It's been suggested that I hate Nintendo. At least in the irc chat. But that's not relevant now. Ever since E3 and the announcement of Wii U, it's been bugging me. The notion that Nintendo for all it's sold consoles, still doesn't really know what they're doing. A small part of me will always like Nintendo for being my childhood console of choice, but around N64 they fell out of interest to me due to Playstation and the type of games available to me there. And ever since then, I look at Nintendo with a mixture of wonder and pure bewilderment because they succeed despite doing crazy things that shouldn't work.
When they announced the Wii, I was excited and curious because it was something different. But, I didn't reallt buy into their notion that old controllers were hard to understand and their way was easier. Eventually though, the realization that it lacked fidelity and the target audience was only part the pure Nintendo fans and the new casuals. The latter is a group of people were a rather unreliable gamble, but it was a group Nintendo managed to trick into their system probably less due to the new controls, but more due to the fact that the games accompanying those controls were simple and easy to learn. And I think there's a reason a lot of Wii:s only have those games on the shelf. I have yet to see someone have a hard time using the 360 controller playing Risk or Carcassonne. It's all about the games and how they make the player use the controller. Most of us have the good fortune of having grown up with the controller evolution so we're already trained for the FPS layout a lot of people new to games really can't multitask the first time. However, if you start them on simple games and move them up, they too will get it. Don't insult people's intelligence.
So, here comes E3 and Nintendo announces a new console (really, it's not just a controller, dudes) and suddenly they're fishing for the lost market. The third party support and the mature games. So, they create a controller-tablet-thing that can support those games, while still sticking with the Wii controllers as well. This begs the question; are they painting themselves into a corner and spreading themselves too thin? Because if regular controllers are too complicated, then why not wait a bit and release Wii 2 and stick with the wii controllers and boost fidelity and graphics on par with the other new consoles? And if regular controllers are not too complicated, why not go back to that? Now we're facing a middle-of-the-road approach to their system, trying to please everyone yet throw in yet another wacky idea (the controller screen). On top of all of that, it's an incremental upgrade graphics wise by the sound of it as it's been said to be comparable to current gen systems. But that also makes no sense in the "now they don't have to make a weird version of the other games" argument, as once the other manufacturers get to making new consoles, cross platform will still have to be ported "down" to Wii U. And furthermore, if you can only use one of those controllers, you still have to adjust any local multi-play to the regular wii controllers for it to work.
I've heard arguments that since this will please all sorts of people, this might be the go-to console for core gamers since they get both things. But what core gamer doesn't already have a console capable of what this console will do horsepower-wise? And on top of that, once a generation shift happens, what core gamers are going to want to stick with a console half a step back when the new ones go forward? It seem too far fetched.
I am curious to see if their new casual audience will buy into this new console and if the core audience will adopt it due to it's so-called possibilities. Personally, I'm skeptical.
I should note that the only true benefit to this console and that controller I've managed to think up, was playing a game like Assassin's Creed without any hud elements and keep the map/ammo/health on that controller instead. That, I would like.
So what say you?
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