Aaron Barton

Have to agree with Narc here.  Historically, power doesn't seem to correlate to success at all.  There are ALWAYS other variables at play that turn out to be worth more.  The N64 was more powerful than the PSX, see how that turned out?  And I'm pretty confident that the PS2 was weaker than the GCN.  The Game Gear ran circles around the Game Boy...etc.  Of course, the winners in those battles won for very good reasons...reasons far aside their processing ability.

Nintendo's biggest problem is that they simply don't throw down with the amazing games like they used to.  They built up enormous prestige in excellence in the 90s, and they're whoring it out to this day.  Sometimes it's done deliberately, such as when they outsource projects (we were just talking about Star Fox in another thread), and other times their teams really give it their all, but for whatever reason, the game didn't come out as good as it should have (I'm going to get flamed, but Twilight Princess is an example).  They do sometimes strike gold, like Mario Galaxy 2.  But it's not enough to have a handful of games each generation to carry the torch.  There was a time you could walk into a store to buy a game, not knowing what it was going to be, and choosing a Nintendo-made one was almost always a good choice.  You could literally judge a Nintendo game by its cover.

Nintendo went from the "quality over quantity" mantra with N64, delaying games over and over that would end up masterpieces, to wanting to cash-in so fast that they can't outsource their own properties fast enough.  They have a quality problem, and their control gimmick worked once.  They can't pull it off again without delivering the goods, the TRULY amazing games.  The problem started with GCN and got worse with Wii, so I have a bad feeling we're either going to see a drastic turnaround in quality...or it'll just slide further.  Time will tell.

Too true... the hope for the Nintendo console has never been in its superior power.  

It seems that the new system will be adequately powerful, and it is nice to have a system that is relatively up to par with the market... but the real question has always been about the games.  Will Nintendo give us some real, quality 1st/2nd party titles (as well as new, exciting IPs), and will they adequately court quality 3rd party developers?  

Second to this has to be the concern of the online functionality... Will they develop a substantial community network, and will the social buzz be attractive enough to establish a real, involved community of gamers?

I HAVE to think that the only reason you would choose Xbox over Nintendo if you had to choose would be because of these issues... am I right?  Nintendo's hardware has always had impressive quality in terms of reliability and true control innovation (I, for one, would drop my Xbox in a second if there were anything worthwhile to play on my Nintendo systems).  This reinforces to me that Nintendo really must put their focus on these areas...

It's easy to assume that a new system will support multiple connections of its controller for multiplayer.  But I slowly grew wary as I realized here that Nintendo has shown no specification for this, nor have they shown the system being used with more than one Wii-U controller.  They have shown only one Wii-U controller with up to four additional Wii Remotes at once.   See this quote from an interview:

Miyamoto: Right now I'm planning that people can still be able to use their Wii Remote controllers that they already have, which means this time you now have five controllers to play with. Iwata: You mean this new controller, and four Wii Remote Plus controllers for a total of five. Miyamoto: Right. Five controllers. And we have people play in many combinations.

They don't exactly confirm it either way, but I don't like the sound of it.

Consider that the Wii-U console needs to process the video for each screen to be transmitted wirelessly, and you see just how dangerous it is that they allow only one Wii-U controller for processing or wireless bandwidth limitations.  Not to mention cost limitations, as it's clear that this would run higher than your typical 360 pad.  They may have designed this whole setup so that they don't really expect you to have any more Wii-U controllers than the one it comes with.

If this is the case, I'm extremely disappointed.  You couldn't even make the four swords concept work on this system as it existed on Gamecube.  All of the obvious applications such as having your plays in a football game on your personal screen are suddenly a lot more gimmicky.  It's not going to keep anything secret in multiplayer -it's just going to clean up the TV interface.

I need confirmations before jumping the gun, but I'M NERVOUS.

I just totally LOL'd at the above rumor.

They can remove online entirely, scale down the graphics, remove final smashes, have less stages, and call it Super Smash Bros. Nap Time.  I don't really care, my only deciding factor on buying a new Smash is whether they fix the horrifically bad fighting engine in Brawl.  I'm still playing Melee with my friends.  And before anybody says anything: no, I don't use wavedashing.  I remember Iwata saying that had Sakurai not accepted the project, they probably would have just polished Melee with some balance changes and added online.  Oh how I wish.