What's your opinion about the Wii U?

[Ichiyasha]

for everyone who doesn't know what makes it awesome.

The thing I love about Nintendo is that they always start something new in the Gaming industry that everyone goes off of. For instance, when the Wii started, wirless gaming become the next big thing and no one has done it before. Then, Sony eventually made the Playstation Move and Xbox created Kinect. These guys are starting something that will change how many players can play a console and how that is done. It's pretty impressive in my opinion.

What do you guys think?

[Getsuga-Tensho]

well if they stick a blu-ray drive i think Wii U will give the PS3 and Xbox a run for their money if not its just be another current gen console

[lemmingllama]

I can definately say that it is an interesting concept, the only problem is that it will be just another expense that you dont actually need to play your games. I know that I will not be investing in one of these, but I am interested in how it will affect the other consoles and how they make their new controllers. Still, they should have just made it so that you could connect a DS to the Wii for its touch screen, then people would be buying both of their consoles and hopefully games for both.

[Leviathan87]

im definitely getting it. they are going back to real gaming

[Kyle_Dimetri]

isn't very impressive in my opinion. seems to me it lacks entertainment features such as a simple dvd player or hard drive reader

[lolrawr]

I'm excited about it since I love Nintendo. I'm not sure when I'll buy one though because you never know if they'll drop the price like they did with the 3DS lol. I just hope developers continue to support it as the next wave a consoles from Sony and Microsoft come out.

Game wise, I'm really hoping they bring back F-Zero.

[† Emotional Outlet]

I don't see why the Wii has to have a DVD or Bluray player. It's a device for gaming. They're sticking to their purpose. Not everything has to be a proverbial swiss army knife, haha.

Creating a greater connection between the Wii and DS would have been neat, but I suppose I can see why they didn't bother. I still haven't "upgraded" to a 3DS, haha. I think we'll end up getting one eventually, though the Wii is more my console and I'm slow to buy things.

[Zanco]

It's just a new gimmick that nintendo released so they can stay in the race. Not that Nintendo's off, it's just that they don't have any violent games that hipsters like to stimulate their penises with. I don't think another super smash bro's will keep them in the race too long ether. Their getting old, Mario just ain't what he used to be, and Sonic's... Let's not even go there. What I'm saying is, unless the Wii U comes out with some NEW iconic main character that every one'll know, they're going to end up just like Sega and gonna be bought out by Microsoft or Apple. (Personally I love Nintendo, but it's what every one loves, and every one loves Call of Doodoo: Modern Poofare, and it seems like it's gonna stay that way for a while. I just hope that new Micky Mouse game might do some thing to save my childhood, iconic game love.)

Edited August 17, 2012 by Zanco

[Kyle_Dimetri]

I don't see why the Wii has to have a DVD or Bluray player. It's a device for gaming. They're sticking to their purpose. Not everything has to be a proverbial swiss army knife, haha.

Creating a greater connection between the Wii and DS would have been neat, but I suppose I can see why they didn't bother. I still haven't "upgraded" to a 3DS, haha. I think we'll end up getting one eventually, though the Wii is more my console and I'm slow to buy things.

it wouldn't kill to have 1 single feature on it thats not related to gaming. Even the xbox 360 had dvd player even though its heavily game concentrated

[lolrawr]

The Wii could have a DVD player if you install homebrew.

[† Emotional Outlet]

There are non-gaming features, though. They have channels for news and weather. You can browse the Internet You can even have Netflix and Hulu on your Wii. It doesn't need a Bluray player is all.

Consider:

The reason for that is that we feel that enough people already have devices that are capable of playing DVDs and Blu-ray, 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.

[...]

That said, the Wii also doesn't play DVDs yet the lack of the feature hardly seems to hurt Nintendo's sales.

I think they're spot on with that assessment--if you want a DVD player, you probably already have one. If you want a Bluray player, you've probably already got one or are one of those people who don't care about having one (that would be me). A lot of households seem to tend to be multi-console households. We have three in addition to several handhelds and our PCs. We're definitely not for want of a DVD player. Why add that kind of functionality to a console that's just going to increase the price if people already have one or two devices that serve that purpose?

[Kyle_Dimetri]

well recently my dvd plater broke down and luckily there's no need for my mom to buy another one thanks to the fact that i have the ps3. Consiering Netflix, netflix doesn't have MOST of my favourite movies like Euro Trip, I Am Legend, Pursuit Of Happiness, Grudge 2, etc streaming and what about those who don't have internet connection at home?? I am not asking for a blu rayer player since dvd is still more popular (and i have many animes on dvd) . Since they give the wii u full hd resolution support and even an hdmi port, it would have been no hassle to install a simple dvd player to compliment those features.

Edited August 23, 2012 by Kyle_Dimetri_09

[Wiegraf]

There are non-gaming features, though. They have channels for news and weather. You can browse the Internet You can even have Netflix and Hulu on your Wii. It doesn't need a Bluray player is all.

I agree with this. The fact it can connect to the internet is enough and honestly DVD players are extremely cheap. We are also in this second generation of gaming where once again, 2 out of the 3 consoles can play a DVD. I think you'll be hard pressed to find a gamer who owns a Wii but doesn't also own a PS2, PS3 or XBOX (360).

With that said, it's smarter to push out this product for a cheaper price because they're leaving out that particular functionality. Even more so now I suppose because Nintedo knows this will most likely sell on the design itself. Not also taking account we went through two previous generations where most of us have picked up a rival console that plays a DVD.

There are other variables like everyone pushing towards a digital age and probably wanting everything to be accesible from a screen rather then actually holding it in your hands.

[q3wq]

Seems like it could work if it comes out soon, but the next gen consoles will likely be much more powerful than it when they come out

[Dude888]

I think they should change the title (they won't) because it's too close to the Wii and people might think it's just like Wii Fit or whatever. Nintendo is also 7 years late with their hardware. They are announcing games like Mass Effect 3 and Batman: Arkam City will be coming out... These games can run on consoles that came out 7 years ago (Xbox 360, yes 7 years) and 6 years ago (PS3).

I don't see why the Wii has to have a DVD or Bluray player. It's a device for gaming. They're sticking to their purpose. Not everything has to be a proverbial swiss army knife, haha.

Actually it is gaming related. They don't have to implement video playback, but DVDs and Blu-ray discs have greater storage capabilities (DVD - Up to 8Gb, Blu-ray - Up to 200Gb (if I am not mistaken)) compared to CD-Rom (Less than 1Gb, I could be very wrong here), which I think they still use. Thus, their games could be that much bigger and if they keep low graphics, they could make games 10 times bigger.

[lolrawr]

The Wii U uses a high capacity 25GB disc.

...the fact is that in the Wii U we've built a lot of capability. And during the Nintendo Direct that happened last night or two nights ago, overnight Wednesday to Thursday, we showed a lot of specs information for the Wii U: the fact that it has an extremely large RAM built into the system, the fact that the discs are high-capacity [25gb] discs. And so we've got a system that, based on our review of the world and our architecture, it absolutely's gonna hold up and bring the best content from third-party for a long, long time." - Reggie Fils-Aime

Source

Sony on the other hand either uses a 25GB single layer disk or a 50GB dual layer disk. Who knows maybe Nintendo has a dual layer version like they used with Brawl on the Wii that they'll use on special occasions. Either way, the large amount of RAM on the Wii U should give it an advantage (I think).

One thing about BD though, I don't know much about the technical details of it, but BD is owned by Sony. So I'm sure Nintendo wouldn't want to pay licencing fees to Sony and that's why they aren't using BD.

[† Emotional Outlet]

The quote I posted above about Blu Ray came from Iwata, the current president of Nintendo. Basically between the ubiquity of other devices that fulfil the same purpose and the patents, it's easier just to do without.

[Dude888]

The Wii U uses a high capacity 25GB disc.

...the fact is that in the Wii U we've built a lot of capability. And during the Nintendo Direct that happened last night or two nights ago, overnight Wednesday to Thursday, we showed a lot of specs information for the Wii U: the fact that it has an extremely large RAM built into the system, the fact that the discs are high-capacity [25gb] discs. And so we've got a system that, based on our review of the world and our architecture, it absolutely's gonna hold up and bring the best content from third-party for a long, long time." - Reggie Fils-Aime

Source

Sony on the other hand either uses a 25GB single layer disk or a 50GB dual layer disk. Who knows maybe Nintendo has a dual layer version like they used with Brawl on the Wii that they'll use on special occasions. Either way, the large amount of RAM on the Wii U should give it an advantage (I think).

One thing about BD though, I don't know much about the technical details of it, but BD is owned by Sony. So I'm sure Nintendo wouldn't want to pay licencing fees to Sony and that's why they aren't using BD.

Wow! I was way off with my 1gb, lol. But still, sony can have games that are 4 times bigger (if using the same graphics) and 8 times bigger if they can manage to mass produce 200Gb blu ray.

Sony did have some copyrights problems because LG said that the Blu ray drives in the PS3 infringe on several LG patents. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the article that I read on the subject.

[† Emotional Outlet]

I'm trying to understand why a game would be so big. I have so much Sims 3 crap on my computer but it's far less than 50GB on my computer. Skyrim takes up, what, 6GB?

The only thing I can imagine is like... endless high quality textures and high polygon models and cinematic cut scenes and music. What I wonder is if the majority of gamers are even still interested in such lengthy stories, and if the high quality wouldn't go unnoticed. I was talking with Java about it and he mentioned his Castlevania game (Lords of Shadow) and how on the Xbox it had come with two discs, but it doesn't seem like the majority of games are like that.

I mean, I encounter people every day who consider four hundred words to be a "rant" and "too long". Their attention spans seem to only exceed thirty seconds when they're upset with someone, and even then it's just a barrage of slurs and foul epithets.

[Jªvª]

Going to be honest with the Blu-Ray drive; there is no real point to have one only for storage capacity for games and playback for videos. Also take in consideration the capabilities of the system itself; can the game's engine run with all the HD Textures, High-Rez Poly Models, while playing High Bitrate/Bandwidth interactive noise and ambient noise/music without an issue that the system would require a Blu-Ray drive.

Plus reading a few articles, the actual Blu-Ray drive is one of the issues the Playstation 3 does have, not saying wasn't a good move on Sony. But they could have made a more durable and upgraded the drive speed/cache on later models for the games load time (which would more and likely have increased the PS3 price). And not including the infringement battle that Sony is going through with LG that has caused some stress on Sony.

So honestly what Nintendo is doing is probably the best decision for marketing reasons.

Edited September 26, 2012 by Jªvª