wii u

The Nintendo Wii U is a cool and interesting concept. My initial (cynical) take was that it's like a Fisher-Price iPad, but I made that observation more for giggles than anything else and, as we sat through the series of demos, the Wii U pad-machine-controller showed some amazing potential. It lets you interact with games in an innovative way, and really opens up some serious potential for new types of gaming.

Wii U: Design and features

The Wii U system itself doesn't look too far removed from a Wii(and it still uses all the Wii remotes and peripherals the company currently employs). The difference is in the controller. This beast has a massive, high-resolution touchpad built into the screen, and it's fully capable of running the same games on both the controller screen and your TV screen.

A lot of what Nintendo showed was very conceptual: sharing video from the Wii U's handheld screen to your TV, using the alternative screen as a standalone information panel for games like Wii Fit, and a number of other odd, intriguing uses. But I got a little time to try out some of the more game-specific applications Nintendo had ready for the show.

As Nintendo said over and over again during the conference, none of the demos we look at in the following review are proper games - they just show what's possible (though I'm sure we'll see more than one of these in an inevitable Wii minigame collection). But first, I'll go into a few general impressions.

GamePro

Wii U: The tablet controller

Wii U's screen looks big; it's basically a tablet... but that doesn't keep it from being an effective game controller. I have no idea how it'll feel after extended play or how heavy it'll feel when you have to wave the controller around for too long. But in my brief demos, it felt great. Surprisingly, your hands fit on the buttons and analog sticks without feeling stretched or uncomfortable.

The touchscreen looks good, but I'm not sure why you'd want to play on the controller by choice. But some of the demos available let you switch between devices on the fly, while others allow you to use both at the same time.

Wii U: The HD experience

An interactive Zelda demo shows off how well the game does HD. Link enters a cathedral-esque area and squares off against a massive, ugly spider creature. I couldn't control the battle, but buttons on the touchscreen let you switch the time between day and night (to see the lighting effects) and to swap between several preset camera angles.

It's not as good as actually getting to play a game, of course, but this tinkering shows that the Wii U is obviously a more powerful system than the Wii, with much more attractive visuals. Not every game was optimised to look this good (although they all looked better than Wii), but from the looks of it, Wii U is going to be able to at least keep up with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

We don't know anything about the system's online capabilities (although they're promised to be robust), the extent of the system's backward compatibility, or if you'll need (or even be able to use) more than one of the new controllers at a time. The system isn't coming out till next year, so that leaves lots of time for info on the price and unique Wii U features for the flood of ports that will be coming soon.

Microsoft @ E3 2011: Five Things We Learned

Wii U: Can it do better than the Wii?

So the Wii U is a cool concept. But I remember saying exactly the same thing about Wii - I was blown away by how cool it was. How innovative the controller was, and the more I thought about it at the time, the more I thought that we were on the verge for a new dawn of gaming. The reality is, though, we weren't.

While the hardware was cool and interesting, the reality for most gamers is that Wii is one of the least-played consoles of recent years. It sold incredibly well - it was the machine everyone wanted to have. But the same can be said for the latest fitness machines: they are bought, they are played with for a while, and then they gather dust. And unfortunately that's also true for most Wiis out there.

Wii games: the problem?

Part of the problem is the games - there are simply very few truly great Wii games. Some might blame the Wii's weak technology for that, but I always felt that innovations in game mechanics driven by the controls would make up for that. But it seems most companies simply couldn't capitalise on that, and we ended up with a few shining examples of Wii games drifting in a sea of mediocre, unimaginative shovelware.

The other thing that didn't help is that Wii's architecture and tech is so out of step with 360 and PS3, publishers couldn't cross-develop games. That meant development costs were relatively high for Wii games because a unique team was required to develop games, and assets were difficult to port and share across platforms. Which then combined with a generally weak market for Wii software - many machines were sold, but users generally bought fewer games for their systems that users of others - and you ended up with a market that just wasn't particularly viable for a lot of publishers.

The end result was a machine that, for most gamers, delivered a lot of promise that it never really fulfilled. So is Wii U going to change that? I really, really hope so, but I think there is a large amount of wait and see.