Wii U is a Four-Letter Word to a Gamer

It’s no secret that I’m not the biggest fan of the Wii platform. We have one in our house, and the only time I play it is when my daughter wants to play a multiplayer game on it. That said, I looked for Nintendo to address some of the fundamental issues I had with the Wii in the Wii U so they could potentially keep both the new gamers they attracted during the heyday of the Wii and bring back some of the traditional gamers they lost during that same time. After watching everything shown and discussed during and after E3, I’m left with the sad realization that Nintendo doesn’t really seem to know what they’re doing.  I know I’ve said that before (and was wrong, at least with respect to making money), but the people who have been playing the Wii for the last six years (there are some, right?) are ready for something more substantial — and I don’t mean the Wii HD.

One might be easily fooled into thinking they’ve finally gotten their head wrapped around everything they need to do during this next generation, but it only takes a slightly closer look to realize they seemingly don’t. We’re less than six months away from the launch of their system (realistically probably closer to four months), so let’s take a look at both the stuff we do and the stuff we don’t know that should cause great concern for anyone seriously interested in the platform.

We still have no clue what the price is for the new system. Nintendo is well-known for selling their systems at a profit from day one, and providing you can actually sell systems, that’s a great tactic.  Selling systems at a loss to build an install base is a risky and expensive proposition, just ask all the other platform holders. For Nintendo though, I see this as a double edged sword, as the price may end up revealing quite a bit about the system and/or Nintendo themselves.

I suspect they’re either going to try to charge a premium ($349-$399) because of all the “functionality” offered and then set themselves up to fall short of people’s expectations or they’re going to aggressively target a much lower price ($199-$249) and pretty much let the cat out of the bag that there isn’t really that much advanced/expensive tech in the system. You may notice there’s a gap in my price estimates. That gap is where they probably need to price the system and ideally really outperform gamer’s expectations to have a chance at striking lightning twice and having another runaway hit platform like they did with the Wii.

The Wii U console and Wii U controller have been estimated to cost about $180 to make (with $50 of that being for the Wii U controller).  While it remains to be seen what kind of markup Nintendo will throw into the mix, you can probably kiss that $199 price point goodbye. While traditional gamers rip on the Wii all the time, it was an incredible moneymaking phenomenon for Nintendo.  One I’m sure they’ve spent a lot of time and money trying to recreate with the Wii U.  The system and its games by most accounts should have never garnered the reception it received, but it was probably more the seemingly “magical” mix of new technology people didn’t understand, shortages in stores, and the “I’ve got to have one before everyone else!” fad that played a huge part in selling over 96M systems.

What concerns me about the Wii U? Where do I even start? Based on what was shown and talked about at E3 this year, the Wii U seems on par with what the 360 and PS3 offer now in terms of horsepower and graphical fidelity. Those two systems are creeping up on their 6th year in the marketplace. What the Wii U seems to have going for it is a controller that seems to (try to) mix the best of all gaming options. It’s got motion control (like the Wii/PS Move), traditional controls (like the PS3/360), touch control (like smart phones/tablets), its own screen (like smart phones/tablets), RFID reading and writing (like Skylander’s portal), it’s got an IR blaster (like your TV remote control), it’s got a camera (like phones/tablets), it does HD (like all the other last-gen systems had), and it has first-party Nintendo titles (like all previous Nintendo platforms), as well as third-party titles reworked to work on the controller. At E3, they were basically showing new installments of Nintendo franchises and reworked third-party games from last year as if they were supposed to excite us this year.

Let’s take a moment to address those “benefits” the Wii U offers. The Wii U controller apparently doesn’t use the sensor bar that the Wii-remote controller does and has known calibration problems. Shigeru Miyamoto knows this and said their solution is to have developers work the frequent recalibration into the gameplay. Everyone seems to be sidestepping the issue that the Wii U will only launch with support for one Wii U controller, leaving all those other smiling fools in the Wii U promotional videos basically playing an HD Wii. Sure, they said eventually they’ll support two Wii U controllers on the system (meaning there will be one less smiling HD Wii playing fool in those gaming parties), but they also unveiled that adding a 2nd Wii U controller will halve the framerate on those personal screens.

While we’re on the topic of the Wii U controller, Nintendo’s not playing up the fact that it’s touchscreen doesn’t support multitouch like most every other touch screen you’re likely to be using today.  It’s also fairly low resolution at 854×480; chances are your smartphone has at least if not a higher resolution display. They’re also not keen on directly spelling out that the Wii U controller is basically a dumb terminal that won’t function as a handheld gaming device even though they dance around implying it is. You can’t take your personal Mario Wii U game from the living room to the car like a 3DS or any other tablet. It’s effectively like a wireless screen. This has led some to wonder if the framerate reduction from adding a 2nd Wii U controller to the mix is less about CPU horsepower and more about wireless bandwidth. If the Wii U only has so much bandwidth to use for sending a video signal to the Wii U controllers, is that why using two screens means each screen gets half the bandwidth? If there truly is no CPU/GPU running this stuff on the Wii U controller, will it be susceptible to wireless interference causing display issues? Time will tell.

The Wii U controller’s battery life is a sad 3-5 hours per charge. If Nintendo is going to push the system as a motion controlled system where you’re really going to want to use the Wii U controller as your main controller, you’re either going to be artificially limited to 3-5 hour sessions (from a full charge — less if you forgot to charge it when you were finished playing the last time) or play with a charging cable dangling from the controller.  Cue the stories of people tripping over cords, having controllers yanked out of their hands and breaking, or if you see Nintendo’s vision for golf… accidentally stepping on the controller that you use by laying on the floor.  For some reason Nintendo keeps returning to the image of the Wii U controller on the floor and playing golf with the Wii remote like that’s filling some great void in gaming today.  That is the reason Nintendo thinks you need their new system.

For those of you that want a more traditional controller, Nintendo’s (separately) releasing a controller that looks like an intentionally designed mash-up of the 360 and PS3 controller. Of course you will have to buy this controller outright, and it’ll likely cost close to the price of a new game.

One of the areas Nintendo completely fell flat on for the Wii was their lack of any compelling online offerings. They’ve promised to address that with the Wii U but first-party games are already being announced as launching without an online component because according to legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto “it would be very difficult to sync up over an internet connection.” How can “it would be very difficult” be an excuse for a legendary game designer to just walk away from offering online multiplayer support for a game? I’m not one to insist that every game offer online multiplayer, but Pikmin already supports local multiplayer. What are all those other game developers doing out there with their online multiplayer games? Oh, they’re doing “very difficult” things and not making excuses. I suppose that’s why they get a lot of people hooked into their games.  There’s no argument where Pikmin 3 is more technically demanding than the dozens of games that pull of hectic online multiplayer gaming day in and day out.

I suppose Miyamoto has at least one argument to make for the way Nintendo has done things… it’s called 96M+ systems sold last generation with crap online support, a metric ton of shovel-ware, and milking their first-party franchises a bit more than most people would probably like.  Don’t get me wrong, there are a handful of truly impressive Wii games (a couple with the word “Galaxy” in the title.)  I just can’t imagine what they could have done if they’d actually tried. They will be offering achievements this time around though. Nintendo’s really got their work cut out for them. They’ll effectively be pitting their first “real” online network offering to Sony’s 2nd generation PlayStation Network and Microsoft’s 3rd generation Xbox Live once those two systems inevitably launch.

At the end of the E3 hoopla, the only thing Nintendo was offering that couldn’t be denied was access to new installments of their first-party franchises. Even then, Nintendo has repeatedly been criticized for prancing their same dozen or so franchises around each time they launch a new system, often with a simple port and/or revamp that adds the new generation’s buzzword such as  “Super,” “Wii,” or “64” to the name. Maybe this will be the generation for “Wii U” to be tacked onto the beginning of dozens of game names. I can’t help but shake the famous quote from Ling in the movie Kung Pow! Enter the Fist whenever I hear or say the name of Nintendo’s new system.  Further than that, when I think about it very long, I’m also reminded of her other quote from the movie: “Waaaacht!”

Tags: Nintendo, Wii, Wii U