Nintendo Wii U To Be Release In 2012 With New Gaming Network

In Nintendo policy/result briefing, the company confirmed plans to show the Wii U final build at E3 2012. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata confirmed that the Wii U will be release for the 2012 holiday season. Iwata announced a new gaming network for Wii U and 3DS called Nintendo Network. Iwata says that Nintendo Network will be a personal account system with multiple individual password-protected users on an Wii U system (simpler to PS3 and XBOX 360). The Nintendo Network will also have support for DLC and digital titles.

New Super Smash Bros. Game is Still 'Several Years' Away

One of the biggest announcements at Nintendo's E3 Press conference this year was when Satoru Iwata announced that a new Super Smash Bros. game will be coming for the Wii U and the 3DS. The only problem with that is, well it doesn't exist yet. 

Series creator Masahiro Sakurai clarified that statement a bit, not disputing that there will be a new SSB game for the Wii U and 3DS, but he wants to be clear that he hasn't even started thinking about it yet.

Sakurai used his weekly Famitsu column (which has been translated by 1UP) to dispel the thoughts that the new Smash Brothers game was anywhere near completion. Sakurai's studio, Project Sora, is currently working on Kid Icarus: Uprising for the 3DS, and that's all they're working on right now.

"We've got two new games out in the open when there's no extra time to work with them at all," says Sakurai. "It makes me cringe, and I'm not sure it's the smartest thing to make gamers wait for several years, but the early announcement was made chiefly in order to attract new team members."

The key words there are "several years" which no one wants to hear, but Nintendo has never had a problem with making us wait for games anyway. Fortunately, Sakurai did have plenty to say about making the game for both Wii U and 3DS as opposed to one or the other.

"If we went solely for the Wii U," he said, "the HD graphics would really bump up the visual effects, but then we'd be stuck in another arms race. If we made this game another extension over previous one, we'd have to cut out the new things we could possibly do on the 3DS hardware and compete with ourselves again over the size of the character roster and the amount of gameplay we can put it. It wouldn't be a fruitful competition, but doing something completely new would be difficult for many reasons, not least of which that the gamers may not be satisfied with it. That's why we decided to think about ways to link the personal connection one has with his portable system to the gather-around-and-play aspect of console systems."

So we can be sure that Sakurai has been thinking about what he wants to do with the next installment of the wildly popular brawling series. Still, it sounds like he's becoming a little uncomfortable and worried about the huge strain that has been placed upon him.

"The hardest part about game development is the burdens it places upon me," he said. "With previous projects I had a game design document in place before forming a team, but with this I don't have the time for that. I won't be able to look at every aspect of the game and balance out all the characters by myself this time. I'm trying to think about how this is going to work out, but probably I'll have to discuss it with my future development team. The future of this project really depends on the people I can get involved with it."

Hopefully he can find those people to help him lift some of the weight off his shoulders and make another masterpiece.

According to Miyamoto Wii U Hardware Unlikely 'Dramatically' Outperform Xbox 360 and PS3

Nintendo has never been one to give specifics on their hardware, and that's proving no different with their new Wii U. The Wii U is coming out right around the time where we'd usually be getting new hardware from Microsoft and Sony, so it's no surprise that people are curious how much of an upgrade the Wii U will be over the current systems.

In a recent interview with GameSpot, Shigeru Miyamoto was asked about his thoughts on the graphical hardware for Wii U.

"Nintendo is an entertainment company," says Miyamoto. "We're very sensitive to pricing because people have generally only a certain amount of their spending that they'll devote to entertainment. And if you're talking about parents buying something for kids, there are certain price points where parents may be willing to or not willing to purchase a certain product."

This is most likely setting us up with tempered expectations so that we don't go into the Wii U expecting the next coming.

"So I don't know that we would be able to sit here and say that it's going to necessarily dramatically outperform the systems that are out now," he went on to say. "It's part of the balance that we strike in terms of trying to find entertainment that is new and unique."

It's very likely that the new controller will be driving the majority of the Wii U's price point, which may be the cause of Miyamoto's price sensitivity. This thought is just made stronger thanks to Nintendo's cautioning that the hardware may not support more than one controller at a time.

Wii U Won't Have Blu-Ray or DVD Support

One of the major faults a lot of people found with the original Nintendo Wii was its inability to play DVDs. There are some people out there for whom that was a make-or-break feature and I know a few people who didn't buy a Wii for that reason alone. Well it seems Nintendo is going to upset a few people again.

While speaking to investors at this years E3 Satoru Iwata was asked about the Wii U's ability to play Sony's Blu-Ray format, and regular DVDs. Iwata gave an answer that left very little room for interpretation, stating that the Wii U wouldn't support either format.

"The reason for that is that we feel that enough people already have devices that are capable of playing DVDs and Blu-ray," says Iwata, "such that it didn't warrant the cost involved to build that functionality into the Wii U console because of the patents related to those technologies."

Which if you think about it makes a lot of sense. DVD players are incredibly cheap nowadays, and it seems highly unlikely that Nintendo would pay their competitors for licensing fees for a technology that is becoming ever more obsolete. So now DVD or Blu-Ray for your Wii U, the silver lining here is that it looks like Nintendo is shooting to keep this new device at a relatively low cost.

Nintendo Press Conference Wrap-Up, What We Saw

Nintendo was the last company to give their press conference at this years E3, and they also had the most hype of anyone at the show. With the knowledge we’d be getting a new console and some more news on the 3DS, all eyes were on them. Did they show up? Let’s see.

The conference opened with an orchestra playing some of the classic tunes from the Legend of Zelda games, which set up the talk for a Zelda retrospect in honor of its 25^th anniversary. Once the orchestra concluded the man himself Mr. Shigeru Miyamoto took the stage to make some announcements regarding the classic franchise. He made the announcement that all of Nintendo’s current hardware would be getting a Zelda game. The 3DS would of course be getting Ocarina of Time 3D (next week), the newly opened 3DS eShop has just released The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, DSi Ware will be getting The Legend of Zelda: The Four Swords (for free), and Skyward Sword was confirmed to be out holiday of this year. Miyamoto also made the announcement that there will be Zelda orchestral concerts held in different regions around the world. You’ll also get a gold Wii Remote if you pre-order Skyward Sword, as well as the games original soundtrack. Ocarina of Time will get a soundtrack as well.

Head honcho, president and CEO of Nintendo Satoru Iwata showed up to confirm that Nintendo had a new console. He pulled a fast one though and made people wait a bit longer to see it. He instead spoke about the 3DS and announced that there would be five new first-party 3DS games coming. Star Fox, Mario, Kid Icarus Uprising, Mario Kart, and Luigi’s Mansion 2.

Iwata then gave way to one Reggie Fils-Aime president of Nintendo of America. Reggie spoke more on those five 3DS games, gave some more details about each one. Star Fox showed off group play and tilt controls, that will be out in September. Kid Icarus showed some multiplayer. Mario Kart has hang-gliding and driving underwater. Luigi’s Mansion will have multiple mansions, and Mario has finally gotten his Tanooki Suit back. Some third-party 3DS games were shown, Resident Evil, Ace Combat, Pac-Man, Tekken, and Metal Gear were all in full force showing off the 3DS technology.

Then we got the big news, the announcement that everyone was waiting for, the new Nintendo console. The Nintendo Wii U is real. So Nintendo showed us the controller for this thing, and really only the controller. It has two thumbsticks and eight face buttons, standard for controllers in this day and age. The new addition is a touch screen in the middle of the controller. You can see the pic below to get a better view of what this thing looks like. Now a lot of people have been confused, this is not just an addition for the Nintendo Wii, it’s the controller for an entirely new console. Nintendo didn’t mention the actual box at all during the entire conference, but it does exist (you can see it in videos showing off the controller). The controller is what was focused on though. The 6.2 inch touchscreen does not support multi-touch, it is however compatible with a stylus. The biggest feature of the Wii U is its streaming capability. If you are playing your Wii U on your TV you can instantly switch and go from playing that game on your TV to the touchscreen on the Wii U controller. Iwata was quick to squelch the ideas that this controller could be used as a portable gaming device, since the Wii U controller doesn’t have that hardware in it the console itself needs to be on and near to stream the video. The controller has speakers and a front-facing camera as well.

That’s a lot of talk about what it is, but what about the games, what will these games look like, when can I play this and how much will it cost me. Well Nintendo gave no specs for the Wii U so we don’t know what’s running it. It was confirmed after the press conference that it will output video in 1080p, and we saw games like Darksiders 2, Batman Arkham City, Metro Last Light, and Ninja Gaiden 3 being shown off. It was later revealed that the footage of those games was taken from the PS3 and 360 versions of those games, but Wii U graphics will be “comparable.” One game we did see a brief bit of was what looked like a new Legend of Zelda game. It was running in HD and looked spectacular, and it had an interesting use of the controller screen keeping the menu/inventory on the touchscreen and keeping the game itself on the TV. Other than that Nintendo didn’t show any games actually running on the system because it’s still very early in development. John Ricotello of EA came out to make sure it’s known that EA is behind the Nintendo Wii U.

So Nintendo is an interesting beast, I’ve heard a lot of people say that they came out of the conference more confused than when they went in. I have to say I feel of that mindset as well. Only time will tell how the Wii U will fare, what are all of your thoughts?