8th Gen
Wii U – E3 2011
Jun 8th
Yesterday at Nintendo’s E3 gaming conference in America, one of the oldest and biggest faces in gaming showed to us their new games console. The presentation at the conference was very poor I’ll admit, and we didn’t actually see anything of the console it’self in the show, all we saw was the controller working along side other Wii controllers, leading us to believe that this is a new controller for Nintendo’s current system, the original Wii. Now of course, a day after the conference and after a load of questions being asked towards Nintendo, we understand that this is a new console, with HD graphic capability (giving the console the capability to run in 1080p) and also has backwards compatibility with all original Nintendo Wii games and is compatible with all Wii controllers.
There isn’t any Gamecube compatibility being mentioned so it’s games and controllers aren’t compatible. I can understand this as the original DS was compatible with Gameboy Advance games and now the 3DS is only compatible with DS games. The backwards compatibility is a good feature but they don’t want to go two generations backwards in their consoles game library. In my mind, the Wii U may have a virtual console or e-shop where you can download classic titles. The Gamecube may well be added to this online service.
The graphic capability for this console seems fairly convincing. This is a being played off the Wii U’s game engine…
The controller it’s self is returning to the traditional way of controlling games, but giving it that little twist, by adding a touch screen, a camera, gyro-sensors and a microphone. All these, Nintendo claim, will change gaming all over again, just as the Wii’s motion controls did. I’m not aware of how conferable the controller is, but people are saying that it is “surprisingly nice to hold” so I’ll have to take their word on it.
Nintendo are claiming that this screen will allow a player to do more things at once. I have my doubts, as they said the same about the DS, yet the bottom screen is hardly ever used at all in most of the games. But, by the look of some of the demonstrations they are running, it looks like they will use it to it’s full advantage.
Hope you’ve found this informative, please tell me what you think of this console as both a step forward for Nintendo, or a direction you want videogame consoles to take in general. More to the point though, will you buy it?