Wii U - Page 8  

Oh right, because they haven't been talking about integrating screens for years, right?

There is no thunder stealing going on here. Both implementations are obvious next steps. Nintendo is bringing DS tech to the home console, Microsoft is giving you a reason to buy their phone OS.

We need a sarcasm emote...

My oldest daughter saw some of the bits from Iwata's pretaped E3 bit while I watched it yesterday via Facebook - she immediately said "it makes a Wii like a 3DS".

Sold, I'm thinking. Curious to hear more later in the week.

My quick thoughts....

I am a big zelda and metroid fan have been since the NES... What I think Nintendo needs to do is what appleTV isn't doing. While keeping the quality of the games, let us use the U to cut the cable cord. Have specific channels that pull in Hulu, Netflix, ESPN3, give us media center controls. I know some don't want that from Nintendo, but apple is going to kill them, need to bring something better than apple tv. I like the remote idea, especially if it works like a harmony one. That would not be hard to do. Universal remotes are $5 at Walmart.

Wii already has Netflix & Hulu Plus channels available (Netflix also on 3DS with Hulu support still coming supposedly), but I see where you are coming from. I would bet that both streaming services - and more to come - will be part of WiiU from the beginning - and possibly even viewable on just the WiiU Game Pad.

There are those that would claim something better than Apple TV already exists and has the brand name Roku.

One thing that the WiiU looks to have that is new to a Ninty home console is an actual OS of some sort more along the lines of PS360.

Add in you tube and I could use the game pad instead of my iPhone for late-night Zero Punctuation viewing while the significant other sleeps.

Yeah, u guys are getting what I am talking about. I want the channels YouTube and good Internet surfing.

No Wii U footage that really showed the system's power so far at Ubisoft. AC3 is running on PS3 hardware.

Watch Dogs... I think I saw a U Pro Pad in the guys hands during the demo...

I don't see the Xbox 360 being able to link up to a cell phone being of much threat to Nintendo with a large screen incorporated right onto the controller itself.

I'm having difficulty seeing just what sort of benefits Microsoft's screen will offer beyond being able to say that they also offer the ability to stream to a handheld screen.

About all I can think of is something like GTAIV where you're utilizing a mobile device in-game could be streamed to your own phone with you using the buttons on the phone itself.

And I suppose you could call plays in a football game with your phone (Also hardly a big deal, particularly since when I hear Madden/NCAA fans talking, it always seems to be about online play rather than local multiplayer).

And for those without the messenger keypad attachment, I suppose it could be incorporated to write someone a text message to a friend.

But picking up your phone mid-game almost seems like something deserving of making the rounds around videogame sites on April 1st instead of legitimate news. But being a Xbox/Xbox 360 fan, I certainly hope I'm proven wrong and it leads to some fun ideas.

But it sure sounds of pretty limited usefulness to me right now where gameplay possibilities are concerned.

No crysis 3.

Funny accent guy answers the question of whether c3 will make it to wii U as "fat chance".

Wow. That's ok-- colonial marines looks better anyway.

I'm not really interested in the flood of fps titles hitting the Wii U. Seriously, how many of the games shown on day 1 of the show shooters? 90%? 80%?

I'm no FPS fan myself, but when people say they're going after the hardcore gaming crowd, as Wii U supposedly is, by hardcore they really mean "FPS."

http://www.ign.com/videos/2012/06/05/assassins-creed-3-wii-u-6-minute-gameplay-demo-e3-2012

While the main Wii U presentation was apparently showing AC3 running on PS3, IGN posted a video form the show floor later featuring the actual WiiU build of the game.

The video is a slideshow for me. Do they comment on if it looks noticably better than the 360 and PS3 versions?

After that joke of an E3 show I'm pretty much off the Wii U bandwagon, and I was all but sold prior to E3. At least my 3DS will be getting plenty of games in the next several months.

I'm still surprised I haven't seen anyone on the show floor talking about how the games hold up to the 360 versions. You'd think Eurogamer or the like would take a minute and say "In person it looks like 720p with FXAA at a nice 60fps", or "it looks like a 1080p version of what we currently see on 360", or "it's pretty much the same 720p at a pretty stable 30fps that we are already used to on the 360/PS3".

It's hard to get impressions off of the crap highly compressed 720p/30 video that we're seeing at home.

Cool infographic:

Knowing eurogamer, they're taking their time to do it right. I have no doubt that they're hard at work on this, and we'll see it in a few days.

Honestly, I don't expect ANY game on the Wii U to look anything more than an equal to the current-gen games. Even if the Wii U has superior hardware, it's early days development-wise and ports aren't going to be optimized. Even ZombiU probably won't look that much different. In fact, if they're looking to take it to other systems, it may be coded with that in mind.

Of course, we still don't have tech specs, so we have no idea what the hardware is or how it will perform.

Some new news on UE4, apparently it only needs a full 1Tflop to run, but there's plans for a scaled down (WiiU? iOS?) version.

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/stunning-videos-show-unreal-engine-4s-next-gen-gtx-680-powered-real-time-graphics/

The real highlight is the global illumination, so if that's what has to be cut/gimped to get it to run on other less powerful devices I'm not sure how the graphics will end up looking. Then again, if the Samaritan demo was 720p and needed 1.7tflops, it sounds to me like they're gonna scale up/down the FPS as needed and restrict 1080p to higher end systems. From the same article:

So no universal achievements/trophy system, according to Destructoid. Now, that's something I couldn't care less about personally (people who buy cheap games simply for the easy gamerscore points or whatever are among the saddest specimens in gaming). But this is definitely one of those "Uh-oh, I thought Nintendo was getting with the program" moments. It's just weird, because Nintendo seemed to be coming around to the idea of achievements recently (even Mii Streetpass has achievements).

And apparently Friend Codes will still exist in some form or another. Again, not a huge deal to me, really. They're fairly painless on the 3DS and will be better on Wii U if anything. But it's not comforting that they're bringing this universally reviled relic of a system to a fourth platform now, even if it's just in name only.

I wouldn't get peeved just yet. Not only are there a lot of details to be finalized, but this is the launch of a new system and new infrastructure. Give it time. Even MS and Sony are still working out plenty of big kinks in their long-standing networks.

That said, knowing Nintendo's past history with these things, it won't be exactly what we want it to be.

Likely - but if the basics of things like online play & whatnot are at least in the "as good or slightly better than" column compared to 3DS, it would mark an improvement over what the WIi had (or more importantly lacked).

True, I don't want to be one of those sky-is-falling fanboy alarmists. I'll reel it in a bit. But when Reggie says stuff like universal achievements are "not in our philosophy." I mean, what does that even mean? Nothing good, that's for sure.

Judging by his comments, it sounds like Wii U will have achievements a lot like those on iOS. Mostly meaningless (but, come on, so are global achievements!), and entirely determined by developers. No gamerscore or trophies, just a developer-made list of fun things to do.

But, like I said, it's a new platform, so things might change. However, Nintendo tends to think carefully about its OS and whatnot, and they tend not to change it post launch. But that's also just working with a sample size of three (DS, 3DS, Wii). So who knows.

I'm kinda bummed by this - not because I care about achievements or trophies, but because every time Ninty seems to be 'getting it', they pull off another one of these kind of things that insinuate they're even less interested in courting gamers than we thought. So far we've seen:

• No online mulitplayer for Pikmin 3 (probably to make the launch date, but I'm wondering about NintendoLand and NSMBU)
• Not all games will support playing off-screen (ok, not necessary but would be nice, especially since they pimp the heck out of it)
• Comments will be moderated in the Miiverse and will take 30 minutes to post (so no chance for real time help or feedback, bah!)
• Still using friend codes, albeit updated a bit
• Basically current gen+ hardware
• No upres'ing for Wii games (again, would be just "nice to have")
• Probably no off-screen play for Wii BC titles, too.

Don't get me wrong, they shouldn't ignore the wants and needs of the 100 million or so current Wii owners out there, but focusing on the Wii crowd and facebook junkies might not pay off like they think...

-vdz

No online Pikmin 3 because that is essentially a 404 person server if you want to do multiplayer. If Battlefield 3 can't do 400 players on a map, I don't see why you'd expect Pikmin to.

Starcraft (and every other online RTS ever) says hello.

It's not that it can't be done, it's that Nintendo is incompetent when it comes to anything online.

Fair enough.

Its an unfortunate, but predictable circumstance they're in. Its the same reason why the graphics look nothing impressive either. While the rest of the industry was busy one-upping each other and pushing the limits in every conceivable way, Nintendo has gone their own way and buried their heads in the sand for the past half decade, while the world was changing around them. Now their artists are incapable of taking advantage of current gen consoles, their programmers clueless about modern online infrastructure. They're basically where everyone else was in 2005, and now they have to play catch up, when they can least afford to.