The Wii U, The Cat is Out of The Bag

I can't stop myself from blogging these days so much news coming out of E3 I can't type fast enough. We all knew Nintendo was going to unveil their next console and we were all sitting tight to see if could be a console to rival Sony's and Microsoft's hardware.But when Nintendo announced the Wii U, it seemed like a double edged sword.

The lack of third party support was my biggest concern for the original Wii and ultimately caused my avoidance of the console. The sleek, little white box had nothing more than your run of the mill, rehashed first party Nintendo software that I was never too fond of. This seems to have changed with the Wii U, it looks like it will be getting to some third party titles like Arkham City. The Wii U will apparently have some kind of powerful hardware to enable games in HD, so they are finally joining the party. I am glad Nintendo decided not to alienate core gamers this time around, they can potentially recapture the gaming audience they have left behind.

This seems all fine and dandy but I have a couple of concerns, first Nintendo needs a solid online network or else things will get ugly with the third party games that rely heavily on their online components. Hopefully the Wii U will have something free like PSN and runs smoothly. As of now, we can only wait and see; this could possibly make or break the console as almost every game has some type of online component these days.

My second concern is the controller, sure it has that nice large touch screen in the middle with a front facing camera and all the buttons you would find on a conventional gaming controller but it has a huge problem; price. This controller is pretty much like Nintendo DS that is missing a screen, it has so many features that will enable it to enhance the game play styles of several games but at what cost. I foresee the Wii U controllers costing well above $100 and that is not even taking into account the price of the hardware itself. If the cost of a controller and a console is above $300 I can see people have a tough time forking out the money for a console that is more expensive than a 360 or PS3 and will have few games at the time of launch.

The Wii U is a cool idea with its novelties, bell and whistles but it can be a hit or miss. Hopefully Nintendo has learned from their errors and picked up some tricks from their competitors, if they have they might recapture the core gaming audience once again.