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The new Nintendo Wii U
By Steven Curtis | June 26, 2011
The Nintendo Wii has managed to outsell both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in the current generation of games consoles, capturing the imaginations of tens of millions of people across the world because it made a previously impregnable industry much more family-friendly and easy to approach. Motion controls and a low price point helped its success, but now the Wii U has been announced, heralding the second iteration of this console and raising many questions as to how its launch next year will alter the games industry and meet fan expectations.
While Nintendo was working on the Wii U it was referred to in rumours as Project Cafe, but its commercial nametag is now intended to indicate how it is both a machine for multiplayer, family fun as well as being a return to enabling engaging, single player experiences of the variety favoured by serious gamers. While the Wii U may induce a few sniggering laughs upon first hearing its name, it is hardly the oddest console brand on the market given the presence of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
The hardware inside the original Nintendo Wii was not up to the task of pumping out true high definition visuals, unlike the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, which allowed Nintendo to keep the cost of the console down. However, the Wii U will bring HD visuals to the table with Nintendo promising that they will be easily as good as if not better than its two console rivals. At the moment only a few technical demos showing off the power of the Wii U have surfaced, so the graphical fidelity of in-game action on the finished article remains to be seen. However, Nintendo seems confident that it will be enough to satisfy those who are crying out for more visual clout.
Throwing the traditional design of a controller out the window and emphasising motion controls made the first Nintendo Wii and its remote a success, so the news that another brave control method is accompanying the Wii U may not be a surprise. The Wii U’s controller looks like a handheld console in its own right, largely thanks to its 6.2 inch screen which supports touch interactions, just like the portable Nintendo 3DS. The plan is to put gameplay elements such as menus, inventories and other items onto the smaller screen so that the boundaries of what gamers will expect can be expanded. While the Wii U will make the most out of HDTVs in living rooms worldwide, the controller will double up as a substitute for the large display, with users able to switch from one to the other seamlessly so that others can watch TV without interrupting a session of play.
Nintendo has yet to finalise the details about what kind of hardware will be giving the Wii U its graphical grunt. However, reports suggest that IBM and AMD will be handling the main processing and graphics chip respectively. Both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are seen as solid graphical performers even after so many years on the market so Nintendo should have a shot at matching these when it comes to number crunching, provided it can get the pricing right and not oversell its new machine.
The launch line up and future releases for the Nintendo Wii U are not yet known, but it would be safe to assume that the firm’s most popular franchises such as Mario and Zelda will feature at some point, if only because demos at E3 showed prerendered scenes from both worlds. An HD remix of a sequence from Zelda: Twilight Princess showed real promise and was enough eye candy for fans of the series. Nintendo is also striking deals with third party game firms so that big name releases will appear on Wii U, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 with consistent graphics and gaming experience across each. The big fish for Nintendo to net will be the Call of Duty series of first person shooters, although this has yet to be confirmed.
There are a few quibbles being levelled at the rumoured Wii U specifications ahead of its launch and they may remain until it is revealed in greater detail. For example, initially it was thought that only one of the new screen-based controllers could be used in conjunction with the console at a time, but Nintendo has since said that two will work simultaneously. Secondly the lack of DVD playback has annoyed some, although as Nintendo has pointed out most people already have a device for achieving this.
Next year the Wii U will be making its international debut, potentially carrying with it the 86+ million people who bought the first Wii. This would represent a real shift in the games industry and could see Nintendo stealing users from rival consoles. However, Nintendo’s supremacy in the current generation in terms of console sales may be shaken if a new Xbox 360 is launched at next year’s E3.
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