Does anybody want a WiiU?

Amazon is awesome like that. They had GH3 up when it came out with the bundle the same price as the stand alone game, and honored the $60 price for me after they changed it.

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Bayonetta 2 is a Wii U exclusive

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The wii u is wank.Its oversized tablet controller is a joke.Its not even multi-touch ffs.It still uses dated DVDs as storage and has no hard drive.It still can't play DVDs or CDs ffs.Alsp still no 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound.Still only supporting shitty analog stereo.All games on other platforms are in Dolby Digital 5.1.Surround sound has replaced stereo.Even your favourite TV programs like Eastenders and channels like Sky movies are in 5.1.now.So theres no excuse.

Nintendo seem to like living in the past releasing old technology and classing it as new.Nintendo need to wake up and realise its 2012 not 2002.

Also I am sick and tired of Nintendo releasing the same shit over and over again.Another mario game another zelda game ect.Oh ffs Nintendo change the record and come up with something new.For example.How many times can they keep calling new super mario bros "new"? When technically it isnt because it has been done before.

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I thought it was alright. No real complaints about it to be honest, and if I somehow manage to have enough money to buy a Wii U I'll buy one for the heck of it.

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Neither are the DS or 3DS. Its not meant to be your iPad, its meant to function like the bottom half of a DS.

The bulk of your post is about Nintendo using outdated technology, but you're mad that the WiiU doesn't play CDs and DVDs? Could you at least TRY to be consistent?

Get over it? The Wii came out when 720p was the standard and it didn't support that. The games were still fantastic.

Or maybe they use things that are cheaper and leave out unnecessary hardware (like CD and DVD players) to lower the price of production, leading to a cheaper end product for the consumer. Its damn near what gave them the sales victory in the PS3 vs 360 vs Wii fight. The extra bells and whistles are great, but not when it inflates the cost of the console. Also, based on your grammar you weren't even alive in 2002.

Everything we play now is the same shit over and over again. The next DDR game is going to still be DDR. The next COD game is still going to be COD (and based on everything else I'm about to say, its why I don't bash COD for this despite the fact that I personally don't enjoy it). Guitar Hero is still going to be Guitar Hero. Mega Man is still going to be mega Man. Street Fighter is still going to be Street Fighter (focus, parry, dashing, etc don't change what the game is at its core). Thats just how gaming is. Even new IPs are shit we've seen over and over again. There are people on GameFAQs saying the new Castlevania is a God of War clone (totally ignoring the fact that the first Castlevania in that style pre-dates God of War). Any new 2D brawler game will just be based on Double Dragon, Final Fight, Battletoads, etc. Any side scrolling platformer will be based on Mega Man or Mario. Any action RPG is going to take inspiration from Zelda. Its 2012, games have been being made since what, the 1970s? There are zero new genres to be made. There is little innovation left.

Sony and Microsoft aren't innovating anything either. Its great that the PS3 and 360 have upgraded and added all these cool apps, and its great that they were enough to get Nintendo to follow suit with the Wii and 3DS allowing companies to make their apps for those as well. But gaming wise, Nintendo is at least TRYING to do something more innovative. The 360 controller is a slightly better design than the second model X-Box classic controller. The Playstation controller hasn't changed since the Dualshock 1, aside from the sixaxis feature (the buttons and layout are the same though). There is beauty in simplicity and its great that Sony and Microsoft are sticking to proven controllers that are great. But you can't bash Nintendo for trying to be innovative 30+ years after video games have been going strong and all the ideas are taken. Nintendo might be doing the same shit over and over, but take off the blinders and see that no one is really innovating anymore. Everyone is just taking existing ideas and trying them again with slight improvements. Its all about seeing who can take whats known and do it best now, not the next big idea.

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Um... some Wii U games = interesting but i don't like Wii U disc because we can't back up the games for emergency situation.

It's OK still using Blu-Ray Disc or HD-DVD but Wii U disc ? I don't think Wii U will be booming like Wii before.

Sorry, just my opinion.

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Definitely getting a WiiU. :3

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However, you can download the retail games via-Nintendo Network and store them on your WiiU HDD (which, unlike poster xboxmodder02, the WiiU HAS) or another external hard drive.

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If I could +6 you n00b I would.

It's obviously not going to be even up to par with the PS3 and 360, but Nintendo sure knows how to make gaming consoles for the general audience of gamers, and at the very least with the Wii U they are trying their hardest to branch out to the hardcore gamers which if you look at the launch titles for the Wii U is not that bad.

Of course when the PS4 and the 720 come out, it will leave the Wii U in diapers since both consoles will be even more far ahead of the curve in terms of technology, graphics, HDD storage, and so much more, but for now it looks to be a better console than the Wii is, that's for sure...

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Might get it when Super Smash Bros Universe w/e comes out and ends up with 300 characters (no dupes) and good online play.

Don't forget Tecmo/Namco characters might get in the roster seeing that their old developer got shut down but they moved it to Namco.

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I hope it's not like that other super smash itg clone which had slow gameplay.

Played the demo of the new rayman game on Wii U at gamestop today. I have to say if Nintendo gets enough support the Wii U could be epic.

Just want to re-iterate that for the past 40 years, Nintendo's entire design philosophy has been "use cheap components and old technology, make a high quality product out of them".

People ragged on the Famicom, Super Famicom, Nintendo 64, Gamecube and Wii for not being powerful enough, or not having a certain hardware feature, but nobody's ever proven them wrong. Every console has been a huge success, and every single console has given us exclusive titles which have turned head, and influenced the direction of gaming for years to come.

It's relevant now more than ever, because gaming technology has plateued. The current generation of consoles are almost 10 years old, and there's absolutely no need to produce faster, more powerful consoles anytime soon. The costs of making a big, graphically impressive "Triple A" title right now are so astronomically high, that only a handful of developers can even dare to try it, and the majority of games released on the market today actually look like something a Playstation could easily render.

Nintendo have never done anything new or innovative in their games either, they've just taken old concepts and mechanics, and made high quality products out of them. Donkey Kong is a great rework of Space Panic, Super Mario Bros was a typical platform game, which was refined and reworked for months, to the point of perfection. Zelda was a mish-mash of Hydlide and Challenger, which was again refined into a quality product. These games aren't important because they were original in any way, they're important because they copied large chunks of games which were already on the market, and made them perfect.


If you consider how much the Zelda games drastically changed when the original creator left the series, Skyward Sword is only the 5th game in the current Zelda mould. There have only been 6 2D platform games in the Super Mario Bros series, and four 3D games in the mould of Super Mario 64. Compare Super Mario Galaxy to Super Mario 64 - they're fucking light years apart. Super Mario Galaxy is a sequal that took 10 years to make, and it shows. If you could go back in time to the release for Super Mario 64 (or even Sunshine), and show them Super Mario Galaxy, do you think they say "wow, they're still doing the same old shit for the next console"?

If you actually showed Super Mario Galaxy to someone who had just bought a Gamecube it would blow their fucking minds. Even if you think the graphics aren't that impressive (they're practically rendered on the same hardware), the functionality of gameplay would still blow their minds.

There was a 16 year gap between Super Mario Bros 4 and New Super Mario Brothers because, believe it or not, Nintendo don't actually want to oversaturate their franchises, by churning out a new sequel every year. If any other company was holding the reins on the Super Smash Bros series, they'd have a sequel shoveled out every single year, instead of having 7-year gaps between them

There's a huge difference between putting your franchises to work, and shoveling out sequels.

The NES was the greatest thing we had ever seen.
The SNES was only inferior to the Genesis when it comes to the processor, everything else it blew it away.
The N64 was twice as powerful as the PSone, the PS1 had the ram restrictions while the N64 had general game size restrictions.
The Gamecube was the most powerful of its generation in competition with the X-Box and PS2.

It wasn't until the Wii that anyone brought up that Nintendo was using underpowered hardware. I can't think of a single feature anyone complained about for the NES or SNES. The only N64 complaint I recall was cartridges but it was mostly Sony fanboys talking about how games on CD were the future of gaming. The Gamecube's complaint was the controller, with some morons completely ignoring the console having Resident Evil as an exclusive for like 3 years with every main game either remade or ported to it plus two new games (Zero and 4) to call it a "kiddie" system because Pikmin. We all know the Wii complaints, those are recent.

The rest of your post is a great addition to mine, going back we found out that Nintendo has always used older hardware to make their systems, even the handhelds. No one really knew this at the time. Back then it was "16-bit vs 8-bit", "blast processing vs we have mario games", 64-bit vs CDs have more storage", and things like that.

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Nintendo talk :{

The Famicom was obviously a giant leap from anything we'd seen before, but instead of following the common logic of "we must make this as powerful and long-lasting as current technology will allow", they made it as cheap as possible, using processors that had been around for years, and were easier to program than the newest, fasted processors on the market. The reason it's red and white is because Nintendo went to a toy company to produce the plastic shells, and asked for it in the two cheapest colors they had in bulk stock.

When the NES came out in 1986, the Famicom was already 3 years old and Nintendo streamlined the US model, making it incompatible with a couple of things that would later get released in Japan. A lot of kids who knew about the Famicom thought Japan was getting a better deal, and even though there wasn't an internet, if we had one, it would probably be full of people complaining about the fact that the Nintendo Of America took out the microphone, reduced the number of cartridge pins (thus drastically reducing the sound quality of a couple of games), altered games to be easier for the US market, refused to release the "real" Super Mario Bros 2 outside of Japan, and ported Famicom Disc System games to cartridge, by stripping out level editors and other features that didn't really matter.

It was kids whining on the playground instead of kids whining on the internet, but it was certainly there. The Super Famicom was again produced using sturdy technology that had been around for years, rather than being cutting-edge, and since we had videogame magazines and Genesis vs Nintendo arguments at this point, a lot of them were eager to point out that the SNES was inferior to the Genesis and Turbografix 16, because of some numerical values that nobody understood, and which certainly didn't matter, when companies were putting out identical games on both systems. Nobody ranting and raving about Sega vs Nintendo understood anything about the architecture of either system, they just knew that Nintendo could have made it bigger and faster, and early games like Final Fight highlighted the fact that the SNES couldn't keep up with arcade hardware, and even at the very start of it's lifespan, it was quickly falling behind the technology curve.

The N64 obviously had the Cartridge vs CD-ROM thing, but was also talked up to be something that it wasn't. People wanted very specific types of games at this point, and all Nintendo wanted to do was to bring Mario 64 to market, so they designed the console and the controller around Miyamoto's whims. The N64 was probably the most cutting-edge console Nintendo has ever put to market, but the fact that it was designed around one single game really hurt it in the long run, and led to most games having short vanishing points and being filled with "Nintendo Fog". Pretty much the entire hardware generation consisted of Playstation and Saturn games trying to copy Nintendo's games (even changing the systems' controllers in response to certain N64 games, and forcing players to buy them in order to keep playing new games). Also, third party developers trying to cram CD games onto Nintendo's console, exposing the fact that this was harder than it was to port Mario 64 to the Playstation. It was another round of people crying "Ok, so it's done revolutionary things that have changed the way we all play games, but in retrospect, it could also have done all these other things as well, so fuck Nintendo!"

I think the Gamecube was the point where Nintendo announced the console, people cried that it didn't have [random feature of other consoles], and Nintendo just put their foot down and said "Look! It's a games console. It just plays games. It's $100 cheaper than the other consoles, because we made it to play games".

And it retailed for $199, correct? And correct me if I'm wrong, but it also retailed for less than the competing systems at the time right? This has always been Nintendo's business strategy. Why would you buy an Atari 5200 for $199 when you could get an NES for the same price?

The reason FDS games got cart releases in the states is because of the FDS flopping in Japan. Rather than screw us over, at least we GOT those games. Zelda 2 was a FDS title. We actually got the better end of this deal IMO. We didn't have to buy an add on system and we still got a lot of those games. And lets be real here, while I had heard of the FDS in Japan as a kid I didn't know anyone that knew about the origins of Super Mario Bros 2 and Doki Doki Panic until Nintendo Power covered SMAS.

Except the ONLY way the Genesis was better than the SNES was the processor. The SNES had better resolution, better sound, more colors on screen at once, etc. And for as much talk as people did at school about the TG16, I never knew anyone that actually HAD one. "Oh, it has a perfect port of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo? Let's play it! No one has it? How do you know its so bad ass?". Yep. Same can be said for the Jaguar and its 64-big nonsense.

Actually, Mario 64 originally had a different name and was an SNES title using the same 3D effects used in Super Mario RPG. After the N64 was shown, the project was moved over to that system because it allowed Miyamoto to do what he wanted in much better ways.

I've never heard this term before, although I know exactly what you mean. I can tell you with 100% certainty that it plagued the PSX too though.

And yet, at the time, not a single N64 game was pirated. Everyone had a mod chip in their Playstation or a Gameshark on the launch models that had the rear port. All Saturn owners had the Action Replay 4 in 1. Who pirated N64 games in the mid 90s? Not a single person I knew, I can tell you that. Meanwhile we all had those memberships at Blockbuster for $20 a month to rent unlimited games (1 at a time of course). It only took me about 3 months and $80 (after buying discs) to pirate every PSX game they had in stock. Something no one took into consideration when bashing Nintendo for the cartridge choice. Yeah, it was harder to put more on the cart, but the system was capable of more. Compare Mortal Kombat Trilogy on both systems. You're missing two bosses, the classic versions of 4 characters and unmasked Sub-Zero on the N64. Seems like a shame, right? Well you also have the character sprites in the same size as the arcade version, no load times, and it isn't anywhere near as broken as the PSX version. Wrestling games? Yeah, there were no good PSX wrestling games. N64 had WCW vs nWo World Tour, WCW/nWo Revenge, WWF Wrestlemania 2000 and WWF No mercy. It was kind of a shame that the N64 version of Resident Evil 2 lacked the extras the PSX version had, but the full base game was there with better resolution to boot.

The sad thing was the Saturn was the all around best system at the time, with its ability to add external RAM and built in memory card. I get why no one supported it, I remember the Sega CD and the 32X. But the Saturn could do everything both systems could, it just didn't do it as pretty as the N64. When coded right, the load times beat the hell out of the PSX as well. Some complain about load times, but thats usually on games ported from PSX to Saturn, like Mortal Kombat Trilogy. Compare the PSX X-Men vs Street Fighter to the Saturn version. The PSX got a stuttering frame rate, no tag mode, missing frames of animation, etc. The Saturn version had tag with all frames of animation intact with no stutter and virtually no load times. The Saturn was the real beast back then.

And good on them. I'll take a cheaper console that just plays games over an expensive on with features I'll never use any day.

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Incoming wall of text...

Actually, from what I hear, the controller is actually quite comfortable to hold. The majority of used space on the controller is the screen and they don't want to make it too small since the game can technically be played on it altogether.

This I will have to agree with. I was a bit surprised Nintendo didn't want to aim for something like this. It would certainly open up more gameplay possibilities. Though, I wouldn't use this as a point towards saying why the console is bad. It's somewhat minor, if you ask me.

Not quite. They are using their own kind of DVD that allows up to 25 GB of storage. Xbox 360 DVDs can only store up to around 9 GB.
Also, playing DVDs and CDs should play a major role when buying a system. The music CD market is slowly fading to a digital market and most people already have a DVD/Bluray player or some other device that can play them.
It's a matter of the company trying to find a way to bring down the cost of the system.

Not terribly sure how much Nintendo would have to go through to implement this, but nonetheless I am sure it would cost money. If Nintendo is trying to lower the cost of production, they need to weave out any "frivolous" features. I.E. anything that is catering to a very small market. Playing DVDs and CDs is one as well as surround sound.
As a side note, usually if someone is concerned about the spatiality of sound, they spring for headphones.

As far as we know, there are actually no solid specs of what this system contains. We only know that it has a similar processor uses the same architecture as the one found in IBM's Watson. GPU models and processor clock speeds have been tossed around, but we won't know for sure once someone finds out at on launch day.
With the currently speculated GPUs, the thing may be a few years old, but it's still never than current gen GPUs. What developers have been able to do with current generation specs has been amazing, with a GPU never than that they will be able to push those limits further.

I am kind of on the fence about this. I do find some of the later Nintendo games do feel a bit rehashed.
New Super Mario Bros. was great when they released it on the DS years back, but the Wii counterpart just didn't hit much of a note with me. I skipped out on the 3DS version because I was seeing the same rehash formula and I read up on some critic reviews confirming the exact same thing I feared.
Though I will say that Nintendo is still more than capable of making a great content. Games like Donkey Kong Country Returns, Skyward Sword, and Super Mario 3D Land I thought were done extremely well.
Overall, I feel in some areas, Nintendo could do a lot better. Some of their franchises have great potential, but for some reason or other, they don't go as far as they could. Other areas they seem to deliver just as much as the fan wanted and sometimes a bit more.

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I think we're both re-iterating the same things to each other at this point. I'm just clarifying stuff because it might be interesting for people to read ^^;

Would you believe the NES retailed for $99 at launch? The $199 bundle included the Capper, the Robot, another controller and two more games. The Atari 5200 wasn't even an option, because video games and Atari were both taboo at this point, and the NES was marketted as a children's toy robot and gun, which would also play videogames.


I think the Saturn and Dreamcast are the ultimate examples of why Nintendo succeeded with their minimalist strategies. The Saturn was an absolute powerhouse, but it had so many seperate co-processors and daughterboards trying to communicate with each other that nobody could put them to good use, and I don't think any game ever got close to using the console's full potential.

The Dreamcast was probably the console xboxmodder02 wants Nintendo to make, but it was lightyears ahead of it's time, and came with too many features that just weren't worth including in a 1998 videogame console. Is there a point in packing your console with as much expensive, modern technology as possible, when that technology could quickly become obscelete anyway? The Dreamcast's modem was one of the single biggest advances we've ever seen in gaming, but by the time a single game put it to use, the technology was outdated, and it wasn't until 7 years later that the Xbox 360 managed to achieve what Sega were spending far too much money to try and incorporate into their console. As a result, the Dreamcast could have cost $50 less if they'd given up on the online idea, or shipped the modem with Phantasy Star Online.

I don't think Nintendo have ever included a frivolous function in their consoles that wasn't used by absolutely everyone? Maybe the Microphone on the Famicom, but even then, they only included it on the 2nd player controller, and it really helped bolster the image of the Famicom as a child's toy, which in turn probably made more money than the cost of including the microphones in the first place.

I know you said the FDS was a flop, but I think it was ultimately killed off because :

A) It was a platform for inexperienced software companies to shovel out low-quality shit on chap media, rather than investing the time necessary to quality test a full-price cartridge release

B) Konami figured out how to incorporate extra hardware in their cartridges to actually store more data than an FDS disc, as well as deliver better graphics or sound than existing FDS or cartridge games. After the FDS superceeded cartridges, Konami basically invented a 3rd form of Famicom media - much, much better cartridges.

And I'm loving the conversation, please don't think otherwise ^^

HOLY HELL. This is something I didn't know. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that you have a few years one me, I was born in 1985 so most of what I remember is toward the end of the NES life span when I was 5 (1990). Most kids in class were playing on their older bothers NES, I was the oldest so I actually had my own NES at that age. Most of what I knew about the "Nintendo CD drive" and what not was because of what these kids heard from their older siblings.

No kidding. Between the failed Genesis add ons and the quality titles making it to the N64 and PSX the Saturn never stood a chance with everything developers had to do with it. It still blows my mind to hook mine up and go back and play X-Men vs Street Fighter or Nights Into Dreams and see what could be done with that system. The PSX ended up being a really good system by the end of its life span though, companies really figured out how to get past its limitations and to be honest I wouldn't even call the visuals of some of the later 3D fighters like Tekken 3 bad by today's standards. Capcom also found a nifty work around for sprite based games by combining the sprites with polygons, Capcom vs SNK Pro on PSX used this work around and IMO the game wouldn't have even been playable otherwise. Not to mention Konami basically getting around load times all together with the DDR titles, which always amazed me. But if the Saturn had more consumer love, I would like to think that more of these kinds of things would have been discovered there, leading to the potential of it being realized as well.

Not only was it ahead of its time, but after no one supported the Saturn because of previous blunders, no one wanted to spend money on a Dreamcast when the PS2 was right around the corner. And Sony did that one right IMO. They took a lot of Sega's ideas and improved upon them in so many ways, such as making the game modem and HDD compatible but not shipping them until a console needed them. The VMU was way ahead of its time though, and I'm surprised its taken this long for a company to revisit the idea of a screen on the controller again. Being able to pick plays in a foot ball game without the other player seeing them was cool, and to be honest it was also cool to look down and see a Capcom logo or whatever on the controller. I really like seeing the screen on the WiiU controller for this reason, I'm excited to see how it will be used.

It may have been cheap media, but wasn't it more powerful? Maybe I'm getting things mixed up, but weren't things toned down graphically for the US release of Zelda 2 because the cart couldn't do what the disc system could?

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