f13.net

So a new console launched last week, supposedly marking the start of the next gen, and the result on these boards is....  nothing?

Yeah.  Pretty sure Nintendo is headed rapidly towards being a software house.

These boards hated the Wii after 6 months and weren't fond of it before that. They're the last place you need to look for anything about its successor.

True enough.  We're hardly representative of gaming at large, but you're telling me that out of how many frequent/infrequent posters that post on this board, no one has reported their impressions?  A console launch is a fairly large event in gaming, and for not one peep to have appeared on these forums in 3-4 days is pretty damning.

I didn't even know it launched until I got linked to the thing where someone accidentally got access to the Wii Universe admin thing.

I think I could only name a couple posters still on the Nintendo bandwagon, (Margalis and Rendakor).  

For this board's demo, the Wii was pretty much a failure.  The other consoles had the games we talked about, the Wii had.. No More Heroes?  Xenoblade (which I assume a lot of didn't play due to mothballing our Wiis)?   Hell, even with my younger nephews, they pretty much stopped playing their Wii the second they got a 360.  

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that we're collectively about the games, not the gimmick.  Unless the WiiU delivers the games, it'll largely go ignored.

edit:  And I didn't even know it launched until I saw pictures on reddit of dads getting it for their kids.

I liked Skylanders on the Wii, but I'm sure it wasn't much different from the other versions. Mario Kart was also fun.

However, the issue is (again) if Nintendo can get enough third party titles that people want to buy. If all you can get on the Wii U is yet more Mario, Zelda, Metroid and only the occasional third party title worth anything, then the Wii U is going to end up with the same problem that the Wii faced. Only it's likely to sell less because the casual interest in motion controls isn't there like it was with the Wii.

No point in getting a Wii U until there's more software out.

Also, I'm unconvinced this is the next great thing in gaming, so unless it has an awesome game that makes it shine, I'm unlikely to get it. My kids are older now (my son finally sees the value in playing games on the pc, hurrah) and haven't been clamoring for it at all. I don't see much interesting there - yet at least.

Fuck Nintendo in its goddamn earhole.

I was a big-time Wii cheerleader. I bought the system on release. I still love some of the original games despite their obvious flaws (Red Steel). But it seemed like everything I bought the system for was a total letdown. The motion controls, instead of being a new innovation on control schemes, was a goddamn gimmick. Most of the 3rd party games just mapped their typical control schemes onto inaccurate swiping motions. I'd say maybe 5 of the games I played on the system actually had any sort of thought or innovation put into the controls. Most of the games were kiddie shovelware and stuff that belongs on a smartphone. Conduit was the last thing I played that I had any hope for, and it was boring as fuck. The 3rd party devs almost to a man gave not a fuck about making interesting games with the controls and it showed in the lazy ass games they made. I haven't even turned the goddamn thing on for more than Netflix in most of a year.

And now they want me to pay for a new console that finally has HD graphics and the only thing they added is a GODDAMN iPAD with a Wiimote strapped to either end?

Fuck them in their earholes.

Funny thing with the Wii is the innovation was actually in the controller, not in the console.  :awesome_for_real:  Really, the console was a step back tbh.
If we wanna look at the economics of it though, if it weren't for Nintendo a lot of mo-cap and aug. reality suites would be 10 times more expensive then they are now.  They really ramped up production of a lot of this stuff when the Wii came out, so now you can get similar components for a lot cheaper (gyros, accelerometers, etc.)

I hope they got some real good shit coming down the pipe because I doubt they're gonna have the massive explosion of people buying the system for a glorified game demo (wiisports) then never ever buying anything again like they did with the Wii.

Although my wife liked the Wii for a while (co-op Mario Bros Wii, co-op Donkey Kong wii, etc), in the long run it has just become a glorified netflix box.  I just don't see myself ever buying a console again to be honest. I wouldn't have even bought a Wii if my wife hadn't been interested in one, and before that the last thing I had was a gamecube.  In other words, I've been a Nintendo man since I was a basically a baby, never owned an Xbox or 360, never owned any of the playstation systems, but I've had all the Nintendos (also was a Sega guy, but  :why_so_serious:).  But even as someone who has a fair amount of Nintendo loyalty, I just have no interest in this thing.

Apart from the Wii Universe admin story, apparently there's also a 5gb firmware patch download before a new system will even work. Interrupt the patch and it bricks itself. Mass market consumer ahoy.

I'm on the Nintendo bandwagon? :headscratch: I'm an admitted 3DS fan but I haven't owned a Wii in years; I had to borrow a friend's just to play Xenoblade.

Regarding the Wii U, Nintendo seems to have failed pretty hard at marketing the system. I've had several hardcore gamer friends ask me for the first time this weekend, "Dude, what's the Wii U?" People I talked to that have heard of it usually think it's a handheld, and/or assume there's no way that a Nintendo system could match the PS3/360 in terms of performance. This is all Nintendo's fault, for showing off mostly Nintendoland and Mario and not any of the more serious third party launch titles (COD, AC3, Batman, ME3). Furthermore, by not giving a launch date at E3 (when everyone was paying attention) and instead announcing it at some private conference, they failed to build anticipation because no one thought it was going to launch this year since the PS4/Xbox720 are probably still two years away. Bottom line is that Nintendo hasn't been the console of choice for hardcore gamers since the SNES, and if they want to get that demographic back they're going to have to work for it (and none of their marketing efforts so far have had success in that direction).

Personally, none of the launch titles really interest me; I'm not big on minigame fests and I'm sort bored of Mario. However, Bayonetta 2 and the new Monster Hunter are both supposed to be Wii U exclusives, so when either of those come out I'll probably have to pick one up.

Also, there are reports (This thread (http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/631516-wii-u/64671273) on gamefaqs, MovieBob's twitter (https://twitter.com/the_moviebob), and this YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=H4LI5hTh7GE#!)) of a blue flash of death, with some systems DOA. I really hope for Nintendo's sake that this isn't as common as the RROD; the last thing they need is a catastrophic hardware failure. None of the major gaming news sites seems to have picked it up yet, but expect to hear BFOD or BLOD a lot in the next few months.

Hey, I was struggling to think of people who even still talk about Nintendo games/systems.   :awesome_for_real: Didn't want to just single out Margalis.

I'm with Rendakor in that there's some software that may be coming that should be fun.

The biggest thing that interested me was that it wirelessly transmits the video signal from the box to the Remotes, which I thought was cool.

I'm not sure I need another way to watch Netflix though.

I hear zombi u is really good and borrows liberaölly from dark souls, but that's pretty much it. Time will tell if it's worth getting.

I normally have to get a WII, due to any Zelda games that come out. Not for me, but my Significant other. She will likely LOVE the portability of that controller. Our entertainment system backs up to our bedroom wall, so i foresee her playing in the room a lot.

Hearing that Bayonetta 2 will be a nintendo exclusive makes me remarkably sad.  I doubt it will be even a shadow of the over-the-top nature of the first due to the console.

Why would the console be a limit at this point? Its got more ( faster ) ram than an Xbox 360. X360 has 512 ddr2, ponder that.

Wow, if Bayonetta 2 is really a Wii U exclusive, that really makes me sad.

The Wii online experience was just a total failure for me.  The Nintendo Store doesn't even hold water compared to Xbox Live or the PSN.  Adding friends with an random long code was obnoxious, not that there was any way to interact once you did.  For a game like Super Mario Bros Wii to launch without online multi-player just solidified that they were out of touch with what I wanted in a game console anymore.

The Wii U is not a next gen console -- the guts are only slightly better spec'd than an Xbox 360 (mostly cause of the extra RAM). So finally Nintendo owners will get real ports of the major titles (Call of Duty, Batman, Assassin's Creed, etc.). Yea. Of course next year the next Xbox will be coming out and a new Playstation presumably the year after so Nintendo will once again be behind the others. The Wii was able to flourish for a while even with its gimpy internals thanks to the game-changing motion controllers and casual-friendly games. The Wii U GamPad, however, is not a game charger like the Wii Remote was -- it's a supplemental device. Yeah it might eventually* be the best TV remote you can get but that makes for a very expensive TV remote. Nintendo also fucked up the button placement on its controllers putting them *below* the stick on the right side, fucking up the muscle memory of all the serious gamers out there.

* TVii and a bunch of other promised features have not be released yet

Price point also helped a lot.  As for the new unit, WII U supports a Blu-ray like disk drive, 25gb of storage. And a Multicore processor. Its also DX11 capable.

Not sure what your criteria for next gen is there Trippy.

Yes, and the Wii U doesn't have that advantage anymore (presumably the GamePad is expensive to manufacturer).

Oh it's not a graphics issue but the fact that it will almost certainly be a more toned down game in terms of content.

Eh?  CoD, Resident Evil, Scarface, Bully, Man hunt, house of the dead, Dead Rising.... All on the WII.  Bayonetta's High heals and juggs are surely at risk.

I'm not sure its just the game pad, but yes, now its 300$. But, in many aspects, you get more with this console then last gen. More power, more flexibility, higher render standards and a fancy controller.

Yes, unlike the Wii where Nintendo was making money on the hardware right from the beginning (that's how gimpy it was), they are losing money on the Wii U itself. So Nintendo definitely packed in the hardware features this time around (the lack of sufficient internal storage not withstanding).

The Wii U has a more powerful GPU (precise specs unknown at this point) but its CPU is about the same if not actually less powerful than its counterparts, and it has more RAM as previously mentioned. The true next gen consoles (next Xbox, next PlayStation) are likely to be significantly more powerful than the Wii U. That's why I don't consider it a "next gen" console but a "current gen" one.

I have one but why bother posting about it? I don't think people here are terribly interested.

Plus I really want to clear my backlog of Gamecube games (lol) before I start using it seriously.


Nintendo stopped toning down content in the SNES or N64 days.

Last gen I had a 360 and a Wii, but in retrospect I should have had a PS3 and Wii instead. Those two systems give me coverage of basically every game I want to play. I can't think of a single game that is exclusive to 360 that I cared about at all. I feel like in some ways if you only owned 1 console 360 would be the best, but if you owned two 360 would the worst.

I know the Wii U is going to have games I want to play and it's not particularly expensive. Also I can play a console quality game while lying in bed which is pretty cool. The quality or number of third party ports is not really relevant to me. I owned a Wii for Nintendo games and for games like No More Heroes, Sin and Punishment, etc, not for Call of Duty ports or whatever.

As far as the Wii U goes, the pad is great, playing console games on a pad around the house is cool enough that some games feel better played on the pad even when I'm in front of the TV. It's not an iPad with buttons because iPad games are hot garbage. In terms of tech the Wii U pad tech itself is pretty novel, the rest of the system is PS3 / 360 ballpark in terms of visuals and performance. MiiVerse is a cool and I'm sure either MS or Sony is scrambling to steal it. (Live message board of text and drawings from users that you can access in game and that can be integrated into games kind of like the messages in Dark Souls)

In the end it's basically a 360/PS3 with a different library and a controller with a touchscreen that can play full games off of the TV.

The PS4/720 are going to be a lot more powerful, but there's always a more powerful system coming at some point so it's difficult for me to get worked up about that. The Wii U is not really "next gen" other than the pad streaming tech, it's current gen-ish with a twist. But I've really soured on "AAA" games that appeal to the lowest common denominator with safe design decisions, QTEs, auto-platforming, special vision modes that tell you exactly what to do, etc, so the prospect of games that look even prettier and are even more brain-dead and conservative doesn't excite me.

Edit: Zombi U is a good example of this. I don't think it would be made for Xbox 720, the budget required to appear competitive would also require the game design to change. It's a zombie game where fighting zombies is the least interesting part of the game.

I didn't even know that it was part of a new console.

They had something actually novel for the wii, and got lucky and attracted mass-market interest. I get no sense this is likely to happen again, so only the nintendo niche are likely to care.

I got burned on the Wii. Most of the games on it were shitty and if it wasn't for wii-sports and wii-fit I probably would never turn it on again and just pawn it.

That alone is enough reason for me to pass on the Wii U. Sure, I'll miss the latest Zelda which is a franchise I still love but I can live with that. I bought all 3 consoles this Gen and while the Wii was the cheapest it was also the one I felt I wasted my money on.

Our Wii hardly ever gets played. My son prefers the older Nintendos (N64 is his favorite, I think, and he likes the Super Nintendo too) over the Wii. He tends to play XBox 360 more though. (He's now 16).

My favorite console is the PS3 but I don't play it that much. Still would rather play on a pc.

For various reasons this is a wait.  Smells like Nintendo wanted it out for 2012 holidays but it's not ready, and I'm not playing that game now that I have three stable consoles.  There are exclusives that are going to force us to get one, but I'm hoping that the oddities associated with finding and purchasing one will have simmered down.  Also I'm really hoping to get one that works right out of the box.

wii-u wii-u wii-u

choooooosen one

If the Kart game is good, has a substantial number of tracks, etc., there's a chance I'll get it. Otherwise meh.

Our Wii sits and collects dust, despite having both an 8 and 10 year-old in the house and a number of what would be considered "good" games for the Wii.  Only, they really aren't that good.  That's the problem.  Sure, Gamespot will give the new Mario game an 8.5, but that is a game we all played 15 fucking years ago or something.  Who is supposedly going to buy this stuff?  The adults have all played it, and the kids couldn't care less.

In any other era in my life, I would have been certain that I would eventually get this console, if for no other reason than Zelda.  Even that doesn't work any more...Zelda games seem to get slightly worse with each iteration, and I still haven't gotten much into Skyward Sword.  Because it isn't fun.

Bought my Wii U from Gamestop last week. It won't be opened until Christmas. I may get NBA 2K13 for it. Not sure yet what my kids want on it, but they had fun playing Rabbids Land in the store. I know they want Warriors Orochi 3, as well. I may end up getting some games off of the Wii Store as well. I hope they have Gamecube titles on there. The kids love their Gamecube games.

Open it up on Christmas Eve or thereabouts to download the patch; it's a several hour ordeal, and this should save you some wailing and gnashing of teeth from your kids on Christmas morning.

I'll wait until 2013 or later, that should fix things.

I ended up buying one.  My wife was pretty dismayed that the new Mario (pretty much the only game she plays) is only out on the new Wii.  Also, our Wii (aka netflix box) is acting funky lately, so this lets us replace the Wii with our Roku box and use the Wii U as a bedroom gaming system.

Though it's currently wrapped for xmas

If you connect through HDMI make sure to adjust your TV to accept limited-range HDMI signal. ("Low range" on some TVs) Otherwise your blacks will look grey.

I use my Wii U in my bedroom even though the system is in my living room.

It's kind of weird, before the system came out a lot of people would have said that being able to play with just the pad is a cool but minor feature. After playing it a lot of people feel the way I do - it's easily the best feature. When I am sitting at my computer I can just pick up the pad, turn on the system, see who is on, play a quick round of Nano Assault or whatever, without being anywhere near the TV or the system. Even when I am sitting in front of the TV I often prefer just playing on the pad, it feels more immediate. (Though the be fair when I first plugged it in I was using a new port and accidentally had auto-motion smoothing set on my TV and other crap like that that I find terrible)

Are all games playable on just the gamepad? I was under the impression that some games required the TV if the tablet was heavily used for interface things.

I thought that too.

Also what kind of range are you seeing with the gamepad?

Depends on the game. Zombi U requires the TV for example. Not sure what else does. In a way it is a little awkward that a game that uses the dual-screen nature the best has the disadvantage of being hard to make work on just the pad.But on the plus side games that don't "take advantage" of the pad take advantage of it just by virtue of being playable on it.


My bed is about 15+ feet from where my WiiU is and through a wall and a closet filled with junk and it works fine there. From what I understand it depends a lot on what is in between. For example my bathroom is a little closer but is a bit finicky, probably because between the bathroom and the WiiU is a closet that has about 2+ feet in thickness of books in it.

A buddy of mine just bought one (the console is surprisingly easy to get for something that just launched), and picked up NSMB.  I picked up the Sonic All-Stars kart racer for him for Xmas (since there isn't yet a proper MK release on it yet), which is surprisingly fun.  Having the player with the pad just use it as their display instead of putting them on the TV is pretty cool.

The titanic update required right after bootup was a bit of a downer, but the MiiVerse stuff is very cool - tons of people communicating via images/handwritten notes instead of text is super charming.

http://www.slashgear.com/how-popular-is-the-wii-u-really-22262054/


It's only an opinion piece, but ouch. 

So it's basically like the original Wii where it was cool for like a week then it just sat there between first party releases.

Well it doesn't help that it came out at a bad time for 3rd party titles; by the time it had launched nearly every major game had already released for the year (across all consoles). What's actually going to hurt them is that they've failed to secure any of the big multiplatform titles coming in early '13: Tomb Raider, Devil May Cry, GTA V, Metal Gear Rising, Dead Space 3, Bioshock Infinite, Crysis 3, etc. are all coming out on PS3/360 but none on the Wii U. The only two I could find that are confirmed for the Wii U are Aliens Colonial Marines and Injustice: Gods Among Us. I realize most of those titles have been in development for a while, but if the Wii U is going to actually succeed it's going to need to get titles like these released on day 1.

Why do people care about multiplatform titles any more? They are basically commodity products at this point. Not only are they available for and roughly equivalent on PS3 and 360 but many of them are superior on PC as well. Who needs 4 systems that play the same games?

It's like having Netflix on a device. If nobody has Netflix and you do that's a pretty nice advantage, but if every other device has Netflix and yours doesn't it doesn't really matter any more given that most households already have a billion ways to watch it and don't need another. (See also: DVD playback)

I assume most people who care about multiplats already own a 360 or PS3. If I own one of those and can get Tomb Raider on it (because I like terrible games apparently) I don't see how being able to also get it for another system I own is something I should care about.

It seems to only matter if you don't own a PS3 or 360 or were looking to sell/trade them away once you got a WiiU.

This is also why I probably won't get an MS system next gen. Beyond a new Forza and Halo every year (two games I don't care about) there's not much reason to own a 360 over a PS3 at this point. I do, but in retrospect that was a mistake. XBLA is slowly withering away in terms of meaningful exclusives and the gap between the quality of PS3 and 360 versions of games has closed considerably. There is really nothing my 360 does that a PS3 couldn't do, and while I'm not a huge fan of Sony's first and second party output it's definitely better than Microsofts.

The good:
* Holy crap Margalis wasn't kidding about the range.  As long as you aren't moving I can use the new Gamepad and play Mario pretty much anywhere in the house.  Moving the gamepad a lot makes it lag pretty bad the farther you are.
* Mario is really really fun, though that's to be expected
* Being able to play games or watch Netflix without using the TV is fantastic, it really is.  This has serious potential that Nintendo needs to capitalize on (but probably won't for reasons I'll mention below)
* The gamepad, while bigger than I expected is extremely comfortable actually.  I'm really surprised how light it feels, as it looks like it should be bulkier.  
* Using the gamepad as a TV remote is pretty nice, especially when you need to quickly increase/lower the volume in a game without suddenly hunting for the other remote.  yes it's the little things in life.

The Bad:
* Nintendo is retarded.  Miis are now your profiles (like windows logins it seems).  You then tie your Nintendo ID to your Mii.  The problem is it expressly forbids you from associating 2 mii's *on the same system* to the same nintendo Id.  Sooo it seems that I will lose functionality and not be able to play online if I'm not playing as my wife's Mii......   For a console that is heavily advertised to families, this has to be the most retarded thing I have ever, ever heard.  In fact, the wording of the error clearly states "on the same console" which means you can probably associate a mii on another system to that Nintendo Id.

* In Mario, you must have 2 wii-motes to play multiplayer.  If you are playing single player the first player has the choice of using the gamepad or the wiimote.  Once you add a 2nd player in, both players MUST use a wiimote.  You do not have the option for one player to use the gamepad and the other to use a wiimote.  In multiplayer, the only purpose of the gamepad is for someone to occasionally tap the screen and create temporary blocks to help give a boost to high areas.

* The wii menu is extreamly clunky, which I think is due to the touch screen.  While the touch screen works fine in games, it seems very hard to consistently tap compared to my cell phone.  It feels like a resistive (or whatever the older touch screen technology is) touch screen where you have to press hard for it to register taps.  That causes drags to not work all the time and taps to sometimes miss.  I don't feel like this while playing games though because the touch screen hasn't been a focus while gaming so far.

* Not all apps take advantage of the gamepad well.  While Mario and Netflix allow you to swap between the gamepad and the tv, Hulu and other apps don't.  This worries me that most games are going to not allow this and if so I'll be extremely disappointed.  I would love to be able to play a lot of games on the couch while my wife watches TV, and switch back to the TV when she leaves.  It would also be nice to play on my tv and then pause to go play in the bed for a bit.  

* The wii is heavily getting into social networking, and it makes me rage.  Every time I beat a level in mario it pops up "Do you want to write about this level to the wii verse?".  After the 5th time you beat a level and select "another time" it starts to get annoying.  

Those are my comments after one day.  

Fuck.
That.

I'll also mention though that my friend says he's never seen that, so apparently there is a way to disable it, or I (or my wife) accidentally enabled it and I need to figure out where.

The Wii has shit the bed so I guess I'll be getting a WeeOoo.  Also one of those trigram screwdrivers so I can get the game disc out of the Wii.

The two Wiimotes thing for Mario really is super dumb, doesn't make any sense at all. Maybe they wanted to save a screen where you have to designate which controller is used for what but it's very strange and awkward.

Playing only on the pad seems to be a big hit, basically everyone thinks it is one of the best features, so I suspect moving forward most games will support it.

On a note somewhat similar to watching Netflix on the pad in the house, on like the second day I had the WiiU I wrote a Python server I can run on a computer in my house that serves movies to the WiiU. It's a little web-app that let's you browse directories and displays movies the WiiU browser can render. (Mp4 and mov) It's not really specific to the WiiU other than that the interface fits nicely on the pad, it only lists stuff the WiiU can play, and I made sure it worked properly with the quirks on the WiiU browser. It's pretty handy.

It's just one file, if anyone cares I could share it.

When I had to do a similar repair on a Gameboy (kids are talented destroyers...) I found out Harbor freight has a whole "security screwhead" set which includes this for about $9. Best of luck!

http://www.harborfreight.com/100-piece-security-bit-set-68457.html

I love Harbor Freight and the Chinese children they employ.

I was looking at the Wiuu specs and it doesn't seem to have a SD card slot.  Savegames from the Wii gone forever?

It has an SD card slot and you can transfer all save data, virtual console/WiiWare games and Miis from Wii to WiiU via an app that uses the SD card. If you have VC games saved to an SD card on the Wii you may have to re-download them (for free) after the transfer.

You cannot store data on an SD card for the WiiU, but you can hook up a USB external HD.

I haven't actually used the xfer app myself, keeping my Wii hooked up for now until I finish some old GC games...

Do VC games play on the gamepad?  It would be bad ass to have the old mario games playable on the gamepad while in the other room.

Sadly no. Supposedly coming in an update at some point.

Well, oddly enough I already have an old external hard disk with a USB connection sitting on my shelf from when my PS3s kept shuffling off their mortal coils.  Currently I just have a USB stick in the PS3 as a backup to the backup.

Reminds me I need to see if I can plug that thing into the 360 and backup my saves there as well.

I'm glad there was a picture on the site.  I already have that exact box. :awesome_for_real:

Just graduate your kids off the brand. There's no reason to keep supporting this shit.

I hear what you are saying.  Contrarily, the 3DS XL is great.

First off, I was wrong about the game they played. It was Rayman Legends. Which wasn't out before Christmas.

Well, we unboxed it and the kids were excited. (Boy, 14, Girl, 12)

Nintendo Land.

It has a bunch of fun mini games. The pad is really cool to use in the games where you have to come find people. I think it would be good for two player shooters where one watches the pad, the other watches the tv.

Pros:
Fun minigames for kids. Mario Chase, Luigi's Mansion, Animal Crossing and Pikmin Adventure get a lot of play
The Ninja game with the throwing stars was fun to watch my kids try out. But it's not multiplayer, so they went back to the multiplayer games.

Cons:
Some games require the Wii Motion plus sensors. We still have original Wii controllers and only had one sensor, so the Zelda game and I think it was the Metroid game are unplayable.

Scribblenauts Unlimited

I bought this for my daughter. She loves it. She played it for a few hours last night. I watched her play and she was having fun creating items. She hasn't figured out all the intricacies yet, but she has fun with the puzzles and with the words. It's played with the pad and was very intuitive to play but seemed to have more depth that she hadn't even gotten to yet.

007 Legends

James Bond with missions from 5 of his older movies but Daniel Craig as Bond in all of the missions.

This game was unplayable for multiplayer. It requires the Wii U wireless Pro Controller. We have the old Wii Pro Controllers that hook to the Wiimote (even have a gold one from Goldeneye), but they don't work with the game and neither do standard wiimotes.

My son played with the pad in single player and quit after one mission. He didn't like where the triggers and the movement/camera controls were.

Super Mario Brothers Wii U

I watched the kids play this one. It seemed like the pad just made it easier for the person using the wiimote which took the challenge out of the game for them and they got bored after about 2 levels and went back to Nintendo Land.

Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper

My son said he tried it out but I haven't seen either of them play it yet. Once we play it, I'll report back my impressions of it.


So, overall, the kids liked the game it came with and everyone loves the pad. We strongly dislike the requirement to have Wii Motion Plus or Wii U Pro Controllers since it seems like a money grab. Once I buy a bunch of these new controllers, we'll try some of the other games on it.


Dead Space 3 = M rated
Devil May Cry = M rated
Metal Gear Rising = M rated
Tomb Raider (2013) = Rating Pending (attempted rape will probably make this M Rated)
Grand Theft Auto V = M rated (All games in the series so far have been M rated)
Bioshock Infinite = M rated (All games in the series so far have been M rated)
Crysis 3 = M rated (All games in the series so far have been M rated)

All ratings taken from ESRB.org (http://www.esrb.org/ratings/search.jsp)

I detect a trend. All the games you listed are not for children. The Wii U is for children and family play. Anyone interested in playing the games you've listed more than likely already own an X-Box or PS3. Or play those games on the PC. You do make a good point that Wii is missing out on multiplatform games, but it is possible that it's on purpose.

The biggest thing we are looking forward to at this point is Nintendo putting a lot of the Gamecube games in their e-store. And whenever the new Smash Brothers game comes out. They love Smash Brothers.

Edit: Fixed attribution on quote

That was me you quoted, not Margalis. And if they are avoiding Mature games why did they get Blops2, AC3 and ME3 released?

A lot of publishers do believe that 3rd party games don't sell on Nintendo systems, especially M-rated games, so I'm sure for many publishers it isn't worth the effort (in their minds) to try to port an M-rated game over to WiiU.

Nintendo hasn't actively avoided mature content since the SNES days, but it's quite possible mature-content makers will continue to ignore Nintendo systems.

Ubisoft is basically the only major 3rd party publisher with a coherent Nintendo strategy. Everyone else is derping around making games like Dead Space Extraction.

It's something Nintendo should be actively trying to fix imo; third party support is a big deal for me because I'd like to be able to play those games I listed on the cool tablet controller while laying in bed.

Yeah, this.  I am going to miss like hell some of the brilliant Nintendo exclusives, but I'm not sure I can ever bring myself to plunk down money on a Nintendo system anymore, unless it plays all the big titles as well.  There are just too many entertainment avenues out there for me to fret overly much about not playing the next Zelda title or whatever.

...What? Simply make another Mii and sign up for a Nintendo ID, what's the issue? It's no different than any other online system in place today.


It can be turned off and each game prompts you when you first launch it asking if you want these things popping up for you.

5-year old grandson got one for Christmas. I fully expected to hate it after being alternately underwhelmed, frustrated and annoyed with the Wii.  It's surprisingly much better than the Wii, or at least the game pad is vastly superior to the wiimote.  Which may also be its biggest weakness since at best all but one player in multiplayer are stuck with the wiimotes.

I had a lot of fun playing the pad in super mario, sucked as always with the wiimote.

Nintendoland had a lot of fun games on it.

I'm told he played Skylanders Giants on it for a week straight, but he forgot to bring the figures so I haven't seen it.

The online functions plus the camera which seems to automagically broadcast the player's image without warning or control worry me. A lot. Like we chose not to let it connect to our wifi until we have a better understanding of wtf it's doing.  As a bonus with no online connection we never once got nagged to post social networking stuff.

Is it a hardware limitation that won't allow more than one of the new controllers to play at the same time?  Because that sounds like a console killer to me.

I see these things advertised like crazy in the following places:

- Um...
- Err...
- ...?


Yeah, absolutely nowhere.  It is as if it does not exist or was ever launched.  Too early to be certain, but if I had to bet money now I would wager that this is the last full-sized console we see out of Nintendo.  Which would be fine with me, if they would license their IPs out to the others.

Yes because each gamepad needs it's own graphics card and processing hardware in the console.  The gamepad doesn't have any of this, the gamepad is really just an extremely advanced video stream reader.  Everything except for input is done on the console and sent to the gamepad.

My son has been playing this game every day. In single player mode, he plays on the gamepad and my daughter watches TV shows. He has unlocked a ton of characters and cards for the pvp battle part of the game. The story is pretty deep and you can unlock over 100 characters. There are also a ton of weapon upgrades and item upgrades. There is a little bit of repetitiveness in the story mode where you go "back in time" to a previous mission where you save a character who was previously defeated and that unlocks that character for future missions.

It plays just like previosu KOEI games, but there are a few new twists with the tri attacks and a few characters from previous games have new weapons.

All in all, it's fun if you like button mashing chinese/japanese historical battlefield type games. Lastly, framerate is smooth most of the time. We did have one hard lock that required us to unplug the Wii U due to a cinematic in multiplayer. Same cinematic locked it up twice in a row, so he played it single player and skipped it.

John Siracusa rant on Wii U setup was hysterical.
http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/99

Heh - this almost goes without saying.  KOEI has been shitting out DW and 'DW, but in...' since the original Playstation.

I have a WIU now.  Since my Wii is dead I'm probably going to just make a clean start of things rather than send it in for repairs and try to re-acquire any VC games.  GG Nintendo.

You cant redownload vc games?

Moving VC content from a Wii to a Wii U is an incredibly painful experience apparently. And on a Wii U you can't transfer that content to another Wii U, ever. Oh and if you sell your Wii U somebody can download all your VC content that you had on there.

lol

Someone here reads Neogaf and believes everything they read.

We were going to transfer our Wii stuff to the Wii U, but I had previously hacked my Wii so we could play games without a disc. Normally, I would not have done that, but the disc drive in my Wii had failed 4 times since I bought it and I was tired of sending it to Nintendo. Before you can transfer the data, you need to update the system and, with the hack on the system, it might brick it if I do. So, i didn't.

It didn't appear to be too painful. You install the transfer app on an SD card from the Wii U. Put the card in the Wii. Download the transfer app on the Wii. Transfer the data to the SD card. Switch the card back to the Wii U. Run the app and watch it all get installed on your Wii U.

The main downside is that all of the data you transfer is transferred, not copied. It is removed from the Wii and moved to the Wii U. And you don't get to pick and choose what to transfer.

I have it.  This system shines if you don't live alone.  The killer app is being able to play console games while someone else watches TV, or stream movies in the same room while someone else plays games/watches TV on the TV.  Sounds shitty and fairly niche/useless unless you're actually living the dream/nightmare. 

Played Nintendoland with 5 people.  Luigi's Mansion and Mario Chase were pretty fun.  Everyone had a blast.  NSMB Wii U is solid.  I dig reading the little posts people write about levels.  Sort of Demon's Souls-esque.  I also like that if you're having trouble on a level you can tap into Miiverse and usually figure out what to do.

Tvii works better than I thought it would as a media aggregator/Harmony remote. 

It feels liberating to play a console game in your bed, or anywhere not in front of the TV for that matter.  Overall, I'm a fan but if you have a 360 and a PS3 you probably don't need this.

TVii works with Cox cable here in Nevada, so I use it as my remote sometimes, although it won't oull up the channel guide.

I actually got the social commentary part of it to work while watching an NBA game. It shows each scoring play and give syou the chance to pick an emoticon and make a comment on each play. I was commenting through most of the game, but only saw a few comments here and there from other people.

From what I have seen, the comments you post on TVii are also shown on the Mii lobby screen where you can pick the app you want to run. I see stuff on there all the time. A lot of drawings. My kids say that the drawings come from Flipnote Studio on the DS. I'm not sure how they are getting them onto the Wii U.

To me complaining about the transfer process is a perfect example of the sort of fake outrage-of-the-day shit Neogaf is infested with.

It's not hard and Nintendo is basically the only company that let's you transfer content to begin with. 360 is not backwards compatible, PS3 backwards compatibility was quickly removed, there's no way to transfer PSP UMD games to Vita even though it's something Sony has the tech to offer, etc. Meanwhile not only is every recent Nintendo system backwards compatible with media but you can transfer digital content across them.

Yeah, I understand people would prefer to have a unified account with games linked to the account (e.g. Steam).  The problems are those you have noted, and the fact that piracy is a real thing that exists.  The DS was festooned with it.  It was absurdly easy to grab a flash card off the internet and then download every game ever made for the handheld for free/peanuts.  My brother actually brought me the means home from China.  I never utilized it because A) I'm opposed to piracy on ethical grounds, especially when I have the means to purchase the games if I so choose, and along with that, B) Having the means, the experience of just buying whatever gamer I want and playing it legitimately is easier than messing with flash cart downloads.  

I also don't really understand how people can simultaneously love a product (e.g. viideo games) and then become irate when companies (engaged in the business of making money, whose board members owe a fiduciary duty of loyalty to the shareholders to that effect) attempt to stem the theft of their product.  You don't see that in other industries.  People don't typically grow upset when Sears employs Loss Prevention Officers and installs cameras to stop shoplifters.  You also don't see people employ a tortured logic of "the theft of those products don't hurt the company's bottom line."  Or, even better, "Piracy actually helps software developers because of free advertising!"  Now, there are differences to be sure, one is a physical product and one is not (necessarily).    But, the biggest difference is probably the human brain which has a hard time wrapping its neurons around the morality of stealing a digital product.  That, and the general degradation of our society.

Still, as you say, the most befuddling thing about it is the very loud and public outrage involved.  I prefer a quiet sense of shame in my thieves.

I haven't bothered about the VC stuff so far, and it's tied to hardware from everything I read.  There wasn't any sort of "online account" for the Wii, you just started downloading shit, so that much is obvious.  The best you could do is associate a serial with your Club Nintendo account and get coins for your immaterial purchases, but that doesn't seem to equate with me being able to download those items on another registered console.  However I haven't actually tried it yet.

What I have done is to cable up a bunch of things, create Nintendo Network accounts, and play the Pikmin minigame with my son.  It's a DS XXXL, and therefore lots of fun but it isn't very portable.  Supplying my own top screen is also a bit chintzy, even for Nintendo.  I can still play games on the toilet with it, so there's that.

DS piracy was so prevalent because the worth of the product plummeted.   Yes it was ridiculously easy to pirate but also DS was right when cellphones became the new handheld and why buy any game at $50 when something comparable is $1 on your iphone?  WiiU is addressing the handheld issue in a creative way but that old gameboy model of handhelds is simply outdated now, tbh the piracy of the ds probably kept it an active system longer than it would have normally.

Sears doesn't station one of those loss control officers in my house and require me to check with him every time i wamt to use a Sears product that I bought. You're comparing apples and fish.

That said, piracy sucks and pirates are thieves. Period.

Back to the actual thread topic, it strikes me that the wii U gamepad is actually the exact device I've been wishing for for about 20 years. But as an open standards accessory to my PC, NOT as a proprietary device slaved to a second-rate closed system console.

Typically people steal things they want, which means those things have value (i.e. worth).  Also, shovelware aside, I'm not aware of any $1 cell phone games that offer the experience of top shelf DS software.  Angry Birds is no more sophisticated than one of a dozen minigames  included as a throwaway with the original NSMB for DS.  Your argument that people are stealing things because the value of those things is decreasing is without merit.  Supposing that were true, people would be less likely to pirate DS games, and more likely to buy cell phone games.

The idea that piracy kept the DS afloat is malarkey.  It honestly  sounds like the tortured  logic of someone trying to rationalize their own illicit behavior.  A system is active (i.e. supported) only inasmuch and insofar as it makes money.  Piracy does not contribute to the making of money (unless you're Blackbeard).

You're comparing the Wii__> Wii U transfer process (the original topic of discussion) to a person standing in your home requiring you to check with him if you want to use the product?  Nonsense.  It's a convenience and a value added service, that, as pointed out previously, no other competitor offers.

If you're talking about DRM, then that's different.  That's an issue much broader in scope, and I don't have a clear cut answer beyond some sort of Goldilocks approach.  If I desire a commodity, and that commodity's existence is threatened by piracy, then I want the least invasive steps taken to address that concern.

Someone's gunning for a new grief title.

I suggest Smiter of Crappy Arguments.

If we use the word "crappy", it's going to be in a different context.  We remember your bowel thread; we remember.

So like, here I am in a thread nodding in agreement with Duse, what has my life become?

I agreed with him, but I covered with a jab. :oh_i_see:

How piracy concerns interact with content transfer is a messy subject.

Sony has the ability for people to uniquely identify UMDs (from what I understand) and get digital copies for Vita. In Japan you can do that but it costs money per title. In the US you can't do it at all. I suspect that is partly an issue with rights, partly an issue with piracy concerns, partly an issue with wanting to sell full-price digital copies again, etc.

It will be interesting to see what Sony and MS do next gen. The new systems should be backwards compatible in terms of physical media and there is maybe some chance the MS system will play XNA games but I find it unlikely that either system will be backwards compatible for other types of games, including retail games and non-XNA digital download games. I think the expectation now with digital content is that you can play it moving forward without having to break out your old hardware.

Well, I'm getting the impression that the expectation with digital content is that you have to frequently repurchase it.  This is actually fine with me if prices are low enough, but I'd like to retain my saves.

The system supports up to 2 gamepads at once. No game currently supports it though.

So, hows the graphics? On TV and Handheld.

I have NSMB U, AC3, Tekken Tag 2, and Ninja Gaiden 3.  Graphics are the same as a 360.  The pad's resolution isn't 1080p, but the image quality on the pad is roughly the same as on my 42" 1080p TV, given their respective sizes and distance from my eyeballs.  I say roughly because I don't know the exact numbers but they look similar and it's not something I've noticed.

Looking at NSMBU is fantastic, like a koala crapped a rainbow into my eyeballs.

854x480 according to Wiki.

Hold on honey, someone on the internet is wrong.

If you think people only steal things you want then you are seriously uninformed about a topic you seem passionate about, namely internet piracy.  Quick rundown is that the ease with which one can pirate something online lends to people pirating things they would never desire to the extent of spending money.  Sure there's crossover into the popular and it's prevalent enough for people to lose money but it's not the majority.

You're also arguing that angry birds is not as sophisticated as a top shelf DS game well...no shit?  Now ask yourself how many people play angry birds or how much man hours have been spent on it VS any DS game made. It's not about quality, it's about how much fun and time we get out of our diversions.  Yes that $50 DS game has a huge team of developers, cutscenes and wonderfully crafted vistas but it all means jack shit if someone has just as much fun playing fucking farmville...welcome to the new age of gaming.

You said "something comparable", which is not the same thing as what you're saying now.

My experience is that people who pirate generally just pirate whatever they can because they can. The value of the thing being pirated is essentially irrelevant. I certainly don't see any evidence that people pirate things more as they decrease in value.


Box quote!

In general I find looking at the pad is basically the same as looking at the TV. Lower res but smaller screen, view distances, etc, ends up looking essentially the same in terms of overall image quality.

I've noticed that the gamepad looks a little blurry and has more visible jaggies compared to the same game on TV. It still looks good, but there is a noticeable difference. More obvious with 3D games like Nintendoland or Sonic Racing than with NSMB though.

I still do 90% of my Wii U gaming on the gamepad because being able to play a game while doing something else is worth the lower image quality. It's being sold as the perfect living room device for a family who might be competing over the same TV, but I ended up throwing it in the bedroom. It's a better web-browser than what I had on my smart phone and the ability to play real games with a comfortable controller or surf the web while watching TV before going to sleep is pretty great.

The e-shop is a real missed opportunity though. It should be loaded with old N64, SNES, and GBA/DS games for me to buy and play on the gamepad but instead it's got nothing. The Wii Shop still exists, but nothing you buy on there can be played on the gamepad.

Still, it has turned out pretty well for a system that I essentially bought just to play Monster Hunter on.

Couple things.

1.  I didn't say people only steal things they want.  What I said is that there is a strong correlation.  You said that people began stealing more on the DS because the value of the software plummeted.  I pointed out that was retarded.

2. I ain't really all that 'passionate' about piracy.  I also think directing your burps into someone else's face is wrong, and I feel at liberty to say it freely without fear I might start picketing your house at dinner time.

3. I refer you to Ingmar's comment above.

Get a room you two.

You're right, angry birds is wildly more popular than any DS game ever.

OK, so you were just trolling then. Good to know.

Got an e-mail from Nintendo yesterday about their new promotion for the eshop.

As can be seen here (http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2013/01/nintendo_launches_wii_u_virtual_console_trial_campaign_today), they will be selling a new virtual console title every month for 30 cents. This month it is Balloon Fight. I haven't tried it yet, but, based on what it says in the article, it is supposed to be part of the virtual console that won't be installed until Spring? So, does the game work? Or do we have to wait until the new virtual console thing is installed to find out? So confusing. I guess I could spare a quarter and a nickel to find out.

I bought it for 30 cents.  Basically you just go into the eshop and click the big balloon fight banner.  After you purchase, download, and install the game, it will appear as any other app in the wii u os.  I presume the full launch of wii u virtual console will be a distinct storefront from the eshop but work similarly.

I think the spring update is that you can play VC games on the gamepad itself.  I believe you can play VC games on the TV now (though I haven't transferred my games over yet to try)

Not quite.  Right now, you have to go into "Wii Mode" to play VC games you downloaded on your Wii and transferred over.  There is no VC storefront for Wii U yet.  Currently there is one VC game available for Wii U, and that is Baloon Fight, and it is available on the Wii U eshop. 

As you say, the Wii U VC will launch in the spring supposedly, and all the games for it will be playable on the gamepad.  Balloon Fight is playable on the gamepad right now.

ah didn't realize that, my bad.  I haven't had any inclination to play my VC games until I can play it on the gamepad, so I haven't tried.

To download a wii u version of the vc games youll have to pay.  If you already bought the game on wii, they are charging a reduced fee of like a buck to get a wii u copy that has off tv gamepad capability.

Also the Wii Mode is awful.  It somehow looks worse than an actual Wii.

Yikes, I bought Last Story and Xenoblade Chronicles to play on Wii U.   Haven't played them yet (Xenoblade Chronicles is expensive as shit secondhand though).

Make sure your TV is set to accept limited range HDMI signal. (Or whatever your TV calls it) If you don't you will have bad black levels and a washed-out look.

I'll see if I can set that, thanks.

Got a Wii U last night. My first impressions are this thing is an Epic Fail of Epic Proportions (yes the Fail is that Epic).

The dual screen thing does not work with a TV and a hand held controller. Nintendo knows this which is why at times you'll see on the the TV, "Hey dumbass look at the GamePad" and at other times on the GamePad you'll see, "Hey dumbass look at the TV" (I may have made up the "dumbass" part). I have a DS Lite and a 3DS XL so I don't have an issue with dual screen gaming in general but the ergonomics of the Wii U GamePad with a TV are fundamentally flawed. Yes you can sort of get used to but it'll never work as well as the adjacent dual screen system on the DSes.

Other gripes:

You need a Wii Remote to launch the Wii game player even if the fucking game doesn't need a Wii Remote (i.e. it's playable with just a Wii Classic Controller). I don't have a Wii so that means I have to buy, borrow, or steal a Wii Remote Plus just to play Xenoblade Chronicles.

You can't use HDMI and output audio through the RCA outputs of an AV cable. This is even more fucked up than the Xbox 360 which blocks the HDMI port when you use the included AV cable with RCA audio outputs but you can either mod the plug or buy an AV cable without the fucking tab that blocks the HDMI port and get audio out of the AV port while using HDMI for video. The PS3 is the best of the three in this regard -- it has settings for independently controlling where the audio goes and the bundled AV cable doesn't have a cockblocking design. I had to order a special HDMI audio "extractor" box (http://www.amazon.com/ViewHD-Premium-Audio-Extractor-Converter/dp/B00AHS8LD8/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1363806556&sr=1-4) which will hopefully let me work around this problem.

Also there doesn't seem to be a way to mix and route all audio to a single source (console audio output or GamePad audio output). I understand that some games like ZombiU use both sources independently but it still would be nice to be able to have all the audio coming out of one place. My original attempt to workaround the above problem was to try and use just the GamePad for audio (through headphones for better quality) but that was a miserable failure.

The latest system update has not fixed the ridiculous Wii U menu switching delay like switching into the system settings. Assuming there are been 4 million systems sold so far and owners have spent an average of an extra 5 minutes waiting for fucking menus to display that's a third of a million people hours of human potential wasted waiting for fucking Wii U menus to display to date and will likely increase into millions of wasted people hours if Nintendo is too incompetent to fix this (which so far they seem to be).

Yikes!  Is this just for Xenoblade Chronicles?

No, I'm also playing Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate.

Did some looking around.  I haven't come close to finishing Monster Hunter Tri, and since my Wii is dead I'd have to play it on the WiiU anyway... so, is MHUltimate worth it?

This is my first Monster Hunter so I can't compare the graphics to Tri and I'm still in the tutorial so I haven't been able to use the new lock on targeting feature yet either.

Got a Wii Remote Plus controller (and Nunchuk) so now I can get into the Wii menu and load the game but Xenoblade isn't recognizing any of the buttons so I can't get past the start screen :facepalm:

Edit: Got it working. Remote has to be controller 1 for the game to recognize the controls (it was 2 cause the GamePad was 1 before I sync'd the Remote).

To be fair, I've really only seen that on Nintendo Land which is supposed to be the new Wii Sports. Obviously it's just about impossible to look at both screens at once.  I think any unique gameplay comes from the asymmetry or the need to juggle concentration between the two screens.

As far as being an epic fail?  Yeah, maybe.  But only if you thought the touch screen was going to revolutionize gaming.  It's a neat gimmick, nothing more.  I think they needed to do something like this to differentiate themselves.  What, is Nintendo going to come out with a Nintendo Ultra with better specs than PS4?  That would be an even worse plan.

In the end it's an HD Nintendo console that comes with a shitty universal remote.  I use it to run Netflix and Amazon Prime. 

I just saw this in a store for the first time (like, on display).

How stupid.

I just wanted to play some HD Nintendo games after skipping the Wii.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/82533/theretherepokemon.gif)

Very appropriate.  Good job.

The nine-year-old gang likes the WiiU.  I'm fine with that.  I'll just keep playing with my hoop and stick.

Schild has wanted Nintendo to fail since at least 2006 so he could have access to Nintendo software without the need to buy their hardware.  Can't fault the logic really but I'm less dogmatic.

Nintendo's been on a downward slide since 2011 so unless they can pull a rabbit out of their hat with some sort of new system (not the Wii U) in the next year or so that reverses that they will become the next Sega.

A new system would be to not lock downloaded games to hardware and generally stop being dicks.

2006? September 29th, 1996. I've wanted Nintendo shit on other consoles since the N64 had giant cartridges and a crappy controller and the PS1 had already been out.

Doubtful.  3DS is doing fine.  And really, what did the GC sell?  26m?  Wii U can do that and Nintendo will be fine presumably.

The GC didn't put Nintendo in a "fine" position though. The Wii did because it was previous gen cheap as shit tech and for some reason people were like 'HURRR DURRR I WANNA WAVE MY HANDS AROUND.'

But the Wii gave Nintendo a warchest.  And for all the talk about Nintendo losing money on each Wii U sold, that's apparently only after you factor in R&D.  It's not as if they're getting burnt on the materials cost.  Looks like they'll be able to carry on for some time yet.

I have been playing the hell out of Monster Hunter.

In the past few years I've really grown to appreciate "real" games, AKA gamey games, AKA games where you don't just hold forward and press X to win. Not that I didn't appreciate them before, but now I just can't stomach most games where you just sort of bumble through without any element of mastery.

MH certainly has a lot of room for mastery, learning how to beat each monster, then learning how to do it more effectively.

Finally, the consequences of every old person calling anything that plays videogames "A Nintendo" comes home to roost.

(http://i.imgur.com/g2s4AF6.jpg)

Or rather, people realize they haven't probably turned their Wii's on for literal years at this point when the thought of buying a WiiU entered their minds.

A lot of that is poor branding on Nintendo's part, combined with the lack of "gamer knowledge" or whatever of their customer base. A lot of people just don't realize that the Wii U is a whole new system. Some think it's just a tablet controller for their Wii, others that it's another portable system. It's the same issue that happened with the 3DS, where it wasn't clear that it was an iterative hardware upgrade.

Just bought Monster Hunter Tri Ultimate today for my daughter. She'll have many late nights during Spring Break to play. She really liked the Wii version of the game and enjoyed playing online. The giant sandworm fight on the boat was probably the coolest fight i remember seeing in the game. I hope this version has some similar interesting fights in the new content.

They need to relaunch it as Wii II, where the II looks like a U. Then everyone will know what it is.

Supposedly the next system update in April will improve this as this video demonstrates.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBmg_CNsQcc

For those of you without a Wii U you can marvel and laugh at the bullshit Wii U owners have had to put up with. I'm reserving judgement until I see if they fixed the other fucking menu delays (like the above mentioned system settings). The Wii U menu I can kind of understand being so damn slow since it does other stuff not shown in the video like populating the Miiverse display (shown on the other display). It's mind boggling that the other much simpler menu options also take so fucking long to display.

Seriously, the Wii U menu is retardedly slow, and it will still be slow after the update.

I don't get why menus suck on consoles.  It also annoys me to all hell that the PS3 menu has to spin for 15 seconds when you are in an app and bring up the menu.

Soooooo...how's this looking a few months later and post PS4/Xbox announcements?   :grin:

Saw a headline on reddit Friday that said Wii U sales jumped over 8x in the UK after the xb1 announcement.  So, apparently, better.

The big update actually sped up the menus to about what you would have expected originally.  I'm not going to call them fast, but they aren't slow either.  Also you can hold B during boot and go right into the Wii emulator.

The WiiU does YouTube so it's my go-to when I need to show someone something on the TV.

The WiiU implementation of Netflix is my favorite.  Watched some Arrested Development on it last night.

We are still playing Monster Hunter Tri on it.

Also, use it for Netflix.

I also use it as a quick Internet portal when we are watching TV. I just boot it up and use the touchscreen to look stuff up and then turn it off when I am done.

It's surprisingly useful for non-gaming stuff. I use it every day, usually not for gaming, and the Netflix interface is second only to Apple TV's.

I'd use it for gaming more often if their Virtual Console wasn't so inept. It's criminal that they've under-delivered so greatly on a service that should have been an easy source of income and a great answer to the software drought on the system. 1-2 new games a week, overpriced SNES, NES, and Gameboy games only. Ridiculous.

The hardware came out WAY too early.  Scuttlebutt in the local Target is that even Nintendo hates it.

Needs some games.  I have LEGO City and Super Metroid ($0.30!), will get Monster Hunter eventually.  Besides that it's all shit.

Went ahead and pulled the trigger on getting this.  After discussions with the Mrs, we cut the cable, reduced our internet to $30 a month for a 10MBit pipe, and hooked up Hulu and Netflix with the Wii U.

So far I'm mighty impressed with the pad controls.  The Mrs. thinks it's silly to game with such a monstrosity of a controller, but she hasn't really played around with it yet.

It's basically the version of the Wii I've always wanted.  And since the developers seem to be a bit more receptive to it's souped up power plus the controller aspect, should be good to go for a while.  Also, Wind Waker HD  :drill:

Get Amazon Prime.  Do Amazon Mom, or use an .edu email address for 4years of $40/yr Prime.  It's a nice complement to Hulu/Netflix for a cord cutter.  Plus free 2 day ship on anything is nice.

The thing I like best about the touchscreen controller is that you can do stuff on the Wii  (like internet and Netflix) while other people are watching TV. And in Monster Hunter Tri, all of my GUI is on the touchscreen so the screen is just visuals of big swords and big monsters.

Apparently the Luigi DLC is out today, and from what I'm reading it's a lot of redesigned levels that are supposedly really hard (and the time limit I"m reading is only at 100 seconds instead of 300 seconds).

Hopefully not too hard for the wife, but it sounds good to me :D

It's a shame they didn't wait a little longer to release the hardware, what with Platinum Games, Nintendo 1st Party Software and Monolith Soft on their way the next couple of years look promising for the Wii U.

Nintendo's M.O. is to release hardware before they have a significant software pipeline set up. Happens for every single console they have released since N64.


Redesigned levels for $20. Sounds like a great deal.  :heartbreak:

It's a new set of levels that from what I understand is equal in scope to the original game. For $20 it's like the most value-priced DLC of all time.

Yeah, I wasn't clear.  Every level in the original game has been redesigned.  They are a little shorter but you also only have 100 seconds to complete each level rather than 300.  The platforming mechanics are also changed up a bit, since luigi floats a bit more (almost like the Yoshi mechanics).  Since I only had a few minutes last night to try it out I'm not sure what else is changed, but I'll get my money's worth.

In this case, they released the hardware before the OS/firmware was ready.  OOPS.

It seems fine now, I'll not be doomcasting the WiiU.

Being out a year early gives them a larger install base, less direct competition with the PS4/Xbone (for everyone who wanted a new console last year), and the opportunity for a holiday price drop/bundle package to compete with the other launches.

Earthbound is back, baby! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yuzhFCkh5wk)     :drill: :drill: :drill:

Yes, you've been unable to play this on an emulator since... forever.

They shitcanned the basic version.  They dropped the price of the deluxe version by $50.  And they've got a WindWaker HD SKU for $300 as well.  Heading into December against Sony and MS, they'll have New Super Mario Bros. U, Wonderful 101, Pikmin 3,  Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, Super Mario 3d World, Zelda Wind Waker HD, Wii Fit U, and Wii Party U as notable exclusives.  Will it be enough to keep the console from prolapsing?