Yes­ter­day, edi­tor Ace­of­Nades posted his weekly Gamer­Rant and had quite an argu­ment brew­ing over Nintendo’s newly announced con­sole the WiiU. I thought it would be fun, with Ace­of­Nades per­mis­sion, to counter his argu­ment with this rebut­tal. It’s not so much prov­ing him wrong because at this point no one has a vast amount of details on the sys­tem and its odd con­troller, but see­ing the pos­i­tives of the con­troller and con­sole in my opinion.

The WiiU is still sur­rounded with a shroud of mys­tery. What we were shown at E3 was the tech of the new con­troller and what will be the final hard­ware design albeit some tweaks. They showed the con­troller off first the same way they did with the Wii. If you are intro­duc­ing a new way to play games the hard­ware and soft­ware take a back seat to the con­troller. I would want to know how I am con­trol­ling this new piece of hard­ware before the specs. The Wii remote became the sym­bol for the Wii not the actual con­sole it’s self. The WiiU’s con­troller will become the sym­bol of that con­sole as well. Sony has had the same con­troller for over a decade albeit some tweaks, that is why there is such a focus on the hard­ware rather than the con­troller. Nin­tendo is try­ing some­thing new, in terms of con­trollers, with every con­sole life­cy­cle. This time with the largest and most tech­no­log­i­cal advanced con­troller we have seen to date, so I agree with them to push the con­troller first, hard­ware and soft­ware sec­ond and let the press and con­sumers come to terms with what they will be using with the new hardware.

The new con­troller is an odd, yet large, addi­tion to Nintendo’s sta­ble of periph­er­als. I remem­ber back in 1996 see­ing the huge tri­dent of a con­troller for the Nin­tendo 64. After using what resem­bled a small brick for sev­eral years and think­ing this is going to cramp my hands and make every­thing unplayable; what were they think­ing? It turned out to be quiet com­fort­able and ush­ered in a new era of con­trol with the ana­log stick. The Game­cube con­troller with its jelly bean like but­tons was the best con­troller of last gen. The Wiis nun chuck and remote combo showed us a new way to play while devel­op­ers ush­ered in the infa­mous “wag­gle”, but showed that sim­ple ges­tures were, at times, bet­ter than but­tons. The WiiU con­troller, I believe it will give us some­thing we never thought we needed. With a beau­ti­ful 6.2” screen and the full array of but­tons we have come accus­tomed to hav­ing on our con­trollers, maybe Nin­tendo is on to some­thing. The vibe I get from the con­troller is the GBA/GameCube con­nec­tiv­ity and how much fun it was to play Final Fan­tasy: Chrys­tal Chron­i­cles with friends and have your own lit­tle inven­tory screen where you didn’t have to break the action on the TV. The Leg­end of Zelda: The Four Swords is another exam­ple of the con­nec­tiv­ity. The smaller screen was used for dun­geon crawl­ing for cer­tain play­ers and keep­ing your stats as well. This new con­troller seems like a per­fect fit for any game with an inven­tory sys­tem, like a Zelda or RPG. Sports games also come to mind. I have always hated play­ing Mad­den against some one in the same room and all you would have to do is look at the other player’s plays and you have a 1:3 chance of pick­ing the play they chose. With WiiU, the play­book can be in your hands and no one but you will know the play. The Dream­cast had a sim­i­lar fea­ture with their VMU mem­ory cards but the mono­chrome screen was not ideal in all light­ing con­di­tions. There is a just a bevy of ideas that this screen and con­troller can be used for and I think we haven’t even scratched the sur­face of what devel­op­ers have in store.

I think Nin­tendo has learned a lot from their time with the Wii. The Wii remote devoured bat­ter­ies at an alarm­ing rate and the new con­troller looks to have a recharge­able bat­tery, pos­si­bly inte­grated like the PS3 remotes. I could see bat­tery life rang­ing any­where from 5–8 hours of play on a sin­gle charge, which is bet­ter than the 3DS bat­tery pow­er­ing a full 3D screen. Heat won’t be an issue because I see you being able to either trans­fer Wii titles or titles that are less hard­ware tax­ing to the con­troller. If they find some way to have full retail games such as Bat­tle­field or a full on Zelda to this device, I am sold! At that point they have the great­est con­troller ever devel­oped or some sort of pow­er­ful Voodoo. There is no doubt that the WiiU con­troller is huge. 6.2” screen plus two sticks and all the nor­mal face but­tons; it is larger than my girl­friends Nook Color. The N64 had a rather large con­troller; does any­one remem­ber the orig­i­nal Xbox con­troller named “duke”?  There have been large con­trollers in the past but not to the extent of this one. If the ergonom­ics are right and the weight is kept to a min­i­mum, then I see no prob­lems in long play ses­sions. The con­troller has to feel right as well as uti­liz­ing its functions.

The WiiU and it’s highly advanced, yet large, con­troller will not hit the Wiis orig­i­nal retail price of $249.99; there is just no fea­si­ble way. I can see this launch­ing as one of Nintendo’s prici­est sys­tems to date. There has been no talk of price point but from what I have seen and to have more horse­power than the 360 and PS3, the $399.99 price range is what I would price it at. The extra con­trollers are going to have to be $100 or less. At the peak of their price points the Nun chuck and Remote combo was hit­ting the $70 ask­ing price, so $100 for a con­troller that smokes that combo is not unrea­son­able in my book. They will have a hell of a time mar­ket­ing this. I agree with Ace­of­Nades on this point. Nin­tendo has done a ter­ri­ble job at mar­ket­ing the 3DS and sales have suf­fered as a result. The 3DS needs to be mar­keted as the DS suc­ces­sor and they need to cut the DS cord if they want the 3DS to flour­ish (that and a lineup of games that go from “meh” to “what is this shit?”). The same goes for the WiiU, it needs to be seen as the replace­ment for the Wii and it needs to stay out of the 3DS’s light. Nin­tendo has a great fam­ily of con­soles and hand­helds; it just needs to let the con­sumer know the dif­fer­ence and what the replace­ments are.

I will end with some­thing Ace­of­Nades men­tioned and some­thing I think is going through every ones minds; I don’t think this new con­troller is a gim­mick. The videogame indus­try is a very com­pet­i­tive mar­ket. You have com­pa­nies and devel­op­ment houses come and go and there are only a few major play­ers in the indus­try that are con­stants. Hard­ware man­u­fac­tur­ers are con­stants and there are only three of them so how do you dif­fer­en­ti­ate your­self from the com­pe­ti­tion when you all have sim­i­lar prod­ucts? The WiiU will be going toe to toe with the 360 and PS3 as well as their replace­ments. Nin­tendo is finally mak­ing a HD con­sole and wants to open the minds and hearts of the core gamers they left behind in their quest for a wider audi­ence. Microsoft and Sony all jumped on to the motion con­trol band wagon when the Wii took off and we have Kinect and PlaySta­tion Move as the result. Now Nin­tendo is try­ing to through down with the big boys while going after Apple (and their mind­less min­ions), who they have always seen them­selves com­pet­ing with; now is the time to dif­fer­en­ti­ate. If you have the 360, PS3, and the WiiU all sit­ting side by side with no labels and sim­i­lar con­trollers, you have three almost iden­ti­cal sys­tems that the aver­age con­sumer will blindly pick one and never look back. Microsoft touts its online struc­ture and the 360 being an online media machine, while hav­ing a hand full of exclu­sives. Sony touts a tech­no­log­i­cal supe­rior con­sole with the PS3, the Blu-Ray disc for­mat, and a hand­ful of exclu­sives. Nin­tendo would have a con­sol with sim­i­lar hard­ware, a hand­ful of exclu­sives, and what? That is where the new con­troller fits in. It is unique to Nintendo’s con­sole. It is what sep­a­rates them from look­ing like every­one else. Nin­tendo needs more than just Mario and they know it. They are try­ing to work dili­gently with 3^rd party devel­op­ers and cre­ate some­thing unique, yet famil­iar, some­thing that “hard­core” gamers will put down their 360 pads and duel shocks and say “I like this, it is dif­fer­ent, yet some­thing I would have never thought I needed”. I have faith in Nin­tendo to bring us a qual­ity prod­uct and a com­plete game changer, because that is what they do best.

Wow, what a morn­ing. Nin­tendo went out with a bang that left more ques­tions than answers about their mys­te­ri­ous Project Café, now known as Wiiu. There was a great 3DS sup­port, a new con­troller for their new con­sole, and only one Wii title announced, so take that for what you will. Now on to the facts!

Cel­e­brat­ing 25 years of The Leg­end of Zelda – They had a live orches­tra per­form­ing the many themes from the Zelda games over the years and with fan­fare announce­ments deal­ing with the Zelda fran­chises. There will be a Zelda con­cert series per­form­ing world­wide; dates to be announced later. There will be a free copy of Zelda: Four Swords on the DSI­ware this fall. Sky­ward Sword will be out this hol­i­day, with a lim­ited edi­tion Gold Wii Remote plus, sold separately.

3DS – was greatly sup­ported this time around with sev­eral games that are headed to us by the end of the year. Mario Kart 3D will have new attach­ments such as a glider and a boat motor for under­wa­ter sec­tions on the tracks; release date this hol­i­day. Star­fox 64 3D will be out this Sep­tem­ber and will track your oppo­nents faces dur­ing mul­ti­player. Super Mario 3D will be out by the end of the year and will be a mix of 2D and 3D plat­form­ing, on top of bring­ing back the infa­mous Tanooki suit from Super Mario 3. Kid Icarus: Upris­ing will be out again this hol­i­day and will fea­ture AR card bat­tles and a mul­ti­player up to 3v3. Finally a game that first hit the Game­cube back in 2001 is get­ting a sequel with Luigi’s Man­sion 2. It is an all new title with sev­eral man­sions to explore.

3DS eShop – The update went live last night for the 3DS to enable the inter­net browser and the eShop. There will be com­ing, in the fall, game demos for both DSI­ware and retail games, along with 3D videos. Also within the eShop is the vir­tual con­sole that will have Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. Right now, up until July 7^th, you can down­load a free copy of Excite Bike 3D clas­sic edi­tion. This will be the start of Nintendo’s revival of clas­sis with 3D enhance­ments. Also free on the eShop is Pokedex 3D, which is an enhanced Pokedex where you cap­ture the Poke­mon through AR spots and the 3DS Spotpass.

WiiU– Nin­tendo announced what we all thought would be announced, the Wii suc­ces­sor; the WiiU. Now no tech specifics were given; but what was shown is the new con­troller they hope will rev­o­lu­tion­ize   gam­ing. The con­troller will have a 6.2” screen, accelerom­e­ter, speak­ers, a micro­phone, two cir­cle pads, a d-pad, nor­mal face but­tons (A,B,X,Y,), two bumpers, two trig­gers, and two cam­eras; one fac­ing out the other fac­ing you. Here is a pic­ture below. They did not show any specs but the entire tar­get and title footage they showed is com­pa­ra­ble to Xbox 360 and PS3. They touted titles such as Dark­siders 2, Dirt, Aliens: Colo­nial Marines, Ghost Recon Online, Metro: Last Light, Tekken, and Ninja Gaiden. These are all just titles they announced not con­firmed. No price and no offi­cial con­sole reveal was given out­side of press pic­tures, hope­fully we will see more in the future, until then here is the WiiU and its new controller.       

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