sounds like a cop-out, but different people want different things. what I see with the Wii U is that Nintendo are trying to make a console that can be used pretty much as you want. A "universal machine". With earlier consoles they made the mistake of controlling what could be done with them very tightly, it seems that they have reversed that policy, to some extent. In that developers and publishers will be able to create their own networks, run the way they want. Hopefully all this will be accessed by a single Nintendo user account and eshop. Not the unified network of Xbox live by any means, so not as good for some, but it will allow different approaches to be tried out all at the same time.

Do you drive? I don't find it particularly difficult to look around and in mirrors, constantly switching my attention from one place to another. This is  very natural way of doing things, do you look down at your keyboard when typing and back up at the screen to read what you have written every few words? Low-level multi-tasking, like this, is part of living. You might as well say that you are not sure you can walk and chew gum at the same time...

If there is a steady supply of mature games for the Wii U, it cannot help, but gather gamers who like such titles.

Why would they go for the Wii U, rather than a Playstation or Xbox?

This is Nintendo's huge advantage, one that the Wii U is set to exploit very well. By far the majority of gamers, "hardcore" or not cut their gaming teeth on a Nintendo machine. Although Nintendo did, at one time, have "hardcore" titles, and some might say they still do, they have also always had the market for children and families sown up tight. The fact that they are known as the "kindergarten" of gaming is a massive strength, not a weakness.

That will continue with the Wii U. We can see many of the features are aimed at parents who want to buy for the family, the ability to play and watch T.V. at the same time is a big one, the touchscreen controller - an interface almost everyone is familiar with, if only through their phones, the design, clearly made not to scare off non-gamers, add to that the Nintendo's rep and already existing user base, massive extended by the Wii, and they will continue to dominate that sector of the market.

Why is that important in bringing mature gamers to the Wii U? Before, all those gamers who grew up playing on a Nintendo machine and wanted to move on to more "mature" titles, had no choice, but to move to a Playstation or Xbox, now they can stay with a manufacturer that they grew with; Nintendo. This is the huge advantage Nintendo have and are now on the verge of exploiting.

They did kind of drop the ball, both with the Wii, this year, and the 3DS launch. It has been something of a drought for games on the Wii and not enough titles were available for the 3DS at launch. That left space for the minor criticisms of the hand-held system to grow and dominate any news about the 3DS. I find it hard to believe that there are very large numbers of people who get bad headaches from quite small amounts of time played on the device, but with almost no other news, this is what gets written about and somewhat exaggerates the extent of the problem,  that doesn't help sales either.

Yet again, in both cases we see demonstrated the old adage; its the games that sell the machines.

Have you seen how people react to Farmville. They some hardcore gamers. The definition is not universal and is subject to opinions.



I agree Nintendo is going after a bigger piece of the pie. It's just good business to target all markets.

I'm convinced the third-party devs will come onboard, some might just take a little longer to do so, and that will bring the "serious" gamers new and old, but the big question is the Wii-upgraders. With such a huge installed user-base there must be a significant number interested in what Nintendo are doing. How big that number is can only be guessed at and how many will be persuaded to upgrade is another unknown. Fanboys for sure, but the so-called "casual gamers" who only use their Wii's once in a while, what will they do?

The Wii U has some very good family friendly features, the second screen for when the T.V. is being used, the video-calling facility, the ability for parents to allow kids to surf online, while watching T.V., but keeping an eye on jr. is another big plus and lastly giving those who aspire to owning a tablet, but cannot justify the cost, an excuse to finally get one, or something very close.

It will be interesting to see how Nintendo try to bring in these very diverse groups.

No doubt some exclusives will come, but they are not as important to Nintendo as the other two, because Nintendo's own software, which is exclusive, regularly tops out the charts.

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.

Firstly, I think the complaints about the circle-pads instead of thumbsticks is nit-picking, at worst, it's a minor irritation. The change of a control from analogue to digital is slightly more important, though again, not the end of the world. The touch-screen and gyros can easily help replace any missing analogue controls. Surely the obvious solution, in a racing game, would be to map the brakes and the accelerator to one of the analogue circle pads, steering could be taken care of by the gyros?

Having said that, one thing that seems to be missed by most journo's commenting on the Wii U is that it offers more controller options than any other console. Okay, only the Wii-tablet-thingy comes with the base unit, but the Wii U will support the Wiimote for motion social/party gaming, the Wiimote and nunchuck, the Classic controller/classic controller pro and the balance board, as well as the new controllers range of options; touch-screen, gyros, accellerometer, mic camera, etc. With the exception of the balance board, non of these are going to break the bank, so each players favourite control option is, at least in theory, available.

I think Sony and Microsoft will be happy to wait and see how the market accepts Nintendo's new innovations, before they commit themselves to massive spending. If the hook for Cafe is a huge draw and grabs peoples imaginations in the way the Wii did, or even half as well as the Wii, then the other two will want to take that into account with their new machines.

Having said that, I think it is a given that their next consoles will be significantly more powerful than Cafe is, maybe not in delivering blisteringly different graphics, so much as allowing a better version of whatever Ninty does with Cafe. Perhaps they might even come up with some innovations of their own?

Seems like the next step is a seamless integration of home and mobile gaming, who looks best set to take that route?