Nintendo’s Wii u revealed, Facepalm ensues

This morning I woke up at about 9am with expectations and joy over the E3 Nintendo press conference as I crept out of my bed like I was a mere toddler getting ready to watch a Saturday morning cartoon, waiting in anticipation as nostalgia of my early toddler days with the original Nintendo entertainment system flood through my mind. Only to be met with disappointment much like my pre-teenage years, the conference did indeed start at 9am however of the pacific time zone
so I had to wait till 12pm eastern time.

I was looking forward to seeing that my and probably many other’s once treasured company take a step toward reclaiming it’s former gaming crown. I never got into the Wii, I found the idea of waving a stick around novel at best. and with millions of gamers scrutinising the console’s low level graphics , and a third party library of nothing but games meant for your kid brother or your Mom, it became harder and harder to root for the company I had such fond memories, and practically raised me.

and after a weird pantomime performance from Shigeru Miyamoto (The designer behind Nintendo’s most famous franchises). and announcements for a couple of remakes of N64 games coming to the 3DS, Mr Reggie Fils-Aime (President and COO of Nintendo, North American Division) finally announced what I was waiting for. the next home console in the Nintendo line, surely after all the complaints on the Wii, and the massive motion controller development from Sony and Microsoft in the past year Nintendo would step up their game?

As the ridiculous “Wii U” name was reveal, I watched the entire presentation shown on stage and my reaction was as fallows

” I literally dropped my jaw, face palmed myself, and then walked out of the room ”

Great job Nintendo you are now able to have HD graphics what other system don’t have that already? Nintendo that was a must not a special feature to be shown off. it makes you sound like a kid in the playground telling everyone else you got something they already had years before. it’s nice you got it at last but just makes your previous flaws more obvious.

The main feature focus was the new controller, a neat little iPad clone, with a linking feature to the Wii U and buttons. I’m not even going to waste your time listing the duplicate features of this controller and an iPad.

as the Nintendo presenters continued on about the linking of the controller and Wii U making it able to have your menu screen and over top view map available making this a new innovative way to play that is like nothing before, I can’t help but remember doing that exact thing with a GBA to the GameCube to play Final fantasy crystal chronicles. sure now it’s wireless with the Wii U it’s totally not the same.

watching on as they list the features I noticed that the feature of playing on the smaller handheld screen is available and if your friend or family changes the channel on you to watch a baseball game I can keep playing on the small screen? um I’d tell them to go use another TV cause if I can afford a new console chances are we can afford a simple 200$ for a 22″ in your room

and what is with a board game on the tablet controller, get a 5$ board set, and save energy, the earth and money if that’s what you want to play with your Wii U.

and one last feature I wish to talk about that was shown was the ablity to move videos and internet content from your controller to the TV with just a little flick, that was a really need idea, to bad Microsoft already was doing this with something they called Windows 7, um I guess all the comercials were wrong and Windows 7 was really Nintendo’s idea.

I was actually happy when they listed a bunch of third party developer games. A long list of AAA games are all making appearance in the Wii U show, sadly only later to be revealed that the videos are all images were not for the new Wii U platform but was a montage of footage from Xbox and Sony versions of the same games.

Reggie during an interview after the reveals said the Wii U will not be using BluRay but will be using its own proprietary disc format, later revealed by another source will have a 25Gb capacity, but meaning that BluRay playback on your Wii U might not be possible.

Wii U can have a giant disc size all it wants, but internally it will only have a 8GB flash drive built in for memory. which is startlingly small, though confirmed to have SD card support. There has been conflicting information regarding uses of external hard drives. meaning you better save up money for those SD cards, cause if the hardcore titles really are the same as on the Xbox or PS3 every DLC or title update is pretty much going to take a huge chunk out of your storage. or you could just stick with the Xbox or Ps3.

Over all I’m sure there is going to be many change to look forward to in the 2012, but as of now with what is shown and suggested not that much of an improvement from the base Wii model to merit a new purchase for any owner of a Xbox or PS3 looking towards mostly hardcore titles, especially when Sony’s Vita and Move linked to a PS3 can do most if not all the functions that this system can but if you are really only into the Mario and Zelda game and many other first party nintendo game this is the only choice.