@Atwa said:

Console launches are always underwhelming. Give it a year.

In a year there will be two new consoles coming out that are sure to make the Wii U look even more underwhelming than it does today.

@DeF said:

Slightly downscaled Wii U ports should keep the system viable alongside the other next generation machines (however they'll turn out).

I think you underestimate the cost and effort that is actually required to produce those ports. If the Wii U manages to have a sizable install base of hardcore gamers, I'm sure third parties will be willing to invest the time and money to build up that port pipeline, but I'm inclined to believe that most of the people interested in playing things like Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, and other big multiplatform franchises likely already own a 360 or PS3 and will probably be more interested in continuing to play those games on the next hardware offerings from MS and Sony rather than playing a less than optimal experience on Wii U.

Also, hardware issues aside, at this point there's still a lot of doubt in my mind about Nintendo's ability to keep up in terms of their online infrastructure and feature set. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now and say that stuff just wasn't quite finished for launch and will improve over time, but I have serious doubts about them approaching what PSN and Xbox Live have to offer, especially if those services are significantly improved and more tightly integrated into the next gen consoles.

Bottom line is, I see the Wii U sales being driven almost exclusively by first-party software just like every other Nintendo console since the SNES. If they can deliver on that side, none of the hardware specs or online features matter all that much, and Nintendo will be fine.

If I had to give the console a score (which is kind of silly) I'd currently give the Wii U about a 3/5. Long download times seen on the stream are probably due to Nintendo's dumb idea to add all online features through a large day 1 patch. That will probably get better so I'm ignoring it. Also, having a bunch of low quality launch games is about par for the course for most consoles. So I'm also ignoring things like frame rate issues in Batman and Epic Micky 2. These are the current problems I have with the Wii U:

• Things like the small initial hard drives and locking your profile to 1 console show that Nintendo still doesn't really get the internet. Those are issues that can be changed for the better during the console's life cycle, but it's currently very disappointing.
• For at least the next year the ability to port on par versions of xbox and PS3 games with added features for the Wii U controller should be a big deal. Local multiplayer games using more than 1 Wii U controller won't work well for ports. Sure you can build games specifically around that feature, but ports will suffer serious frame rate issues without major reworking. They will probably have to use the pro controller instead and ignore the major selling feature of the Wii U. This is unfortunate.
• The games look great now, but they will look outdated in a year. Again, on par ports of xbox and PS3 games should be a big deal, but it will only last as long as games are being made for those consoles. That's 1 to 2 years depending on how long developers make games for both consoles (i.e. PS3 and PS4 versions of the same game). People may blow this off saying it wasn't an issue for the Wii, but I disagree with that as well. It was a huge issue for the Wii that was offset by the massive popularity the console garnered from people who don't normally play video games. There is no guarantee the Wii U will see that same popularity.
• It seems like most local multiplayer games will still be hampered by having to use a Wii remote. If the Pro controller really takes off big this could be alleviated. So there's still hope, but currently everything seems to use the Wii remote. This is more of a personal preference issue, but I'm just not a huge fan of their motion controller. Or any current motion controller for that matter.
• There were multiple hard locks during the stream. This seems like it may be a Wii U issue and not a launch day issue.

Will I still get a Wii U? Probably, eventually. Nintendo games will no doubt still be great, and I really want to play Rayman Legends.

@Chaser324 said:

@DeF said:

Slightly downscaled Wii U ports should keep the system viable alongside the other next generation machines (however they'll turn out).

I think you underestimate the cost and effort that is actually required to produce those ports. If the Wii U manages to have a sizable install base of hardcore gamers, I'm sure third parties will be willing to invest the time and money to build up that port pipeline, but I'm inclined to believe that most of the people interested in playing things like Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, and other big multiplatform franchises likely already own a 360 or PS3 and will probably be more interested in continuing to play those games on the next hardware offerings from MS and Sony rather than playing a less than optimal experience on Wii U.

Also, hardware issues aside, at this point there's still a lot of doubt in my mind about Nintendo's ability to keep up in terms of their online infrastructure and feature set. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now and say that stuff just wasn't quite finished for launch and will improve over time, but I have serious doubts about them approaching what PSN and Xbox Live have to offer, especially if those services are significantly improved and more tightly integrated into the next gen consoles.

Bottom line is, I see the Wii U sales being driven almost exclusively by first-party software just like every other Nintendo console since the SNES. If they can deliver on that side, none of the hardware specs or online features matter all that much, and Nintendo will be fine.

Re: porting

That's what I was talking about earlier, though: the effort to port stuff should not require much extra work going forward (as opposed to bringing the old stuff over right now).

Re: online

Sure, they still have a lot to improve on but their foundation is very solid this time around at least. Having the whole thing web-based should not require downloading of new updates but the interface stuff will simply be updated once you login (in theory!). This needs to be looked at again after the holidays once everyone has had enough time to try it out in the wild with maybe a few more updates.

@DeF said:

The big fuck up with the Wii was the completely outdated hardware architecture that didn't support modern shaders and all that jazz. Had the hardware supported those, we would've been able to get SD-downports of HD titles very easily while this was simply impossible due to the lack of the shader support (few made the effort to completely developed their games from scratch over like the CoD Wii ports by Treyarch did). This will very likely not be happening this time around due to the more forward looking architecture. Slightly downscaled Wii U ports should keep the system viable alongside the other next generation machines (however they'll turn out).

Looks aren't the only benefit to more powerful parts. Lets not forget about higher player count in multiplayer games, more complex AI, faster load speeds and other things I'm probably forgetting. The Wii-U will be a slightly more thought out Wii in 2 years, better for downgraded ports but still downgraded ports.

In the long run the Wii U will live and die by it's first-party support and console exclusives, just like every nintendo console since forever. If it plays Mario and Zelda games bet your ass it's gonna sell well enough for nintendo to keep putting out stuff.

But yeah, it's kinda sad seeing a ton of potential get squandered by releasing a piece of hardware that is basically outdated out of the box.

@DeF said:

Like I said above, the CPU is the problematic part right now. The situation with other next-gen hardware is that it will very likely adapt a similar design (GPGPU) which should make cross-platform development easier in that regard.

GPGPU simply means you can run tasks normally done on the CPU on the GPU instead. While that frees up resources on the CPU, it consequently takes up resources on the GPU that could otherwise have been used for regular graphics processing. Also, that isn't necessarily always feasible - the CPU is a jack of all trades, while the GPU is a specialist, amazing at certain things, terrible at a lot of others. Give it the wrong task and you'll get a fraction of the speed of a CPU.

So you can't just say the GPU will automatically compensate for the CPU - there are numerous situations where it wouldn't matter, especially on next-gen games where it will likely already be busy trying to keep up with the beefier ones in its competitors. It still boils down to the Wii U having enough differences from both current-gen and next-gen consoles to make ports require a good bit of effort, and possibly redesign and compromises in the case of the latter.

@DeF said:

Re: porting

That's what I was talking about earlier, though: the effort to port stuff should not require much extra work going forward (as opposed to bringing the old stuff over right now).

I think you're still underestimating the effort that will be required to produce ports. In neither the case of porting from 360/PS3 nor from the next MS/Sony consoles will it be trivial. Thus, there's a value proposition that the publishers and developers will have to consider based on how marketable their game is to the Wii U install base.

@BlackLagoon said:

@DeF said:

Like I said above, the CPU is the problematic part right now. The situation with other next-gen hardware is that it will very likely adapt a similar design (GPGPU) which should make cross-platform development easier in that regard.

GPGPU simply means you can run tasks normally done on the CPU on the GPU instead. While that frees up resources on the CPU, it consequently takes up resources on the GPU that could otherwise have been used for regular graphics processing. Also, that isn't necessarily always feasible - the CPU is a jack of all trades, while the GPU is a specialist, amazing at certain things, terrible at a lot of others. Give it the wrong task and you'll get a fraction of the speed of a CPU.

So you can't just say the GPU will automatically compensate for the CPU - there are numerous situations where it wouldn't matter, especially on next-gen games where it will likely already be busy trying to keep up with the beefier ones in its competitors. It still boils down to the Wii U having enough differences from both current-gen and next-gen consoles to make ports require a good bit of effort, and possibly redesign and compromises in the case of the latter.

I agree. Even if the architecture of the Wii U is similar to the general architecture of next gen consoles from Microsoft and Sony, that doesn't imply that ports will be trivial enough that publishers and developers would be willing to produce them just for the presumably small number of people willing to accept a reduced experience rather than playing those games on the MS/Sony platform they were primarily developed for.

I think in the case of Epic Mickey 2 they ported the game really late. Warren Spector said the game wasn't coming to Wii U, and yet in mid September 'it's coming to Wii U' per the Press Conference. But stuff like Mass Effect 3 (which is better in comparison to a lot of the other stuff) draws a bigger eyebrow because of the policies/confusion set forth from EA in regards to the system.

Now I hope third party efforts get a lot better going forward. Because if they don't... :S

I was hoping it would impress enough to buy one pretending that I bought it for my kid. Everything GiantBomb showed left me thinking I'll be waiting a while to see how things progress - or possibly passing altogether.

And as someone who skipped the Wii, the thought of that additional hardware I'd have to buy scares me off that much more.

@ProfessorEss said:

I was hoping it would impress enough to buy one pretending that I bought it for my kid. Everything GiantBomb showed left me thinking I'll be waiting a while to see how things progress - or possibly passing altogether.

And as someone who skipped the Wii, the thought of that additional hardware I'd have to buy scares me off that much more.

Yes, It seems if didn't own a wii your done for any multi-player.

@Rafaelfc said:

In the long run the Wii U will live and die by it's first-party support and console exclusives, just like every nintendo console since forever. If it plays Mario and Zelda games bet your ass it's gonna sell well enough for nintendo to keep putting out stuff.

Is that really enough anymore though? I mean, for me it isn't. I'm sure the next full fledged Mario game (not a "NEW" series game [also I'm hoping it won't be another Galaxy game]) will be great but I'm tired of Zelda at this point. As for other first part games, Animal Crossing games have been stagnating since the original game, Pikmin looks like it'll be cool, and after Other M I'm really wary of what they're going to be doing with Metroid. And those two things of Mario and Pikmin aren't going to make me go out an buy a Wii U. I'm sure that'll be enough for some people, but personally I'm not going to be able to justify buying one for those two franchises and I imagine there are others who are in a similar boat.

Third party support matters a lot more to me now. And that'll be the determining factor about whether I'll be getting a Wii U down the line, even if it means that I'll miss out on some great first party Nintendo titles.

4/5. I still want it because it's new and I am insane. Mine's coming in today and I am still excited and I have no idea why. Please help me.

The stream left me more skeptic than I was going in, all I can really say is that next year's hardware sales will be interesting to follow.

Its a few firmware and service updates away from being pretty good. The storage limitation of Wii mode is unfortunate if they can't fix that at all. The Wii U will probably be a lot better within a year.

@Chaser324 said:

I agree. Even if the architecture of the Wii U is similar to the general architecture of next gen consoles from Microsoft and Sony, that doesn't imply that ports will be trivial enough that publishers and developers would be willing to produce them just for the presumably small number of people willing to accept a reduced experience rather than playing those games on the MS/Sony platform they were primarily developed for.

The thing you are missing is that there are more than 100 million PS3/X360 users right now if a new console is released next year (note that this is still just a possibility it is not sure that there is going to be a new console next year) how many people are going to buy it by next year? 5 million, how many users is going to have by 2014? 15 million? Publishers still are going to be interested in making games for the X360 and PS3 until probably 2015. So I think the situation is going to be the opposite of what you say, games are going to be primarily developed for WiiU, PS3 and Xbox360 with upscaled versions for the other new consoles, with the exception of a few first party exclusives, for 2 to 3 years.

I didn't get to watch the launch stream, so I have a question for those who might have it or maybe it was mentioned.

Is there any sort of achievement system in place? I once heard they were doing something called Nintendo Accomplishments which work like achievements and trophies, but haven't heard anything about it recently.

@xyzygy: Nope.

@FearMyFlop said:

4/5. I still want it because it's new and I am insane. Mine's coming in today and I am still excited and I have no idea why. Please help me.

It's too late

I want to not judge the console and wait out a year so see what kind of games they make for it, but realistically, in a year we'll all be drooling over fancy new shit that will make WiiU look terrible in comparison

@Zetetic_Elench said:

@Rafaelfc said:

In the long run the Wii U will live and die by it's first-party support and console exclusives, just like every nintendo console since forever. If it plays Mario and Zelda games bet your ass it's gonna sell well enough for nintendo to keep putting out stuff.

Is that really enough anymore though? I mean, for me it isn't. I'm sure the next full fledged Mario game (not a "NEW" series game [also I'm hoping it won't be another Galaxy game]) will be great but I'm tired of Zelda at this point. As for other first part games, Animal Crossing games have been stagnating since the original game, Pikmin looks like it'll be cool, and after Other M I'm really wary of what they're going to be doing with Metroid. And those two things of Mario and Pikmin aren't going to make me go out an buy a Wii U. I'm sure that'll be enough for some people, but personally I'm not going to be able to justify buying one for those two franchises and I imagine there are others who are in a similar boat.

Third party support matters a lot more to me now. And that'll be the determining factor about whether I'll be getting a Wii U down the line, even if it means that I'll miss out on some great first party Nintendo titles.

I agree with you in what I want out of a console, but I reached that conclusion about nintendo on the transition from N64 to gamecube.

The thing is that the target audience for Nintendo's first party games is a very big, perpetually renewed demographic, ie: kids (people keep making 'em) so for every new nintendo console there will be a ton of kids who will be getting their first console experience from it and that will be enough for the next console. The twist is that Nintendo is trying to rope in a more 'hardcore' audience upfront to have more of a sales boost, but I think their endgame strategy is the same as it's always been.

I may be totally off base or wrong in the assumption that it will be enough though, and if there ever was a console that seemed poised for failure, the wii U is it. But every time I walk in game stores and see a small kid bugging his/her mom for the new mario game I still think "yeah, never bet against nintendo".

Most of the complaints in this thread just make me think "well, we'll have to wait and see how things are going next year".

Most of the complaints seem to be for things that can, potentially, be worked on and fixed.

On the topic of power - we'll have to wait and see what devs can pull out of it though I seriously doubt that this console will be on par with the next Xbox and PS4, even if the 720 and PS4 wind up being underwhelming anyway. No, if anything, this console's potential failure will simply be from lack of interest.

It's still way early to give it any kind of rating. If things don't get better than the launch games for any system then things have gone poorly. Launch games are not a good barometer of a console's potential. Also, we are at a point where system updates can makes drastic changes to consoles, rendering any console ratings quickly obsolete.

I pretty much got what I expected. Something pretty meh. Can't wait for real new console news though!

Disregarding the fact that I'm not intending to every buy a console myself anytime soon, I'm still interested in all that stuff in general way. 3/5

Now I do like the asymmetric gameplay options that the WiiU controller allows. It's just something you cannot get so far and it can be used wonderfully. The Luigi's Mansion stuff is just so neat.

However I take series issue with the weak hardware. There will be many good games that'll look plenty well (e.g. the SSB game will be gorgeous I'd guess). However the fact that 3D games that try to go with a bit more realistic art style have already framerate issues here and there at 1080p or, I suppose, actually less in some cases, is just... oh god. I mean this is it. This is the new Nintendo Console which will surely last 4-5 years minimum. The console is probably already 3-4 years behind PC hardware and it's obviously only getting worse in that regard. It's really just disappointing. 1080p, constant 60fps, I'm pretty sure that stuff will be a problem for many games in the lifespan of the WiiU. And especially framerate is something that directly affects gameplay and enjoyment.

Another big issue that to some degree relates to this is slow navigation through menus etc. It's the same issue that made me stop playing Mario Kart 7 on my 3DS because at some point I couldn't take it any longer... often wanting to play Mario Kart 7 but requiring >5minutes to finally start an online round - urgh. The whole "pacing" of the 3DS is horrible. It's far from quick and snappy. No, often when you click a button there are at least short load times. The eShop is a pain to navigate through. Really everything is when it just takes long.

I mean I can start my PC (with an SSD) quicker and start a round of Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2 than I can play an online round in Mario Kart 7.

If the WiiU will have the same issues for now that's just so bad. And who knows if that stuff even gets patched out...

lots of hate here....and im not sure on what? I am using the system and everything seems to run fine. the UI is great, the "ports" (are we really calling them ports? Do we call the ps3 version of a game a port if the core system was the 360?)

look like they should. No less then when they game out before.

The Miiverse is a awesome system that i think should get more attention. Having something cool happen in game, and with out a hitch, you can open Miiverse take a pic of the game and post it for other people who are interested in that game to see. Then go right back to playing.

The friend system...is what it should have bloody been a long time ago.

The gamepad really is fun to use and works perfect. Not hicups or anything. And i dont care what Jeff says...playing Black Ops 2 on the gamepad, when laying in bed in a comfy position, or as tv is going on in the back ground...or yes on the toilet...is awesome.

The games look fantastic. Some of the looks in even Nintendoland is just awesome. Course...thats only if you like Nintendos style. Cause there style in HD is great.

In the stream they had issues with the net. Not so much the Wii U.

And at that point of if any issues with the Wii U...its a new release of a new system...Name one system the past 10 years that came out with out a hitch and everything worked perfect.

Was going to be a 1 star but the wii chat connection animation / jeff's reaction was just the best. The only fun I see in that system is spending 500 bucks for the deluxe edition and 4 wii motes and playing the competitive mulitplayer games in Nindentoland, oh and the problem with that is you need 4 people with you.

Any info when they're going to archive the stream? I worked all day yesterday, and I really want to see how bad Epic Mickey runs.

@Vonocourt said:

Any info when they're going to archive the stream? I worked all day yesterday, and I really want to see how bad Epic Mickey runs.

Jeff said it will be archived. They pretty much archive everything nowadays. Although, watching them dick around with updates and network connectivity doesn't really make a great video. But it was a fun train wreck when it happened.

@Chaser324 said:

@DeF said:

Re: porting

That's what I was talking about earlier, though: the effort to port stuff should not require much extra work going forward (as opposed to bringing the old stuff over right now).

I think you're still underestimating the effort that will be required to produce ports. In neither the case of porting from 360/PS3 nor from the next MS/Sony consoles will it be trivial. Thus, there's a value proposition that the publishers and developers will have to consider based on how marketable their game is to the Wii U install base.

@BlackLagoon said:

@DeF said:

Like I said above, the CPU is the problematic part right now. The situation with other next-gen hardware is that it will very likely adapt a similar design (GPGPU) which should make cross-platform development easier in that regard.

GPGPU simply means you can run tasks normally done on the CPU on the GPU instead. While that frees up resources on the CPU, it consequently takes up resources on the GPU that could otherwise have been used for regular graphics processing. Also, that isn't necessarily always feasible - the CPU is a jack of all trades, while the GPU is a specialist, amazing at certain things, terrible at a lot of others. Give it the wrong task and you'll get a fraction of the speed of a CPU.

So you can't just say the GPU will automatically compensate for the CPU - there are numerous situations where it wouldn't matter, especially on next-gen games where it will likely already be busy trying to keep up with the beefier ones in its competitors. It still boils down to the Wii U having enough differences from both current-gen and next-gen consoles to make ports require a good bit of effort, and possibly redesign and compromises in the case of the latter.

I agree. Even if the architecture of the Wii U is similar to the general architecture of next gen consoles from Microsoft and Sony, that doesn't imply that ports will be trivial enough that publishers and developers would be willing to produce them just for the presumably small number of people willing to accept a reduced experience rather than playing those games on the MS/Sony platform they were primarily developed for.

Just to be clear, I'm not underestimating anything. I'm fully aware of the publisher spiel about install base and audience and blahblah. All I'm saying is that the situation here is not at all comparable to the Wii situation.

i dont know about giving it any stars yet, however it did reconfirm my feelings about holding out at least another year before picking one up.