Wii-U thoughts so far

[ZeroAX]

Yeah they definitely should. I have gotten a lot more entertainment out of Nintendoland than I did with Wii Sports. Nintendo Land gives you a great idea of the potential the system has, and encompasses the social aspect of the WiiU perfectly. It incorporates the Miiverse and really encourages you to participate in it and when you have friends with you, the minigames are unbearably fun!

Games like, Mario Chase just aren't nearly as fun with one other person. You really need the full roster to get the most fun out of it.

The problem from a marketing point is that Nintendo Land is just not as eye catching to the random observer. Think of the brilliance of the original Wii commercials showing people PLAYING games. It made it look so fun and exciting. Now as a gamer, of course I know Nintendo Land is fun. But would someone who doesn't touch games try it out just cause of the "ipad controller" ? Probably not.

[BogusMeatFactory]

The problem from a marketing point is that Nintendo Land is just not as eye catching to the random observer. Think of the brilliance of the original Wii commercials showing people PLAYING games. It made it look so fun and exciting. Now as a gamer, of course I know Nintendo Land is fun. But would someone who doesn't touch games try it out just cause of the "ipad controller" ? Probably not.

Yeah..one of the things it is missing in marketing is slogan. The "Wii would like to play" commercials were electrifying. It sticks in my brain and when I hear that music, I think of Nintendo. They needed something like that for this and they just didn't do it. But I agree when a family sees NintendoLand, they do not see the same thing they do with the Wii.

[Cronozilla]

I think that's because unlike Wii Sports, Nintendo Land is an actual traditional video game. They also ... didn't market the game ... there's like 30 second spots where it's just a bunch living rooms in boxes like The Cube. And they're these weird hybrid commercials about the system and the game. I could definitely see it being confusing to people who don't pay attention, and as a result, they just don't care.

They really needed to market this thing more like they marketed the Super Nintendo ... those ads made SURE you knew it was NEW. They made sure you knew these games were sequels, not the same thing you played before. Stuff like that.

I also think ... there's just a lot of people who bought Wii who aren't going to buy another game console. Maybe Wii Fit U will change that? And it's $50-$100 more than the Wii was when it came out (mentally ... it's actually the same price as the Wii when it came out accounting for dollar value)

But I do think if they increased the memory size of the Basic and included a game ... that'd probably help a lot. And you know ... commercials ... that explain stuff. Getting deals with companies, that sort of thing.

Update:

I've been curious about this for awhile, because a Nintendo rep said, before the Wii U came out, that the thing could play Wii games off the pad, like a monitor. That is not how it behaves. So, I was waiting awhile for teardowns of the gamepad itself (not the system) to see if it's even possible. And ... Nintendo is going to do this. The gamepad has upgradable firmware. Which means they can introduce new behavior to the pad ... it also DOES have LEDs under the black plastic where the camera is, you can see them here:



They're in grey plastic risers.

Now, this is pretty damn cool, if you ask me. This means, hopefully, at some point, they'll update the Wii Mode channel thing to run just off the gamepad. The LEDs, to note, would allow you to point a wii remote at the gamepad itself without motion plus or new software.

Very cool.

[Violent By Design]

Nintendo Land is a pretty forgettable game, I am kind of surprised people here are talking about it.

I've played it a lot, and always with 5 people which is probably how it is meant to be played (can't even imagine why someone would play it by themselves for any decent amount of time), and it isn't a very fun game at all. I think Wii Sports was better than it, certainly had more novelty.

I think the 5 player ghost game is the only real fun minigame. I mean the others are not torture by any means, but they're fairly generic, not interesting or just very imbalanced (I thought they dropped the ball on the Mario chasing game)

[RyaNtheSlayA]

They're in grey plastic risers.

Now, this is pretty damn cool, if you ask me. This means, hopefully, at some point, they'll update the Wii Mode channel thing to run just off the gamepad. The LEDs, to note, would allow you to point a wii remote at the gamepad itself without motion plus or new software.

Very cool.

Its definitely possible. Right now, you can use WiiU games with it at least.

[Cronozilla]

Oh, I didn't realize anything used it yet ... silly me, i figured the games would just utilize motion plus.

[BogusMeatFactory]

I was also noticing something really strange about the WiiU and it's poor sales. A lot of people, after seeing the PS4 and Xbox1 press conference, have stated that they will be buying a WiiU now. I think a lot of people were waiting to see what Sony and Microsoft were doing before making any decisions and I don't blame them. They could have come out with some truly mind blowing.

I don't think a lot of consumers are convinced yet, but E3 may be the big push over the cliff. Nintendo has rented out a LOT of space at E3, much more than any of it's competition. With the ability to play those same games at a Best Buy during the time of E3, mixed with the potential of a slew of new games and content announced, I could see this being the straw that broke the camel's back and won people over to Nintendo.

That is all hypothetical of course.

[CavZee]

If you could run Wii Mode Simultaneously on the GamePad then that'd be great. Playing Classic Controller enabled games on the Gamepad itself would be the main draw to me. The Wii games would look really nice on there as opposed to a HDTV.

[Cronozilla]

Wii games on Wii U do look better on the TV than the Wii itself did. Well ... on my TV anyway. But it has to do purely with the scaling available in your TV set, or entertainment setup.

You know ... if the Wii isn't emulation on the device (I'm still unclear if it is or not) and it's physical legacy circuitry ... then it probably could run Wii U and Wii at the same time. Some memory performance withstanding.

However, if the Wii is being emulated ... Nintendo needs to make that experience better. Upped resolution rendering, for example, gamepad integration would be nice, which is possible with a wrapper layer.

But ... that's likely too much work to put into something they're trying to ween people off of.

[CavZee]

AFAIK, the Wii U has hardware based backwards compatibility due to the CPU being an evolution of the Wii's CPU. It sort've "switches" itself to Wii mode when you boot up the Wii Menu.

I generally just stick to using Dolphin for my Wii games, but I can say Wii games do look a bit better on Wii U as well though. I just thought it would be cool to have Xenoblade or Smash Bros. on the gamepad.