Nintendo gave up doing things by the book a long time ago.
This goes for hardware, and it goes for hardware reveals.
Announcing the Wii's successor a month before the games industry gathered in LA for E3 2011 gave its conference a real buzz: undercutting earlier Microsoft and Sony events with a murmur of speculative excitement.
But when Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime took to the stage last Tuesday he wasn't armed with the machine itself, but a controller and a radical proposal for a new framework of play.
Our colleagues at T3 were at E3 and have put a video together of their first impressions of the Nintendo Wii U:
The Wii U controller introduces a second screen into the traditional gaming setup. A 6.2-inch resistive touchscreen mounted in the shell of a wireless dual analogue stick controller. A hybrid of traditional pad and tablet PC. Unlike a tablet, however, content is streamed from the Wii U base unit.
For the gamer, it's both TV supplement and replacement. A second screen for displaying maps, inventories and objectives or a place to continue the game, should the TV be needed by someone else. Make the call and the game streams to your hands, lag-free.
More interesting is the potential for the two screens to work in direct tandem, an extension of ideas tested on DS. A touchscreen interface enables play types that have escaped buttons and analogue sticks.
Likewise, inbuilt gyroscopes and accelerometers act as a third set of analogue control inputs, allowing gamers to physically move the device to adjust their aim or orientation on screen.
This is a gaming experience selfishly honed for the holder; explaining the addition of a loner 'U' to the pluralistic 'Wii'.
The spirit of Wii lives on in more than name. Wii U is compatible with all former Wii software and hardware: the remote, nunchuck, balance board and classic controller. Some are obvious fits: controlling a Wii Fit weigh-in session with a handy touchscreen makes more sense than the rigmarole of setting up the living room.
Others are more experimental. The potential for novel multiplayer experiences ? four pals sharing a TV as a fifth creates mischief on the tablet screen ? are explored on the games page of this review.
But if Nintendo is forthcoming about *how* we'll play, it's less open on *what*.
Bar a 25 GB proprietary disc format and HDMI output supporting 1080p, little is known of the base unit itself. An ambiguous IMB Power-based multicore CPU and AMD Radeon GPU continue Nintendo's hardware relationship with the two companies, but neither suggests how Wii U stacks up against 360/ PS3.
Leaving memory to SD cards and USB HDDs is a typical Nintendo move, continuing its Wii/ 3DS approach to cost cutting.
Cost is a similarly murky issue, with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata hinting Wii U will be priced higher than 20,000 yen when it goes on sale next year (Wii U will hit shelves by the end of 2012).
In many ways, Wii U's debut raised more questions than answers. What is the range of the wireless pads? How will Nintendo tackle online gaming? What will the games look like? We await Nintendo's answers.
If the controller is a mess of features and bulky design on the page, the idea unifies once in the hands.
It's lighter than it looks, for one, about the weight of an iPad, and sits comfortably in the hands thanks to ridge on the back designed to rest on clasping fingers.
If anything, the bulkiness reinforces that Nintendo is a toymaker first and foremost. It is a sleek screen encased in a chunky toy block of smooth plastic. Wii U suggests hi-tech fun without straying too far into the tablet territory where it simply can't compete.
Face buttons, analogue pads, triggers and bumpers are all within easy reach. It's a shame Nintendo opted for the cheap feeling components of Wii's Classic Controller.
And the absence of analogue triggers (they are buttons) will upset third party developers used to 360/PS3 pads. We'd also question the decision to pick circle pads over sticks; while they are more than up to the task in our hands-on demos, they were designed as a space-saving measure for 3DS, not a satisfying successor to the trusty stick.
The screen itself is crisp and bright, comfortably running even the most hardware intensive tech demos with no visual disadvantage to the television feed.
Pumping such a tiny screen with visuals intended to fill 42-inch flatscreens obviously helps disguise a low resolution. Some may find a single-touch screen a tad archaic in the modern iWorld, but this is Nintendo sticking in its DS comfort zone.
Having taught 146 million users to handle a stylus, it's not going to back out on plastic prongs anytime soon.
The cleverest stuff stems from the pairing of motion controls and screen. We were able to look and move around 3D environments by physically moving with the controller. Spin 360 on the spot in a virtual garden demo and you spin 360 degrees in the game.
The sensation of lifting the controller and peering at light filtering through the tree canopy above is a magnificent trick. Best of all, it's responsive and sensitive enough to become a viable control scheme for first person shooters; analogue sticks controlling movement, pad tilts perfecting the aim.
Like Nintendo's last two innovations - motion controller and glasses-free 3D - the Wii U only makes sense once you've played it.
Nintendo complicated matters with a confusing reveal - some attendees left the conference thinking it was another Wii peripheral - but got its show back on track with simple, satisfying hands-on demos.
Needless to say, dissenting voices had all but disappeared by the last day of the E3 show, and the queues for demo pods never appeared to shrink.
With the concept proven, we turn now to Nintendo for hard Wii U specs.
Hardware-wise, there's little threat of Wii U kicking off the next generation of consoles.
Industry talk has it at parity with 360/PS3, maybe a little more powerful. The worry is that Nintendo has positioned itself between two generations - the same graphical stopgap that did for the Dreamcast.
If Microsoft announce a new Xbox at E3 2012 (as is rumoured), could we find Nintendo coming full circle and sitting on the weakest machine on the market?
There is a hint of stubbornness in Nintendo's refusal to lift the hood, as if the graphics game is a mud fight best left to Microsoft and Sony.
What it announced at E3 wasn't a console, but a concept, one backed up with attractive demos. In a way, it is the Wii reveal run in reverse: there, the silly name and baffling controller arrived to stir up a rather conventional GameCube update.
Can we expect a conventional console to settle Wii U's controller hoo-hah? Baffling, daring, goofy and cool; Wii U is Nintendo design through-and-through.
Each hands-on game was designed to demonstrate a particular function of Wii U. They are as follows:
Chase Mii
Four players with remotes attempt to catch a fifth player armed with the Wii U controller. The twist? His screen reveals the whereabouts of his four pursuers, letting him run circles around them. Using the screen to identify safe passage is a brilliant power trip, rendering you a potent mix of Sam Fisher, Solid Snake and Jason Bourne.
The demo is simple, painted in chunky primary colours, but it's easy to imagine how such an omnipotent view could be implemented into stealth games. A single TV can only offer so much perspective.
Battle Mii
Like Chase Mii, Battle Mii pitches one all-powerful Wii U controller against two Wii remote-wielding saps. Sorry, *contestants*. Armed with remotes and nunchucks, the two TV-dwelling players try to shoot down a UFO viewed on the Wii U controller.
Wii U does what fans of local multiplayer had wished for years: it physically splits split-screen multiplayer. If only Wii U had been around for those long nights of GoldenEye 64. We're also very impressed with the accuracy of Wii U's motion controls. Aiming our UFO's cannons with tiny controller shifts is responsive and accurate.
New Super Mario Bros Mii
The most complete game shown is Wii U's most disappointing. An HD reworking of New Super Mario Bros Wii, we struggled spotting Wii U's extra horsepower. The action is crisp and the screen zooms out further than it could on Wii, but the distinction would be lost on all but the keenest Mario fan.
That said, swivelling our eyes down to the controller feed reveals no loss of visual quality or lag between the action on TV. In fact, it's easy to forget it's even being broadcast nearby, until you hear crowds sniggering at your fifth pitiful death in a row.
Shield Pose
This piratical rhythm game asks you to defend yourself from arrow barrages by physically raising the controller in the direction of attacks. The controller screen acts as an extension of the television screen.
While one pirate ship bobs on the TV before you, the others can only be spotted by physically panning the handheld screen left or right. Turn 180 degrees and you're starting at the back of your own virtual ship. The illusion of peering through a window into a virtual world hidden beyond our reality is quite mesmerising.
Zelda HD
A hands-off tech demo, Zelda HD offers the best taste of what Wii U is capable of visually. Although based on Wii's Twilight Princess, it is smothered in such detailed textures that it is hard to recognise at first.
Smooth depth of field transition and reflective marble and water are beyond Wii's capabilities, particularly how rippling ponds distort the light. Switching between day and night reveals rich, reactive lighting, with flaming torches spotting the hide of a giant spider with neat flashes of colour. Whatever the final specs, no Nintendo game has ever looked this good.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techradar/gaming-news/~3/sCsP9OLygmw/story01.htm
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